GeForce GTX 580 And GF110: The Way Nvidia Meant It To Be Played

[JAYDEEJOHN]

I remember when furmark was "protected" as a bench, and I never thought it should be used
Maybe now its good to throw this useless "bench" away forever

 

[robwright]

I'm getting a little tired of having "new" cards become obsolete within six months and seeing this kind of cannibalization in the GPU market. Anyone that put down money on the 470 or 480 expecting it to live up to what Nvidia promised can't be pleased that the 580 has arrived less than a year later. Maybe next time Nvidia can skip the Ego and Reconciliation stages and go right to innovation.

Great review as always, Chris.

 

[jasonw223]

Personally, I'd rather they called this the GTX 485... Doesn't seem like quite enough to warrant a whole new 5xx series.

 

[Parrdacc]

[citation][nom]jasonw223[/nom]Personally, I'd rather they called this the GTX 485... Doesn't seem like quite enough to warrant a whole new 5xx series.[/citation]

Agreed.

 

[decembermouse]

What about overclocking?

 

[ph0b0s123]

For those of us with pre DX11 cards, i.e the most likely to be interested in an upgrade. How are we supposed to see the comparison of performance verses our cards when all benches are DX11.... Article is no help to me deciding whether to upgrade my 285 SLI setup or not, will look elsewhere....

 

[Chris_TC]

"Anyone who drops $500 on this card right now, before Cayman releases, should have their head examined."

You can't generalize like that. Some of us use CUDA on daily basis, so anything non-CUDA is out of the question.

 

[Gulli]

Is it just my interpretation of the benchies and specs, or is Nvidia playing tricks on us by rebranding the GTX 490 to GTX 580?

 

[lp231]

[citation][nom]Wheat_Thins[/nom]Kinda pointless article other then the fact that the 580 offers superb performance but until I see power and noise set in stone I honestly don't care.A single GPU nearly outperforming a 5970 is quite a statement. Wonder if AMD has what it takes to answer this as the 6850 IMPO is pretty disappointing other then the price.[/citation]

You expect the HD6850 to out perform the HD5850 is that it?
If you been living in a cave or something, the HD6850 is a mid-range card designed to overtake the HD5770. Also at a price of sub $200 with the performance close to the HD5850, it's great in both categories.

And if you didn't read the memo, it's the HD6900s which are the successors to the HD5800s.

 

[Reynod]

Short story ... keep your 285's in SLI.

 

[tronika]

um, 2 6870 beat 1 580 for less money. yah, im waiting for the 6900 series!

 

[bayouboy]

Right now you can get the HD 5970 from Newegg for $420. $500 - 10% promo code - $30 MIB.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102887

I am unsure how good of a deal this may be before ATI's Caymans.

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]robwright[/nom]I'm getting a little tired of having "new" cards become obsolete within six months and seeing this kind of cannibalization in the GPU market. Anyone that put down money on the 470 or 480 expecting it to live up to what Nvidia promised can't be pleased that the 580 has arrived less than a year later. Maybe next time Nvidia can skip the Ego and Reconciliation stages and go right to innovation.Great review as always, Chris.[/citation]

Thanks, Rob!!

 

[rohitbaran]

One line: Buy if you want to play TWIMTBP titles. Else, Buy a Radeon 5970 or better, wait for Cayman. This glorified Fermi won't bash in its newfound glory for too long, once Cayman and the all powerful Antilles is released.

 

[jjb8675309]

wow the 580 is a really powerful card that imo will struggle at its price point given the current offerings and and the 6900s on the way, nvidia will find themselves once again behind the ball or above the price-point where they need to be

 

[tpi2007]

First: Tom's Hardware, you must add 6870 crossfire to the SLI page! This is not a fair comparison; the HD 6800 series are better at Crossfire than the HD 5800 series. And the HD 6800 series IS available.


