Asus GTX580 Direct CU II Review – the ultimate 580?

1. Introduction2. Asus GTX580 Direct CU II 3. Testing Methodology4. Synthetic: Unigine Heaven Benchmark5. Synthetic: Tessmark6. Synthetic: ShaderToy Mark7. Synthetic: 3dmark Vantage8. Synthetic: 3dmark 119. Synthetic: Stone Giant10. Gaming: Mafia 211. Gaming: Resident Evil 512. Gaming: Far Cry 213. Gaming: Alien V Predator14. Gaming: Lost Planet 215. Gaming: Metro 203316. Gaming: Colin McRae Dirt 217. Gaming: STALKER: Clear Sky18. Gaming: Battlefield: Bad Company 219. Gaming: Dead Space 220. Image Quality: HQV Benchmark 221. Technical: Acoustics Performance22. Technical: Power Consumption23. Technical: Thermal Dynamics24. Technical: Overclocking25. Closing Thoughts26. View All Pages

The high end sector only drives a small portion of income for nVidia and AMD, however it is important to be seen as dominant in this sector as public perception and confidence can drive sales further down the range. The Asus GTX580 Direct CU II is a highly modified play on the nVidia GTX580 reference solution which looks on paper to be one of the finest graphics cards on the market.

We have looked at reference design GTX580's in the past and have been extremely impressed with nVidia's flagship graphics card. While the HD5970 is still the ultimate performance king, in fairness it is a dual GPU design.

The GTX580 is comprised of 3 billion transistors and it demands high levels of power, even though nVidia have made changes to the architecture to ensure that electrical leakages and latencies are reduced. The Geforce GTX580 has 512 cuda cores and also features 64 texture memory units and 48 ROP's via a 384 bit memory interface with 1.5GB of memory onboard.

Product	nVidia GTX 480	Asus GTX 580
Shader Units	480	512
GPU	GF100	GF110
ROPs	48	48
Transistors	3200M	3000M
Memory Count	1536MB	1536MB
Memory Bus Width	384 bit	384 bit
Core Clock	700mhz	782mhz
Memory Clock	924 mhz	1002mhz

The Asus GTX580 Direct CU II is supplied in a J.R. Tolkien style box with a fantasy style knight riding a battlehorse. Sure, it's corny, but we doubt anyone cares. The main focus on the box is centered around the cooling performance, which we will look at later in great detail.

The bundle is essentials only, with a power converter cable, SLI (extra long) connector, VGA adapter, and literature on the product with a software disc.

Asus have taken the GTX580 back to the drawing board and have totally redesigned the cooling system with a dual fan configuration. The cooler is a metal design, easily noticeable the first time you lift the card, as it is really heavy. The 80mm fans rest over heatpipes and a parallel aluminum fin array, directly cooling the hardware below. Five copper heatpipes transfer heat to either side of the cooler design ensuring a wide cooling coverage.

As can be seen from the images above, there is also a backplate system in place which totally covers the PCB area. Asus are also using a ‘Super Alloy Power' system which is a total overhaul and upgrade of all system components on the PCB. Asus claim a 15% performance increase over the reference board with a 2.5 x life span improvement with 35c cooler operation. We will test some of these claims later.

The card supports SLI modes, in 2, 3 and 4 way configurations. It requires two 8 pin PCI power connectors to operate, the reference cards we have looked at before have required a 6 pin and an 8 pin connector.

ASUS have changed the display output configuration against the reference design. They are offering 2 DVI, a full sized HDMI port (very useful) and a Displayport connector. This card however won't support 3 screens unless you move to an SLI configuration, which is expensive. AMD are still leading the way in this regard.

The card design really is stellar and this particular card is a fantastic highlight of the ASUS engineering quality.

ASUS have enhanced the clock speeds of the card, delivering the solution with a 782mhz core clock. The 1.5GB of GDDR5 is running at 1002mhz via the 384 memory interface. Direct X 11, PCIe 2.0, DirectCompute 5.0, CUDA, OpenCL and PhysX are all supported, as is acceleration of high definition media content. The onboard processor can output 7.1 audio over the HDMI connector.

To test this high end card today we have built a system with suitable matching components, based around a liquid cooled 12 core Intel i7 970 processor overclocked to 4.33ghz with 6GB of GKILL memory running at 1800mhz with tight timings. We will be mixing the resolutions, as we know that less than 1 percent of the audience have access to a 30 inch screen.

System validation is available over here.

