Today we're turning our clocks all the way back to November 2022 to revisit the once mighty GeForce GTX 580, a card that marked the transition from 55nm to 40nm for Nvidia's high-stop GPUs and helped the visitor sweep its Fermi-based GeForce GTX 480 nether the rug.

If y'all call back, the GTX 480 and 470 (GF100) launched simply eight months before the GTX 580 in March 2022, giving gamers an opportunity to buy a $500 graphics menu that could double equally a George Foreman grill. With a TDP of 250 watts, the GTX 480 didn't raise likewise many eyebrows and effectually then AMD's much smaller Radeon HD 5870 was rated at 228 watts while its dual-GPU 5970 smoked nearly power supplies with its 294 watt rating.

Although both the Radeon Hard disk drive 5870 and GeForce GTX 480 were built on the same 40nm manufacturing process, the GeForce was massive. Its die was over fifty% larger. Nvidia aimed to create a GPU that packed both strong gaming and strong compute performance, resulting in the GF100 die measuring an insane 529mm2.

This behemoth of a die caused problems for TSMC's 40nm procedure which was still maturing at the time, which resulted in poor yields and leaky transistors. For gamers, the GTX 480 was merely as well hot to handle -- you couldn't bear on it even 10 minutes afterward shutting down -- and information technology was far from tranquillity as well.

Fermi went down every bit one of Nvidia'due south worst creations in history and at the time the company knew information technology had a real stinker on its easily so it went back to the cartoon board and returned afterward that yr to relaunch Fermi as the GTX 580. By November, TSMC had ironed out the kinks for their 40nm process and we got 7% more than cores in a slightly smaller dice. Of course, information technology wasn't just TSMC that had time to work things out, as Nvidia as well fixed what was wrong with GF100 when it created GF110 (the Fermi refresh).

Based on our own testing from 2022, power consumption was reduced by at least 5% and reference carte du jour load temperatures dropped 15%. Making those results more than impressive, the GTX 580 was ~25% faster than the 480.

That'south a significant performance boost in the same release year and on the same process, while also saving power. The GTX 480 truly sucked. I didn't like it on arrival simply information technology wasn't until the 580 came along eight months later that I understood just how rubbish it really was. I concluded my GTX 580 coverage by saying the following...

"The GeForce GTX 580 is unquestionably the fastest single-GPU graphics carte du jour bachelor today, representing a improve value than whatever other high-terminate video bill of fare. However, information technology'due south not the only pick for those looking to spend $500. Dual Radeon HD 6870s remain very bonny at but nether $500 and deliver more performance than a single GeForce GTX 580 in most titles. Still, multi-GPU technology isn't without pitfalls, and given the choice we would always opt for a single loftier-finish graphics carte.

Nvidia's GeForce GTX 580 may be the current male monarch of the hill, simply this could all change next calendar month when AMD launches their new Radeon HD 6900 series. AMD was originally expected to deliver its Cayman XT and Pro-based Radeon Hd 6970 and 6950 graphics cards former during November, only they have postponed their inflow until mid-December for undisclosed reasons. If you lot don't heed property off a few short weeks, the wait could be worth some savings or potentially more than performance for the same dollars depending on what AMD has reserved for usa."

For those of y'all wondering, the Radeon Hard disk drive 6970 turned out to be a scrap of a disappointment, falling well short of the GTX 580 and as a result was priced to compete with the GTX 570, assuasive Nvidia to agree the performance crown without dispute for the adjacent few years. It would be interesting to come across how those two stack up today, maybe that'southward something we tin look at in the time to come.

And then, we've established that the GTX 580 was able to save confront for Nvidia in 2022 and retain the performance crown for a few years before 28nm GPUs arrived in 2022, reigniting the graphics war once more than. What we're looking to see at present is just how well the tubby 520mm2 die performs today.

Can the GTX 580 and its 512 CUDA cores clocked at 772MHz handle mod games? Certain, it has GDDR5 memory on a rather wide 384-bit bus pumping out an impressive 192GB, but in that location'south merely one.5GB of it, at to the lowest degree on most models. In that location were 3GB variants floating around, but nigh people picked up the original i.5GB version.

To see how it handles I'k going to compare information technology with the Radeon HD 7950 along with the more than recently released GeForce GTX 1050, 1050 Ti and Radeon RX 560. Let's check out those results earlier taking a gander at some actual gameplay.

Benchmarks

Battlefield one, Dawn of State of war Three, Dirt 4, For Accolade

Offset upwardly we have the Battlefield ane results using the ultra quality preset, which every bit it turns out is a bad option for the GTX 580 and its measly one.5GB frame buffer. Don't worry though, after we go over all the graphs I'll show some gameplay performance using more agreeable settings. For now, we can see that the 580 merely isn't cutting it here and fails to deliver what I would call playable performance at a little over thirty% slower than the Radeon Hard disk 7950.

Adjacent up nosotros have Dawn of War Iii, which was tested using the more than appropriate medium quality preset. Here we see a reasonable 41fps on average, merely over again, the GTX 580 is haunted by that express VRAM buffer as the minimum frame charge per unit drops down to just 23fps. This meant stuttering was an outcome.

Dirt iv was likewise tested using the medium quality settings and hither the feel was quite good with the GTX 580, certainly playable and for the most role was very shine at 1080p.

Moving on nosotros accept For Honor and hither we found a mostly playable feel if that makes sense. At times nosotros dropped downward below 30fps and this made gameplay noticeably more inclement than it was on say the RX 560 or Hard disk drive 7950. Information technology's also interesting to note that the GTX 1050 absolutely obliterates 2022's flagship part.