Anyway, this is more or less comparable to what ATI did with the HD 4890 compared to the HD 4870; they took the same chip and optimized it in order for it to be more power efficient and allow for higher clocks. The difference here being that Nvidia had such a complicated initial design on their hands, they actually weren't even able to enable the 512 cores at first (The ATI card always had the full 800 cores enabled).

In my opinion this should have been called the GTX 490. But they obviously must try to conceal the fact that this card is a year late, so an artificial generation bump is in order.

Anyway, this is objectively a better card all things considered than the GTX 480. I forsee many Nvidia fans going to buy this card. What's important here is that Nvidia is one step away from cleaning up the house (the new GTX 475 based on the full GTX 460 chip is still missing). This is good for the competition.

But now it's time for Nvidia to move on, and start working on a new design from scratch.

But there is one thing I must say to finalise: I absolutely hate this strategy "The way it's meant to be played games". How do developers embark on this unethical scheme ? Don't they see they are just pissing off their AMD customers with artificially reduced performance ? Do they think I'm going to buy a Nvidia card to play their games ? NO! I'm not buying them in the first place! (Unless they're at a heavy discount on Steam, just like Metro 2033 a few days ago).

This is not winning on merit, it's winning by sabotage, by screwing up the competitor. Oh well, it's Nvidia. I'm not surprised.

 

[flyinfinni]

I've been a fan of Toms for a good while now, but you seriously missed the mark on the crossfire section of this article. We all know that the 58xx series has tons of crossfire issues. We also know that the 68xx series does NOT have those same crossfire issues (according to every article I can find) and the 6870, and even sometimes the 6850, beat the 5870 crossfire consistently. WHY THE HECK would you not include that in your crossfire section?

Edit- Also, Why so many TWIMTBP titles and titles that are clearly biased towards Nvidia- we all KNOW how thats gonna turn out, we dont need those benchmarks. Why not use a more balanced test suite so we actually get a good feel for how the cards compare, not an artificially inflated perception of Nvidia's cards performance? The 580 is a clearly a great card and what the 480 SHOULD have been, but this article makes me feel like I have no idea how it ACTUALLY compares to AMD's cards.

 

[nate007]

[citation][nom]KT_WASP[/nom]The last bit of the article is the most important I think. Anyone who drops $500 on this card right now, before Cayman releases, should have their head examined. With two companies releasing so close together, it would be in a person's best interest to see what the other is bringing to the table before shelling out such a large chunk of change. If the 6850 and 6870 have shown one thing.. they are much better then the last gen in many ways (power, noise and scaling) and the cayman is much more robust then the barts. So, before you start calling a winner here, wait and see. That is my advise.[/citation]

Purchase 2 6870's for less the $500 and you will have a setup that can Beat the GTX 580 and the HD 5970, why spend more ?

 

[mdedrick]

Error

Dirt 2. 2560x1600. GTX 480 should read , 40.1 FPS min , not 30.1 FPS.

 

[nate007]

[citation][nom]rohitbaran[/nom]One line: Buy if you want to play TWIMTBP titles. Else, Buy a Radeon 5970 or better, wait for Cayman. This glorified Fermi won't bash in its newfound glory for too long, once Cayman and the all powerful Antilles is released.[/citation]

True but 2 x 6870's are faster and cheaper still then either 5970 and 580

 

[dragonsqrrl]

[citation][nom]awood28211[/nom]You can just release a product that competes with the competitors current offerings, you gotta compete with what he releases next... If AMD's next offering is significantly faster than it's current, then NVIDIA will still be playing catchup.[/citation]
[citation][nom]rohitbaran[/nom]One line: Buy if you want to play TWIMTBP titles. Else, Buy a Radeon 5970 or better, wait for Cayman. This glorified Fermi won't bash in its newfound glory for too long, once Cayman and the all powerful Antilles is released. [/citation]
AMD's next offering "is" significantly faster than it's current, but that doesn't mean it'll outperform the GTX580. I just hope you don't end up seriously disappointed, like the people in this thread...

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/11395-55-report-launching-radeon-6000

The point is, I would read up to get a general idea of what to expect out of the HD6900 series before I get my hopes way up.

