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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.
Lol Asus are insane. love it, even if I could never afford it
Some of the best reviews on the net here, without a doubt. awesome work.
Man, that got me hard.
well thank god its not another AMD review ! great job on the testing. that card is amazing looking and in performance. cant see it anywhere for sale. not that I can afford it mind you, but im curious.
Read it and weep AMD ! these cards are kicking ass all over the world 🙂
I would sell my left kidney for this card, what an amazing bit of work from ASUS. well showcased on KG, great review.
I love the metal coolers, this is way out of my league, but i love the metal cooler on the msi card you reviewed today too. so much nicer looking than plastic crap. (HIS blue cooler springs to mind!)
Something interesting has happened to me since November. I generally opted out of AMD hardware. not because its poor or bad, but because nvidia have always been better.
Reading all the reviews here lately and especially the FLeX 6870 review has really made me want to get into 3 or even 4 screen setups. I know a stunning card like this ASUS board will do it, if you end up with two of them, but the cards alone would cost one thousand quid. Two HD6870’s and 3 24 inch screens would cost the same as two of these cards.
its horses for courses and im still not sold on AMD drivers, but its got me thinking. At least I have till the summer before I work out what to do. (getting married soon!)
Absolutely love it. its Asus insanity again. engineering overload 🙂 great job.
Nice to see you reviewing some nvidia hardware again. Always enjoyed reading your reviews of the new hardware. This is certainly one hell of a sexy card, but the price is a little too rich for my blood. Still, great to read and a good highlight on ASUS, as its often with sapphire!
good lord, what a monster of a card. My 5670 is shaking.
Imagine four of these in SLI, how good would that be !
Lovely bit of work from Asus there. Totally overkill, but we all love that, right?
I still these cards are overpriced, not just the Asus one, but the 580s in general.
The backplate is mounted with screws in a reverse position, that’s unusual.
Nice cooler design, wonder how it would compare against the arctic cooling extreme.
I see a problem, it’s really too powerful for a single screen, but to use it across 3 you need two of them.
I will be ordering this when I can find one.
We all love the attention to detail, but I would love to know how many of these really do sell, a few thousand worldwide maybe? How many did the ares sell?
Awesome! I love Asus designs
Id still rather have an hd6970
I like my games but I see no real need for this power. I’ve still got a 5870 and at 1920×1200 its brilliant. I’d rather have a new CPU and a psu 🙂
Why no direct comparison with a standard GTX580 ?
Price, link, availability?
@ Madone.
Why would you compare results against a reference GTX580? the clock speeds are basically the same.
It says in the article,. only SLI for 3 screen gaming. so you would need two of them.
One question … how did you do the stability testing on your overclocking? I have one and… is that 973Mhz core and 4700 memory furmark stable? I think that 1.125v is not enough for those clocks … at least, not to pass furmark 🙂 I’m really curious on how did you do the stability testing 🙂
Bear in mind every card will be slightly different. How far can you push yours? I generally test with unigine for artifacting, it’s a great stress test and easily to see when issues occur
I only test with furmark … and my is topping out at 961Mhz, 4335Mhz mems … at 1.15v …
That’s why i’m kind of doubting the 1.125v will resist to furmark … but that’s me 🙂
Runing 3dmark 2010 it will do 976Mhz without crashing and 4450 on the memories … but that’s not 100% stable because at furmark benchmark … once it gets at 98% the fans stop and the graphic driver gives stops responding …
But yes, i know not all cards are equal 🙂 I was just thinking about the testing method … because, those 4700 memory is huge … it’s 350Mhz more than mine … not even talking about the core because it’s “not that high” …
Interesting, I’ve had two and I get similar with both cards. Is your memory artifacting in games or is it just fur mark stress testing?
Nope… it just crashes the graphic driver… no artifacts what so ever. I can run it at 961 and 4315Mhz zero problems … more than that … caboom 😛
It simply quits the application … sometimes i get a reboot, other just crashes the explorer and graphic driver 😡
Furmark has it’s own issues as stated over at Guru3D, it’s been shunned!
“Note: As of lately, there has been a lot of discussion using FurMark as stress test to measure power load. Furmark is so malicious on the GPU that it does not represent an objective power draw compared to really hefty gaming. If we take a very-harsh-on-the-GPU gaming title, then measure power consumption and then compare the very same with Furmark, the power consumption can be 50 to 100W higher on a high-end graphics card solely because of FurMark.
After long deliberation we decided to move away from FurMark and are now using a game like application which stresses the GPU 100% yet is much more representable of power consumption and heat levels coming from the GPU. We however are not disclosing what application that is as we do not want AMD/NVIDIA to ‘optimize & monitor’ our stress test whatsoever, for our objective reasons of course”.
Original link: http://www.guru3d.com/article/liquid-cooling-overclocking-geforce-gtx-580-danger-den/8
Worth a note I thought.