The Fastest VGA
Specs
Nvdia had significant trouble releasing the first GF100 Fermi-based GPU back in March, with launch delays letting ATI rule the DX11 battleground for roughly six months. It didn’t help that when the GeForce GTX 580 1.5 VRam did find its way to our test rigs, it wasn’t fast enough for the price, and also ran hot, loud and consumed too much power. What a difference a few months make, as the new GeForce GTX 580 1.5GB solves all of these issues.
GPU Upgrades
While Nvidia has made the obvious move of unlocking the 16th and final SM (Streaming Multiprocessor, or ‘stream processor cluster’ in neutral terminology) of the GF100 architecture for the GeForce GTX 580 1.5GB, the new GF110 codename reveals that this isn’t the full extent of the changes. The most significant difference between GF110 and GF100 is the use of different grades of transistor.
Typically a GPU will use the fastest switching transistors to attain the highest possible frequencies, but these transistors are also the most leaky, resulting in higher power consumption and more waste heat. With the GF110 design, Nvidia has used less leaky transistors for non-performance-critical areas of the GPU, thus lowering the overall power draw of the chip.
Nvidia has also added temperature and power draw monitoring to the GeForce GTX 580 1.5GB via two additional chips on the card. This means that if the GPU or the card’s VRMs get too hot or try to draw more power than is safe, the GPU will clock down to avoid damage to the hardware.
There are three things to note about this power management technology, the first being that as it’s enabled by two separate chips on the card - board partners can choose to leave them off to lower the cost of their card. Secondly, the GPU won’t increase in frequency if the power draw or temperature are lower than the maximums – the technology is more akin to Intel’s SpeedStep than Turbo Boost. Finally, the monitoring is software-based and at the moment only detects OCCT and the latest version of FurMark. This means that any thermal or power draw test using these applications are inaccurate, but as we use 3DMark06 to stress the GPUs, our numbers are perfect.
GTX 560:
After the initial disappointment of the first round of Fermi graphics cards last March, Nvidia’s design tweaks for its mid-range GeForce GTX 460 cards were a surprising success. While the number of GPCs (graphics processing clusters) was cut down from four to two for the smaller GPU, the SMs (Streaming Multi-processors) contained 48 stream processors each rather than the 32 per SM of the high-end GTX 470 1.3GB and GTX 480 1.5GB GPUs. As the GTX 460 shipped with seven SMs (with an eighth disabled) the GTX 460 packed 336 stream processors, a generous 70 per cent of the stream processor count of the ferocious GTX 480 1.5GB.
The GF104 GPU used in the GTX 460 range also benefited from much lower power requirements and waste heat, allowing the GPU clock speeds to be pushed much higher than those of the larger GPUs of the GTX 480 1.5GB and GTX 470 1.3GB. The resulting performance made the GTX 460 1GB and 768MB the mid-range stars of 2010. The overclocking headroom of the cards was also legendary, and from a stock core clock of 675MHz we’ve managed to push some cards to 900MHz – an increase of 33 per cent.
The GF104 GPU used in the GTX 460 range also benefited from much lower power requirements and waste heat, allowing the GPU clock speeds to be pushed much higher than those of the larger GPUs of the GTX 480 1.5GB and GTX 470 1.3GB. The resulting performance made the GTX 460 1GB and 768MB the mid-range stars of 2010. The overclocking headroom of the cards was also legendary, and from a stock core clock of 675MHz we’ve managed to push some cards to 900MHz – an increase of 33 per cent.
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