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]flyinfinni[/nom]I've been a fan of Toms for a good while now, but you seriously missed the mark on the crossfire section of this article. We all know that the 58xx series has tons of crossfire issues. We also know that the 68xx series does NOT have those same crossfire issues (according to every article I can find) and the 6870, and even sometimes the 6850, beat the 5870 crossfire consistently. WHY THE HECK would you not include that in your crossfire section? Edit- Also, Why so many TWIMTBP titles and titles that are clearly biased towards Nvidia- we all KNOW how thats gonna turn out, we dont need those benchmarks. Why not use a more balanced test suite so we actually get a good feel for how the cards compare, not an artificially inflated perception of Nvidia's cards performance? The 580 is a clearly a great card and what the 480 SHOULD have been, but this article makes me feel like I have no idea how it ACTUALLY compares to AMD's cards.[/citation]

Unfortunately, AMD never sent CrossFire'd 6870s to our main lab, making that comparison impossible. There's a 100% chance that we'll be doing a CrossFire/SLI follow-up in the very near future, though.

As far as the game selection, we're representing the latest slew of DirectX 11 titles. AMD came on strong with DiRT 2, BF: BC 2, and AvP back when NV had nothing to show for DX11 hardware. But soon after, NV's dev rel machine kicked into gear, and titles like Metro and LP2 started popping up. Are they not viable games because NV touched them first? No. Is it unfortunate for owners of 5000- and 6000-series cards that they aren't getting as good of an experience? Absolutely. That doesn't make the suite any less representative of today's landscape. Not at all.

With that said, you guys know I'm always taking suggestions and rolling your desires into upcoming stories. If there are games you'd like to see added, within reason, we'll get them included!

Appreciate the feedback, as always!!
Chris

 

[a_mall]

Why didnt you people use your efficient & precise power measuring systems (external), which you boasted about few months ago for "Power & Heat" graphs of GeForce GTX 580??
I know you've dropped CRYSIS, but please run it as a benchmark on this card. This card deserves to be burnt by CRYSIS @ 2560x1200 & full AA & AF

 

[nate007]

[citation][nom]cangelini[/nom]Unfortunately, AMD never sent CrossFire'd 6870s to our main lab, making that comparison impossible. There's a 100% chance that we'll be doing a CrossFire/SLI follow-up in the very near future, though.As far as the game selection, we're representing the latest slew of DirectX 11 titles. AMD came on strong with DiRT 2, BF: BC 2, and AvP back when NV had nothing to show for DX11 hardware. But soon after, NV's dev rel machine kicked into gear, and titles like Metro and LP2 started popping up. Are they not viable games because NV touched them first? No. Is it unfortunate for owners of 5000- and 6000-series cards that they aren't getting as good of an experience? Absolutely. That doesn't make the suite any less representative of today's landscape. Not at all.With that said, you guys know I'm always taking suggestions and rolling your desires into upcoming stories. If there are games you'd like to see added, within reason, we'll get them included! Appreciate the feedback, as always!!Chris[/citation]

Uh ? Why do you have to wait for AMD to send you cross fired 6870's ?
Just get 2 6870's slap them in the board like I did and DONE DEAL !
Now you have a CrossFire setup that OWNS !! the 5970 and GTX 580 for considerable less Money !
flyinfinni : is right though, you really Need to UPDATE your articles because think about it, they are now old and misleading to someone new that is not up to date and the current events. The 6850 and 6870 's have been out a while now and Many other sites have them listed in crossfire reviews and or updated the crossfire reviews to reflect the performance of the 6000 series vs the 5000 series.

 

[LORD_ORION]

>>Gamers care little about snarky accusations, though.

Lies, it is the fluff that comprises our genre of soap opera.

Lots of people have given the sound advice. Wait a bit and see what happens. The cards always launch at a premium price because of the "I don't need to worry about money" crowd.

It wouldn't really hurt to wait 2 weeks to see the word on Cayman and the start of the holiday shopping spree.