KitGuru KitGuru.net – Tech News | Hardware News | Hardware Reviews | IOS | Mobile | Gaming | Graphics Cards
As we expected, Zotac's orange dragon is still the central point for the AMP! Edition box artwork.
The bundle is pretty good. You get a free copy of Prince of Persia ‘The Forgotten Sands' and there is a software disc, installation literature and various power and output converters (DVI Adapter, Mini HDMI to HDMI adapter and 2x PCI Express power cables).
Disappointingly, we aren't greeted with a custom cooling solution like Zotac have implemented on their AMP! Editions in the past. Instead we are presented with the very boring nVidia reference cooler.
The GTX580 can work in up to quad SLI formations for enhanced performance and image quality settings.
The card is shipped with two DVI ports and a mini HDMI port, with the supplied adapter you can hook this directly into an HDMI TV or monitor. As we have said before, the GTX580 is seriously outperformed on a connectivity level by the AMD solutions, such as the HD6970 which can support up to 6 monitors. This card can only handle two screens at the same time. If you want to use three screens, be prepared to buy two of these cards.
The HDMI interface is 1.3 compatible which offers DTS-HD, Dolby TrueHD, AC-3, DTS and 7.1 channel audio support. It also has support for HDMI 1.4 3D output.
As this is basically an overclocked reference card design, we aren't surprised to see that it requires a 6 pin and an 8 pin PCI E power connector to operate properly.
GPUz overview of the specifications, showing the enhanced 810mhz core speed and the GDDR5 overclock to 1025mhz.
Considering ive seen the HD6990 for £50 more, Zotac clearly have forgotten to check the pricing on this one,.
I always hate to see high end cards with special names, just having a sticker over the reference design. its lazy and I cant believe they think they can get away with charging £70 more than the reference card. Does it cost £70 to flash the bios? Most 580s hit those speeds without any effort. easy way to save the money.
£450? eh, surely thats a typo on scans store.
£900 for 3 screen gaming, bargain lol
£900 before you buy the three screens !
Seriously though, this is a great card, but I agree, the pricing is about £80 too high. I hope people dont realise that every 1mhz of overclock should cost about a £5. most reference GTX580’s hit higher than these clocks without any effort.;
I bought a reference 580 in January for £370 on ebay and I have it running at 850 core and 1100 memory. Basically identical to this, bought two months ago for less money.
My sticker isn’t as nice though :p
GTX580 is nvidias best card, no doubt about it. the pricing is semi reasonable too on most of the models
Wow I was hoping Zotac would have had a nice zalman cooler on this, they normally work with them on these AMP! special models. very poor showing.
After the Asus model that was reviewed here a while ago, this does look rather lacking. I always dislike when companies release a card with a reference cooler, its fine at launch time, but its been a very long time since the 580 was released. a little moer effort from zotac would have been good.
The results are good, but the temperatures due to the reference cooler could have been a lot better. I am not sure I like the asus 3 slot cooler however, but Zotac could have approached this from a higher ground rather than aiming for the entry style cooler on such a high clocked model.