GIGABYTE GTX 580 Super Overclock

Join the community - in the OCAU Forums! Date  5th May 2011 Author  DiGiTaL MoNkEY Editor  James "Agg" Rolfe Manufacturer  GIGABYTE Introduction, Features GIGABYTE's Super Overclock series of products is well known for pushing the envelope of overclocker friendly features and high factory-shipped clock speeds. So when we found out they were re-releasing NVIDIA's fastest single GPU card the GTX 580 with their own Super Overclock design, we made sure our name was on the list of sites reviewing this card. Upon arrival we noticed that it was a completely redesigned beast from the cooling, PCB design, power circuitry and amped up clock speed, all while maintaining a dual slot design and familiar form factor. So how does this perform against NVIDIA's reference design, and what features does it bring to the table? Let's fire up our test bench and find out!   The GIGABYTE GTX 580 Super Overclock (SOC for short) measures in at approximately 276 millimetres in length (10.86 inches) slightly longer than a reference GTX 580, and requires a minimum of 750W or greater system power supply. Cooling is provided by a custom WINDFORCE X3 solution that combines a large vapour chamber, multiple heatpipes and large aluminium fin array allowing for efficient heat transfer from the 3.0 billion transistor GF110 graphics processor core.   As with the majority of mainstream NVIDIA graphics cards it features support for NVIDIA's SLI multi-GPU technology, 3D Vision, 3D Vision Surround (two cards required), CUDA technology, PhysX acceleration and Microsoft DirectX 11 game support, as well as a variety of video enhancement technologies under the NVIDIA PureVideo HD umbrella to assist in media playback. More information about these technologies can be found here.   Inside the box we would normally find a user manual detailing installation, product features and general requirements of the video card, a software and driver disc for installation, and two PCI-Express to Molex power converters, as well as a DVI to VGA converter and gold plated HDMI cable. But as we received this card before retail boxes were produced, we can only assume these are the items that would normally be included based on previous boxed samples. Accessories may vary based on region, and once retail products hit shelves we'll look at updating these details.   Next Page: >> Select Page Page 1 - Page 2 - Page 3 - Page 4 -

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