Processor: Core i7 970 @ 4.33ghz
Cooling: Coolit Vantage
Motherboard: MSI X58A-GD65 (MS-7522)
Chassis: Thermaltake Level 10
Power Supply: Corsair Ax1200
Memory: 6GB GSkill Performance Gaming ram @ 902.9 MHz (2:10) @ 7-8-7-24
Storage: Kingston SSDNow V+ 512GB Gen 2 SSD (Storage) / Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB (OS boot)
Monitors: Dell U2410 UltraSharp, LaCie 730, Iiyama Prolite E2472HDD x2

Other graphics cards for comparisons:
nVidia GTX570
nVidia GTX460 OC (715 core/900 memory)
AMD HD6970
AMD HD6950
AMD HD6870
AMD HD5870

Software:
Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
Catalyst 11.1
Forceware 266.58 WHQL
Fraps Professional
Steam Client
FurMark
TessMark
ShaderToy
Stone Giant Benchmark
HQV 2.0 Software

Technical Monitoring and Test Equipment:
Keithley Integra unit
Thermal Diodes
Raytek Laser Temp Gun 3i LSRC/MT4 Mini Temp
Extech digital sound level meter & SkyTronic DSL 2 Digital Sound Level Meter

Games:
Mafia 2
Resident Evil 5
Far Cry 2
Alien V Predator
Lost Planet 2
Metro 2033
Colin McRae Dirt 2
STALKER: Clear SKy
Battlefield: Bad Company 2
Dead Space 2

All the latest BIOS updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests all games across five closely matched runs and average out the results to get an accurate median figure.

Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.

Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:

• Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
• Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
• Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
• Multicore CPU support
• Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
• Powerful C++ API
• Comprehensive performance profiling system
• Flexible XML-based data structures

We test at 1080p so that all video cards can be compared throughout our reviews. Obviously driver updates might enhance performance slightly over time, but as a rule, its a useful way for us to present the findings.

The Asus GTX580 Direct CU II leads the pack by a clear margin with the AMD HD6970 trailing in second place.

TessMark, is small synthetic graphics benchmark focused on Tessellation performance of Direct3D 11 and OpenGL 4 capable cards.

Like Unigine Heaven, TessMark allows to select the level tessellation. The small difference is that TessMark proposes four differents levels:

• moderate
• normal
• extreme
• insane

Moderate and normal levels are levels we’ll find in real world applications like games. Extreme and insane levels are reserved for GPUs with high levels of tessellation processing power. We tested today with moderate, normal, and extreme settings to get an indication of the tessellation scaling with each card.

Tessellation performance is staggering, outclassing even the GTX570 by 10,000 points when set to moderate tessellation settings.

ShaderToyMark is an OpenGL benchmark, developed with GeeXLab, and focused on pixel shaders only.

In the words of the author … Why ShaderToyMark? Simply because I recently played with the pixel shaders available with Shader Toy, a great WebGL tool for testing GLSL shaders. And I said to myself: that would be nice to see several of these shaders running at the same time in the same 3D window… ShaderToyMark was born.

The contributors of Shader Toy are all famous demomakers and their shaders are real gems. It’s just amazing to see what can clever people do with some sin/cos and other math tricks.

We are using the default settings for our testing today.

Yet again, the GTX580 Direct CU II leads the pack with a 6 fps lead over the GTX570 which is in second place. By comparison, the HD6970 generates 38 fps, 13fps less than this customised card from Asus.

Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7.  This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings.

The GTX580 from Asus walks away with the performance level test in 3DMark Vantage, scoring 25,660 points – 4,000 points more than the reference GTX570.

3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.

After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.

If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page.

This is easily one of the highest single card scores we have seen in 3Dmark 11. The Asus GTX580 Direct CU II scores 6,182 points, 800 points more than the GTX570 at reference clocks.

Stone Giant is a benchmark tech demo that showcases and measures DirectX 11 performance using the BitSquid Engine. This is a very heavy tessellation dependant benchmark which runs very well on nVidia hardware.

nVidia solutions, unsurprisingly score the highest with the Stone Giant benchmark. This is not without some controversy however, in our recent interview with AMD guru Richard Huddy he said “With artificial tests like Stone Giant, which was paid for by nVidia, tessellation can be done down to the single pixel level. Even though that pixel can’t be broken away from the 3 other pixels in its quad. Doing additional processing for each pixel in a group of 4 and then throwing 75% of that work away is just sad”.”

