EVGA NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 1.5GB Graphics Video Card Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
1,360 words · ~6 min read
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today we're going to be unboxing a very very exciting product this is the EVGA
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GeForce GTX 580 that is 100 more than
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the 480 it's actually not 100 more because it's difficult to quantify a
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graphics card in terms of a numerical
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value other than well I guess FPS but
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there's features too so bear that in mind so let's get this guy out of his
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packaging and have a look so this is the latest and greatest from NVIDIA this is
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actually the replacement for the relatively short-lived GTX 480 and I
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guess you could say it's more of an evolutionary change than a revolutionary
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change because we do have still a very
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similar feature set so we've got support for 2-way SLI 3-way SLI direct X11 fizx
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3D Vision surround we have 1.5 gigs of
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Graphics memory so stop me if any of that sounds amiliar but one of the big
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improvements that we're making with this card over the GTX 480 is the fact that
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we've improved the power consumption okay so that is less power consumption
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we've improved the heat output that is less heat output and we've also improved
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the performance so that is more performance so it's what the gtx480 is
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except better better and better in every
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way so here is an overall key feature list two-way three-way and pardon me
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four-way SLI is also supported on select
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motherboards we've got full support for NVIDIA's Cuda initiative that is using
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your graphics card to do complex computational equations such as folding
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at home or video rendering all right here we have a little note about
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connecting your GTX 580 to the power supply next we have a graphics card user
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guide okay which is U probably feels
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very short as well as a quick start guide all right there we go shows you
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how to plug in your power shows you where the SLI connector is well we don't need to look at this because we have a
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real card to look at next we've got an EVGA driver SLS software installation
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disc as well as a powered by EVGA sticker so throw that away download the
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latest off the NVIDIA website you've heard me say that before and let's have
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a look at the accessories that are included with this card so first of all
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we have a dual Molex to six pin PCI Express connector next we have a dual
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six pin PCI Express connector to PCI Express 8 pin connector finally we have
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a mini HDMI to HDMI connector and then
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we have a DVI to VGA connector so with
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all of the adapters that are included you could theoretically be running this
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off some ancient power supply that doesn't have proper support for it on
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some ancient VGA monitor that probably doesn't deserve such a great graphics
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card powering it but I'm sure most of you are going to be running this with
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with the recommended power supply which actually whoops oh cool hey we found
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something else inside here I'm sorry here let's check this out so it looks
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like this card actually comes with an EVGA poster check that out EVGA gaming
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want that on your W look at that evj gaming.com I can't
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actually quite tell what this is a picture of but it's it's a skull and
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then there appears to be like some car parts attached to it oh it's some kind
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of like r thing with a skull on the top of it either way that's pretty cool so
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you get a poster with your video card here you know all right we'll put that
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away actually here why don't we do why don't we do a quick contest around this poster so I want you guys to um let me
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see I'll come up with something arbitrary like I want you to tell me
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what you would name that skeleton guy and whatever name I like the best I will
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send you the poster done all right so
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let's uh actually right I wanted to check out the uh minimum system requ
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requirements in terms of power supply so here so EVGA is recommending a 600 watt
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or greater power supply with a minimum of 42 amps on the 12vt rail okay and
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other than that it's all fairly fairly standard stuff and let's just have a
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look at um what else we had on here oh
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right yeah EVGA does some bragging on the outside of this box which I also
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wanted to talk about and so they should
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number one seller of NVIDIA based products in the US number one
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reliability and service and that is in a survey that was conducted in 2010 number
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one performance leader in 3D Mark Vantage as well as the number one
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folding at home team in the world those are certainly some points that are worth
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bragging about so now let's have a look at the GTX 580 itself this isn't a
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reference card so that means that EVGA has customized the look and feel of the
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card itself and probably not much else
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although EVGA does have many custom cards that they do where they use
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different coolers or they actually overclock the stock frequency of the
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card past what NVIDIA specification is and they'll give you a lifetime warranty
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on that as well that's one of the other really cool things about EVGA is their
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lifetime warranty so let's do a quick tour of the card first of all we've got
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our fan here so that fan spins blows the air out the back of your case this is a
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rear exhaust design on this card so that means that you're not going to have to
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worry about the heat being expelled into your case and then having to use hot air
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to cool the card itself although we are going to lose a little little bit of it out the top here that's probably to
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decrease the Restriction of the cooling mechanism so that we can yeah we can
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exhaust some out here if we absolutely have to and same goes down at the bottom
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we have a standard sorry about that guys battery died so standard PCI Express 2.0
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16x slot let's move around let's see if there's anything else interesting on the
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bottom of the card it doesn't really look like it so let's move around to the
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back of the card so here you can see the GF 110 that is the code name of the GPU
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that powers the GTX 580 so that's where it's mounted on the PCB you can see the
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power delivery system is all over on this side you can also see where the
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memory modules are mounted around the outside of the GPU so that you got nice
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short PCB traces so it communicate can communicate very quickly with that
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memory here is the two SLI connectors that are required for two-way you only
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need one three-way as well as four-way
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SLI and last but not least let's have a look at the top of the card where we
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have our PCI Express pin as well as our PCI Express 8 Pin power connectors and
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then let's move around to the back where finally we have two DVI outputs as well
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as that one mini HDMI which EVGA kindly
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provides a mini HDMI to standard HDMI output so that you can make proper use
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of it so thank you for checking out my unboxing of the GTX 580 don't forget to
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check out my other launch day coverage of this exciting new GPU from envidia
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and don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech tips