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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.
Sometimes people email me to ask why I make such a big deal out of custom coolers in our reviews. This page is a prime example of how much difference a modified third party cooler can make. 29c colder under load than the reference design, yes, its not a misprint. The fans only spin up to 930 rpm which explains the fantastic noise emission results on the previous page.
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.
Nvidia's reference cooler has no chance of competing. It takes half the time for the AMP²! to return to idle and at this stage the ordinary AMP! is still hovering around 57c.
Wow that is an amazing looking card. if they could drop the price I think it would sell great for them, ive never seen a 580 peak at 60c in furmark
Wait a minute, are they seriously trying to charge £500 in the UK for a GTX580? thats only 60 less than a 590 !
This has to be voted as one of the prettiest video cards on the market. ever. Its what LL Cool J would have in his rap days.
Nice cooler, if they dropped the price by £100 it would be a great buy, not sure how they worked that out. its not worth £80 more than the Asus Direct CU II, regardless of gold fans.
That is a brilliant graphics card, and I like the PCB design, I wish nvidia had gotten it right with the 590, but maybe thats why partners are charging so much for 580, they know its much better really long term. ?
QUESTION TO THE REVIEWER:
The review says the Zotac GTX 580 AMP² is the model reviewed, and clearly lists 1.5GB…but the Zotac website lists the AMP² as having 3GB. So what model was really reviewed, please? The 3GB AMP²? Or the 1.5GB AMP?
Thanks in advance.
GPuz screen is right on page 2, is 3GB.
Thanks, Zardon, and thanks for the review. FYI page one needs correcting, it currently reads “ships with a 815mhz core clock, an increase from 772mhz on the reference card, and the 1536MB of GDDR5 memory is overclocked from 1002mhz to 1026mhz”
Thanks, sorry about that. fixed.