Regardless, it is a popular benchmark and we felt it was worth an inclusion in our review today. We can see that nVidia hardware scores well, claiming the top positions, followed closely by the AMD HD6970. Those who pay attention will see that the all important minimum frame rates of the HD6970 is higher than the GTX460 card, meaning it is slightly smoother to the naked eye. Still, the higher end nVidia cards still utterly dominate this particular benchmark.

Mafia II is a gritty drama which chronicles the rise of World War II veteran Vito Scaletta, the son of Sicilian immigrants. As the game progresses, Vito will join the Falcone Crime Family and become a made man. There are 15 chapters in the game, connected into one storyline.

We tested at 2560×1600 with fullscreen: on, antialiasing:on , Anisotrophic filtering: 16x, Shadow Quality: High, Ambient Occlusion: on, Geometry Detail: High and APEX PhysX: medium.

Generally we test this game with PhsyX disabled, but with this higher level hardware we have it enabled today. nVidia hardware takes all top three positions with the Asus GTX580 Direct CU II taking the lead, ahead of the GTX570 by 6 fps.

Resident Evil 5, known in Japan as Biohazard 5, is a survival horror third-person shooter video game developed and published by Capcom. The game is the seventh installment in the Resident Evil survival horror series, and was released on March 5, 2009 in Japan and on March 13, 2009 in North America and Europe for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. A Windows version of the game was released on September 15, 2009 in North America, September 17 in Japan and September 18 in Europe. Resident Evil 5 revolves around Chris Redfield and Sheva Alomar as they investigate a terrorist threat in Kijuju, a fictional town in Africa.

Within its first three weeks of release, the game sold over 2 million units worldwide and became the best-selling game of the franchise in the United Kingdom. As of December, 2009, Resident Evil 5 has sold 5.3 million copies worldwide since launch, becoming the best selling Resident Evil game ever made.

AMD hardware has always scored highly with this DX10 engine from Capcom and we can see the AMD HD6970 outperforming the GTX570, if only by 3 fps. The Asus GTX580 Direct CU II is way out in front however.

Far Cry 2 (commonly abbreviated as “FC2 or “fc2″) is an open-ended first-person shooter developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. It was released on October 21, 2008 in North America and on October 23, 2008 in Europe and Australia. It was made available on Steam on October 22, 2008. Crytek, the developers of the original game, were not involved in the development of Far Cry 2.

Ubisoft has marketed Far Cry 2 as the true sequel to Far Cry, though the sequel has very few noticeable similarities to the original game. Instead, it features completely new characters and setting, as well as a new style of gameplay that allows the player greater freedom to explore different African landscapes such as deserts, jungles, and savannas. The game takes place in a modern-day East African nation in a state of anarchy and civil war. The player takes control of a mercenary on a lengthy journey to locate and assassinate “The Jackal,” a notorious arms dealer.

Far Cry 2 is still a popular game and the open world environment can be taxing on even the latest hardware available today.

Settings: 1920×1200, D3D10, Disable Artificial Intelligence(No), Full Screen, Anti-Aliasing(8x), VSync(No), Overall Quality(Ultra High), Vegetation(Very High), Shading(Ultra High), Terrain(Ultra High), Geometry(Ultra High), Post FX(High), Texture(Ultra High), Shadow(Ultra High), Ambient(High), Hdr(Yes), Bloom(Yes), Fire(Very High), Physics(Very High), RealTrees(Very High)

Far Cry 2 has always been a firm favourite with nVidia hardware/drivers and the Asus GTX580 is in a different performance league when compared with any of the other hardware being tested today. The AMD HD6970 for instance scores an average frame rate of 72 , against the Asus GTX580's 99.

Aliens V Predator has proved to be a big seller since the release and Sega have taken the franchise into new territory after taking it from Sierra. AVP is a Direct X 11 supported title and delivers not only advanced shadow rendering but high quality tessellation for the cards on test today.

To test the cards we used a 1080p resolution with DX11, Texture Quality Very High, MSAA Samples 1, 16 af, ambient occulsion on, shadow complexity high, motion blur on. We use this with most of our graphics card testing so cards are comparible throughout reviews.

By now we are seeing the pattern. The Asus GTX580 Direct CU II is utterly dominating all the testing today, even outclassing the GTX570 and HD6970 by a considerable margin.

Lost Planet 2 is a third-person shooter video game developed and published by Capcom. The game is the sequel to Lost Planet: Extreme Condition which is also made by Capcom, taking place ten years after the events of the first game, on the same fictional planet. The story takes place back on E.D.N. III 10 years after the events of the first game. The snow has melted to reveal jungles and more tropical areas that have taken the place of more frozen regions. The plot begins with Mercenaries fighting against Jungle Pirates.

