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The GTX580 is a great card, everytime we test a new model we get reminded of why it has been such a big seller for Nvidia. Thankfully, today this Zotac AMP²! is supplied with an excellent custom cooler design. It makes up for the rather disappointing and overpriced AMP! Edition we reviewed last week which came equipped with a reference cooler.
The AMP²! heatpipe custom cooler design is clearly one of the best coolers on the market, managing to reduce the temperatures from 89c to 60c when loaded in the Furmark stress test. This really is a massive difference and you can be assured that the card should last a very long time thanks to the excellent proprietary cooler design.
The overclocked card powers through all the major gaming engines, leading the performance charts until it faces the AMD HD6990. Now you may think that this seems unfair, but unfortunately at time of press Zotac are claiming that this card will cost £500 inc vat. Yet again we have to scratch our heads in bewilderment, because this is putting it almost head to head against the HD6990 which can be bought in the UK for only £10 more today.
Zotac have further price related problems because Asus have the fantastic GTX580 Direct CU II available in the UK for £420 inc vat, which is £80 less. The AMP²! would have won our top award, but at £500 inc vat we feel it is pricing itself out of the market. Other cards are offering similar configurations, for much less money.
Pros:
- Cooler is one of the most capable on the market
- extremely quiet
- GTX580 design is still a class leader
Cons:
- price point is too high, it is £10 less than a HD6990 in UK today
KitGuru says: A fantastic card design from Zotac and one of the best GTX580's on the market. The price is much too high as it has to compete against the AMD HD6990. It can't win at this price. If you find it online for under £450 snap it up.
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.