Gigabyte GTX580 Super Overclock Review

Gigabyte GTX580 Super Overclock Review

Conclusion

What can we say about the Gigabyte GTX580 Super Overclock that isn’t obvious to anyone who has read the preceding pages? And if you haven’t read the preceding pages, stop skipping to the conclusion and go back, there is a wealth of useful information there.

When we heard that there would be an overclocked version of the GTX580 we confess we were fairly nonplussed. It wouldn’t be the first factory overclocked card, and we’ve seen a few that have good performance so it really had to be something special to catch our eye.

Something special it most certainly is. The looks capture you first. It’s not the most aesthetically pleasing card if you like little touches that don’t add anything, but if you appreciate epic engineering then it’s most certainly a charmer. The thin-ness of the card is a particular highlight as tri-fan solutions normally mean triple-slot too. This is, albeit a few mm, but thinner than the dual-height PCI bracket. Not only has it got three big PWM fans and a huge load of fins, but it’s got a genuine vapour-chamber too, and this really moves the cooling into another league.

Performance is even more startling than the cooling though. In a lot of our tests it provided the highest GTX580 score we’ve ever seen and was often either neck and neck, or even above, some of the dual-GPU setups we tested. It’s staggering. Our thesaurus has been well-thumbed trying to find other superlatives to describe the GTX580 SOC, and we think that says it all.

If you want the fastest single-GPU on the market, look no further. This is insanely fast. If you want to take your overclock to new levels it has that covered too. Both with the dual-BIOS LN2 switch, or just on air with the OC Guru software. We saw north of 1GHz on the core capable of stability on most of our tests, and with a little extra time for those finite tweaks we’re sure it would be stable on anything you threw at it.

We love it, you’ll love it. It’s so phenomenal that not only is it worthy of our Gold Award, but our performance award too. Stunning.

      

Thanks to Gigabyte for providing the GTX580SOC for review. Discuss in our forums.