After destroying a mine, the Mercenaries continue on to evacuate the area, in which a Category-G Akrid appears and attacks them. After being rescued, they find out their evacuation point (Where the Category-G appeared) was a set-up and no pick up team awaited them. Lost Planet 2 runs on the MT-Framework 2.0, an updated version of the engine used in several Capcom-developed games.

We are testing in DX11 mode with all settings on the highest. Direct X 11 features are on high.

Lost Planet 2 isn't one of our favourite games, but the Direct X 11 engine is a great test of hardware. This engine at these settings will bring a lot of hardware to a crawl, but looking at the Asus GTX580 Direct CU II frame rates you would be hard pressed to guess. A stunning experience with this card, and noticeably smoother than even the GTX570.

Metro 2033 is an action-oriented video game with a combination of survival horror and first-person shooter elements. The game is based on the novel Metro 2033 by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky. It was developed by 4A Games in Ukraine and released in March 2010 for the Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows.

The game utilizes multi-platform 4A Engine, running on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Microsoft Windows. There is some contention regarding whether the engine is based on the pre-release X-Ray engine (as claimed by Sergiy Grygorovych, the founder of GSC Game World, as well as users who have seen the 4A Engine SDK screenshots, citing visual similarities, shared resources, and technical evaluation of the pre-release 4A Engine demo conducted at the request of GSC Game World), or whether the engine is an original development (as claimed by 4A Games and Oles’ Shiskovtsov in particular) who claims it would have been impractical to retrofit the X-ray engine with console support). The PC version includes exclusive features such as DirectX 11 support and has been described as “a love letter to PC gamers” because of the developers’ choice “to make the PC version [especially] phenomenal”.

At this resolution many of the cards on test aren't powerful enough to keep the frame rate above 20 fps at all times, nevermind above the 25 fps sweet spot. The Asus GTX580 Direct CU II however is able to maintain frame rates above 30, except for a few instances when it drops to 29 fps and 28 fps. Another class leading set of results.

Colin McRae: Dirt 2 (known as Dirt 2 outside Europe and stylised, DiRT) is a racing game released in September 2009, and is the sequel to Colin McRae: Dirt. This is the first game in the McRae series since McRae’s death in 2007. It was announced on 19 November 2008 and features Ken Block, Travis Pastrana, Tanner Foust, and Dave Mirra. The game includes many new race-events, including stadium events. Along with the player, an RV travels from one event to another, and serves as ‘headquarters’ for the player. It features a roster of contemporary off-road events, taking players to diverse and challenging real-world environments. The game takes place across four continents: Asia, Europe, Africa and North America. The game includes five different event types: Rally, Rallycross, ‘Trailblazer,’ ‘Land Rush’ and ‘Raid.’ The World Tour mode sees players competing in multi-car and solo races at new locations, and also includes a new multiplayer mode.

This engine support DX11 and was one of the integral releases for ATI when they launched the 5xxx series cards a while ago. Hardware tessellation is used on the crowd, as well as water and cloth objects. DirectCompute 11 accelerated high definition ambient occulsion is also integrated with full floating point high dynamic range lighting.

We are testing in full DX11 mode.

Colin McRae Dirt 2 is still a great looking game and at these high settings all the cards on test today can power through the engine. The GTX580 is yet again top of the pack with a noticeable lead.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky is a very eerie game. The Zone is a huge abandoned territory, with twenty-year-old dilapidated buildings, overgrown with forests and anomalous vegetation. It is a territory with deserted surface and underground research facilities, neglected military bases and testing grounds for new technologies. The radioactive land is covered with sores of burned out soil, poisonous fogs, and deadly gravitational anomalies. It is a world of a terrible anthropogenic disaster, and in the center of this hell sit the remains of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

The in-game Zone is a reconstruction of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and the 30-kilometer Exclusion Zone around it. Moving along the storyline, the player will visit such places as the Swamps, the Red Forest, the Limansk city and, of course, the sarcophagus of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Many in-game locations have real prototypes.

The HD6970 and GTX570 are closely matched at these settings, however the GTX580 is miles in front with a clear lead, averaging 46 fps.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (also known as Bad Company 2 or BF: BC2) is a first-person shooter video game developed by the Swedish firm EA Digital Illusions CE and published by Electronic Arts for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 systems. It is a part of the Battlefield series and was released worldwide in March 2010.

