Gigabyte GeForce GTX 580 Super Overclock graphics card review

HEXUS.bang4buck and bang4watt

Putting all the numbers into perspective, let's take a closer look at overall performance and value for money.

In a rough-and-ready assessment of the cards' bang for buck, we've aggregated the 1,920x1,080 and 2,560x1,600 frame-rates for six games, normalised them¹ and taken account of the single-cards' prices.

But there are more provisos than we'd care to shake a stick at. We could have chosen six different games, the cards' prices could have been derived from other sources and pricing tends to fluctuate daily, especially for new-release GPUs.

Consequently, the table below highlight a metric that should only be used as a yardstick for evaluating comparative performance with price factored in. Other architectural benefits are not covered, obviously.

¹ the normalisation refers to taking playable frame rate into account. Should a card benchmark at over 60 frames per second in any one game, the extra fps count as half. Similarly, should a card benchmark lower, say at 40fps, we deduct half the difference from its average frame rate and the desired 60fps, giving it a HEXUS.bang4buck score of 30 marks. The minimum allowable frame rate is 20fps but that scores zero.

² the GPU power consumption is derived from subtracting a flat rate of 100W - indicating system power-draw without a card - from the Call of Duty: Black Ops load figure. While this figure isn't solely indicative of power pulled by the GPU, as the CPU also throttles up, it's a better metric than using peak system-draw alone.

³ the HEXUS.bang4watt score is a crude measurement of how much normalised performance the GPU provides when evaluated against GPU power-draw that's shown in the table: the former is divided by the latter. We're using the peak power-draw numbers obtained by running real-world Just Cause 2.

Summary

Gigabyte's Super Overclock card was shaping up rather nicely, but our bang4buck and bang4watt metrics put things back in perspective.

If performance-per-pound is what matters most, this souped-up card simply isn't likely to be the best option. We won't know for certain until Gigabyte reveals an official UK MSRP, but if our estimated £450 price tag is close to the mark, value for money and eco efficiency aren't the 580 SOC's strong points.

At the time of writing, a couple of Radeon HD 6950s in CrossFire make for a compelling sub-£430 solution if you're willing to go the multi-GPU route.