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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.
The new version of Furmark puts a considerable load on the GPU, and we get a maximum peak figure of 89c, with the fan spinning at 76%, around 3,200 rpm.
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.
The reference cooler isn't too bad, but it does take a fair amount of time for it to return the core to idle temperatures, around 30 seconds. We would expect this with a reference cooler however.
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.