The game is primarily a squad-level online first person shooter based in a contemporary modern warfare setting. Additionally, the game includes a single player campaign, where the player reassumes the role of Preston Marlowe, the protagonist of the original game. The game’s Frostbite 1.5 engine allows for destructible environments, and multiplayer maps contain a wide selection of vehicles, aircraft and emplacements and allow for five different game modes.

We are testing in full Direct X 11 mode.

At these settings the game delivers a high load to the partnering hardware, ensuring that some of the lesser solutions on test today have problems delivering perfectly smooth frame rates. The GTX570, HD6970 and GTX580 deliver great results, with Asus taking position at the top.

Dead Space 2 is a survival horror third-person shooter. The player controls Isaac Clarke from a third-person point of view, looking over the character’s right shoulder. The game features no HUD elements, relying on holograms projected from the player character and his weapons to show information such as messages and ammunition count, respectively. Player health and stasis is shown by a visual indicators located on Isaac’s back. Isaac must fight an alien organism that infects and takes control of human corpses, turning them into “Necromorphs”, mutating their bodies.

Necromorphs must be dismembered as the alien organism controls host bodies via tentacles extending into their limbs. Other, larger types of Necromorphs that cannot be dismembered will often have yellow, glowing pustules, indicating weak spots. Occasionally, when an enemy gets close enough to Isaac, they will grab a hold of him, and the player must repeatedly press a key to fend off the enemy, with failure to do so leading to death of the player character.

Dead Space 2 is a fantastic game, but one which doesn't really cause an issue for any of the hardware on test today, even at the native resolution of a 30 inch screen.

HQV Benchmark 2.0 is an updated version of the original tool and it consists of various video clips and test patterns which are designed to evalute motion correction, de-interlacing, decoding, noise reduction, detail enhancement and film cadence detection.

There are two versions of the program, standard definition on DVD and high definition on Bluray. As our audience will be concentrating on HD content so will we.

This has a total of 39 video tests which is increased from 23 in the original and the scoring is also up from a total of 130 to 210. As hardware and software gets more complicated, the software has been tuned to make sure we can thoroughly maximise our analysis.

Read our initial analysis over here.

	Asus GTX580
Dial	4
Dial with static pattern	5
Gray Bars	5
Violin	5
Stadium 2:2	5
Stadium 3:2	5
Horizontal Text Scroll	3
Vertical Text Scroll	5
Transition to 3:2 Lock	5
Transition to 2:2 Lock	0
2:2:2:4 24 FPS DVCAM Video	5
2:3:3:2 24 FPS DVCam Video	5
3:2:3:2:2 24 FOS Vari-Speed	5
5:5 FPS Animation	5
6:4 12 FPS Animation	5
8:7 8 FPS Animation	5
Interlace Chroma Problem (ICP)	5
Chroma Upsampling Error (CUE)	5
Random Noise: Sailboat	5
Random Noise: Flower	5
Random Noise: Sunrise	5
Random Noise: Harbour Night	5
Scrolling Text	5
Roller Coaster	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Bridge Traffic	5
Text Pattern/ Scrolling Text	5
Roller Coaster	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Bridge Traffic	5
Luminance Frequency Bands	5
Chrominance Frequency Bands	5
Vanishing Text	5
Resolution Enhancement	15
Theme Park	5
Driftwood	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Skin Tones	5
Total	192

The new forceware drivers with this specific hardware generates a total score of 192 points, out of a possible 210. This is one of the highest scores we have seen from nVidia and shows that they are starting to catch up with AMD.

We have changed our method of measuring noise levels. We have built a system inside a Lian Li chassis with no case fans and have used a fanless cooler on our CPU. We are using a heatpipe based passive power supply and an Intel SSD to keep noise levels to a minimum. The motherboard is also passively cooled. This gives us a build with completely passive cooling and it means we can measure noise of just the graphics card inside the system when we run looped 3dMark tests. Ambient noise in the room is around 20-25dBa. We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation.

Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the video card. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.

KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refridgerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

When idle, both fans are spinning at a little over 1,100rpm which means that the card is basically inaudible. When gaming, the fans only spin up to around 1,600 rpm, generating around 33.7 dBa of noise. This increases a little when under Furmark load, but nothing significant. The cooler is certainly quieter than the reference solution (around 5dBa).

To test power consumption today we are using a Keithley Integra unit and we measure power consumption from the VGA card inputs, not the system wide drain. We measure results while gaming in Crysis Warhead and record the results.

