Quiet and deadly
While the GeForce GTX 590 has been getting all the attention of late, NVIDIA's fastest GPU remains the GTX 580. It's now Gigabyte's turn to some work Super OverClock (SOC) magic on the card, and if recent SOC cards are anything to go by, this one promises to be good.
The triple-fan cooler, dubbed WindForce 3X, is strapped on top of a custom PCB that features Proadlizer capacitors, metal chokes and a 2oz copper PCB. Extra attention to detail wouldn't be worth much without a hike in frequencies, and Gigabyte obliges with a clocking of 855MHz core, 1,710MHz shader and 4,100MHz for the 1,536MB of GDDR5 memory. These compare favourably with the stock 772MHz/4,008MHz frequencies of the reference card.
We expect it to ship for around £450, representing a healthy premium over bone-stock models. Feeling particularly flush? A further two can be added for three-way SLI.
From a quick look around the web, this one seems to be the fastest air-cooled GTX 580 on the market, though we're adamant an eagle-eyed reader will prove us wrong.
There's life in the GTX 580 yet, and Gigabyte's extending it rather nicely. Tempting by one of these, or would you rather spend the money on a two-board solution from either AMD or NVIDIA? Let us know your thoughts in the forums.