This article is also worth a read if you own a GTX580 – GPUz can be used to disable power throttling. Our results are taken with the limiter system in place although if you disable this, the card can consume over 300 watts of power.

The Asus GTX580 Direct CU II is taking 2 watts less than the reference GTX580 when idle. When gaming, this rises to 225 watts which is a pretty good result considering the power on tap.

The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 25c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this.

Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load measurements were acquired by playing Crysis Warhead for 30 minutes and measuring the peak temperature. We also have included Furmark results, recording maximum temperatures throughout a 30 minute stress test. All fan settings were left on automatic.

These are fantastic results and a testament to the Direct CU II cooler. The card, under load peaks at 68c when gaming and thanks to the dual fan design it isn't generating much noise at all. The bios profile isn't aggressive when loaded with Furmark, the fans stop at a specific speed, which means the card temperature will rise to 78c, although this is not indicative of a real world scenario.

Return to ambient is a feature we have recently added to our reviews … we measure the time it takes for a solution to return to idle temperatures, immediately after full load. The faster the time, the better the cooler – for example a Noctua NH D14 cooler will return an Intel processor to idle temperatures much faster than a reference cooler. This is a good indication of how quickly a heatsink can dissipate heat.

Even with a noise sensitive fan profile, the dual solution helps to reduce temperatures much quicker than a single fan solution (which is around 28 seconds with our recent testing). Fantastic.

To overclock today, we are using ASUS own software, entitled ‘SmartDoctor'. This not only allows the card to be overclocked, but for voltages to be increased.

Smart doctor is an application which can reside in the taskbar, much like MSI's Afterburner software. At the bottom of the program are sliders which allow for VCore voltage increases and core clock and memory overclocking.

By increasing the Vcore settings to 1.125 we were able to push the Core to a staggering 973mhz before artifacting would occur. We pushed the GDDR5 memory to 1175mhz (4700mhz effective). This translates to around a 25% overclock on the core and around 17% overclock via the GDDR5 memory.

This helped push performance even higher, gaining 8-10 fps more in the Unigine Heaven Benchmark for instance.

Asus are certainly capable of creating some of the finest video cards on the market – the ARES and MARS are prime examples of how far they can push the envelope. Without question this GTX580 Direct CU II would be our first choice of recommendation to an enthusiast user wanting the highest performance nVidia card. The Asus technicans have completely turned the reference design on its head, and have released a card capable of class leading performance while generating minimal levels of noise.

The Direct CU II cooler in particular really deserves a high level of critical acclaim because the bios profile has both fans spinning at a maximum of 1,600 rpm, even under sustained, heavy load – the fine act of balancing heat against noise is maintained perfectly throughout the thermal curve. The coolers heatpipe design leading out to two seperate racks of aluminum fins certainly helps the heat to spread evenly, while both fans help eradicate any hot spots across the full diameter of the PCB.

Even though the card demands two 8 pin power connectors, the consumption has been fine tuned by ASUS engineers and considering the power at hand, the efficiency is actually pretty good.

We weren't expecting such good results when overclocking, but our final core clock of 973mhz certainly shows the potential headroom with this specific design – a 25 percent core overclock is no mean feat on such a high end GPU. Obviously, not all cards will reach this level, but we would assume that 930-950mhz will be easily achieved with some voltage increases via the SmartDoctor software.

Game performance is staggering, leaving both GTX570 and HD6970 trembling in the wake of frame rate insanity. Tessellation performance is also off the charts, as we have seen with the raw Tessmark test. Now all we need are games which actually use the horsepower, rather than just pretty synthetic benchmarks.

There are a few negatives, we have no idea why Asus have opted for such a feeble ‘out of the box' overclock. The core is easily pushed to 900mhz without voltage adjustments, so even factoring in some variances between individual cards, 850mhz or even 875mhz would have been a more eye catching sales pitch.

The second negative point is the nVidia hardware limitation of supporting only two screens. While you can SLI the cards and then game across three monitors, the additional cost in this instance would be out of reach of most people. In reality not many people could afford one of these cards, never mind two.

In closing, this ASUS GTX580 Direct CU II is an engineering showcase, highlighting ASUS strengths as a top grade supplier of enthusiast level components. Not many people will be able to afford this card, but if you are in the market for a GTX580, then we suggest you save a few pennies more and opt for this particular model.

KitGuru says: If you have £500 to spare and you want the highest frame rates possible across a single high resolution display, then this is the card to get.

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