Introduction

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NVIDIA recently released their GeForce GTX 580 which claimed the title of fastest single-GPU card in the world. The launch came as a surprise to AMD fans who had been waiting for their HD 6900 Series at that time and were disappointed by what it delivered.
GeForce GTX 580 delivers substantially improved performance over the GTX 480 and also reduces power consumption and acoustic footprint compared to previous generations. Whereas ZOTAC's GeForce GTX 480 AMP! Edition used a powerful Zalman cooler, their new GTX 580 is based on the NVIDIA reference design. The only deviation from NVIDIA specification are the increased clock speeds of 815 MHz, up from 772 MHz of the GeForce GTX 580 reference design.

<table border="1" class="resulttable" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3">
<tr>
<th></th>
<td>Radeon 
HD 6850</td>
<td>Radeon 
HD 5850</td>
<td>GeForce 
GTX 470</td>
<td>Radeon 
HD 6870</td>
<td>Radeon 
HD 5870</td>
<td>GeForce 
GTX 570</td>
<td>GeForce 
GTX 480</td>
<td>GeForce 
GTX 580</td>
<td>ZOTAC
GTX 580 
AMP! Edition</td>
<td>Radeon 
HD 5970</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Shader units </th>
<td align="right">960</td>
<td align="right">1440</td>
<td align="right">448</td>
<td align="right">1120</td>
<td align="right">1600</td>
<td align="right">480</td>
<td align="right">480</td>
<td align="right">512</td>
<td align="right">512</td>
<td align="right">2x 1600</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>ROPs</th>
<td align="right">32</td>
<td align="right">32</td>
<td align="right">40</td>
<td align="right">32</td>
<td align="right">32</td>
<td align="right">40</td>
<td align="right">48</td>
<td align="right">48</td>
<td align="right">48</td>
<td align="right">2x 32</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>GPU</th>
<td align="right">Barts</td>
<td align="right">Cypress</td>
<td align="right">GF100</td>
<td align="right">Barts</td>
<td align="right">Cypress</td>
<td align="right">GF110</td>
<td align="right">GF100</td>
<td align="right">GF110</td>
<td align="right">GF110</td>
<td align="right">2x Cypress</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Transistors</th>
<td align="right">1700M</td>
<td align="right">2154M</td>
<td align="right">3200M</td>
<td align="right">1700M</td>
<td align="right">2154M</td>
<td align="right">3000M</td>
<td align="right">3200M</td>
<td align="right">3000M</td>
<td align="right">3000M</td>
<td align="right">2x 2154M</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Memory Size</th>
<td align="right">1024 MB</td>
<td align="right">1024 MB</td>
<td align="right">1280 MB</td>
<td align="right">1024 MB</td>
<td align="right">1024 MB</td>
<td align="right">1280 MB</td>
<td align="right">1536 MB</td>
<td align="right">1536 MB</td>
<td align="right">1536 MB</td>
<td align="right">2x 1024 MB</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Memory Bus Width </th>
<td align="right">256 bit </td>
<td align="right">256 bit </td>
<td align="right">320 bit </td>
<td align="right">256 bit </td>
<td align="right">256 bit </td>
<td align="right">320 bit </td>
<td align="right">384 bit </td>
<td align="right">384 bit </td>
<td align="right">384 bit </td>
<td align="right">2x 256 bit </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Core Clock</th>
<td align="right">775 MHz </td>
<td align="right">725 MHz </td>
<td align="right">607 MHz </td>
<td align="right">900 MHz </td>
<td align="right">850 MHz </td>
<td align="right">732 MHz </td>
<td align="right">700 MHz </td>
<td align="right">772 MHz </td>
<td align="right">815 MHz </td>
<td align="right">725 MHz </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Memory Clock</th>
<td align="right">1000 MHz </td>
<td align="right">1000 MHz </td>
<td align="right">837 MHz </td>
<td align="right">1050 MHz </td>
<td align="right">1200 MHz </td>
<td align="right">950 MHz </td>
<td align="right">924 MHz </td>
<td align="right">1002 MHz </td>
<td align="right">1025 MHz </td>
<td align="right">1000 MHz </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Price</th>
<td align="right">$180</td>
<td align="right">$260</td>
<td align="right">$260</td>
<td align="right">$240</td>
<td align="right">$360</td>
<td align="right">$330</td>
<td align="right">$450</td>
<td align="right">$500</td>
<td align="right">$550</td>
<td align="right">$580</td>
</tr>
</table>

Packaging

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ZOTAC's package comes with a see-through feature that lets you easily inspect the merchandise.

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You will receive:

Graphics card
Driver CD + Documentation
Prince of Persia full game
DVI adapter
Mini-HDMI to HDMI adapter
2x PCI-Express power cable

The Card

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ZOTAC's card looks just like the reference design - the only difference being the sticker on the cooler.

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GeForce GTX 580 requires two slots in your system.

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The card has two DVI ports and one mini-HDMI port. Unlike AMD's latest GPUs, the output logic design is not as flexible. On AMD cards vendors are free to combine six TMDS links into any output configuration they want (dual-link DVI consuming two links), on NVIDIA, you are fixed to two DVI outputs and one HDMI/DP in addition to that. NVIDIA confirmed that you can use only two displays at the same time, so for a three monitor setup you would need two cards.

NVIDIA has included an HDMI sound device inside their GPU which does away with the requirement of connecting an external audio source to the card for HDMI audio. The HDMI interface is HDMI 1.3a compatible which includes Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD, AC-3, DTS and up to 7.1 channel audio with 192 kHz / 24-bit. NVIDIA also claims full support for the 3D portion of the HDMI 1.4 specification which will become important later this year when we will see first Blu-Ray titles shipping with support for 3D output.

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You may combine up to four GeForce GTX 580 cards in SLI for increased performance or improved image quality settings.

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Here are the front and the back of the card, high-res versions are also available (front, back). If you choose to use these images for voltmods etc, please include a link back to this site or let us post your article.

A Closer Look

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NVIDIA's cooler uses a vapor-chamber technology heatplate to maximize heat transfer between the GPU and the rest of the heatsink. You can also see above that the heatsink cools secondary components like voltage regulation circuitry and memory chips.

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The card has one 6-pin and one 8-pin PCI-Express connector for optimum power delivery.

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The GDDR5 memory chips are made by Samsung, and carry the model number K4G10325FE-HC04. They are specified to run at 1250 MHz (5000 MHz GDDR5 effective).

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Just like on the GeForce GTX 480, NVIDIA uses a CHiL CHL 8266 voltage regulator on their card. This controller offers extensive monitoring and voltage control options via I2C, so it's a great choice for overclockers.

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NVIDIA's GeForce 110 graphics processor is made on a 40 nm process at TSMC Taiwan. It uses approximately 3.0 billion transistors which is 200 million less than the GF100. Please note that the silvery metal surface you see is the heatspreader of the GPU. The actual GPU die is sitting under the heatspreader. According to NVIDIA, the die size of the GF110 graphics processor is 520 mm².

Test System

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<tr align="center">
<th colspan="2" scope="row" style="font-size:larger;text-align:center">Test System - VGA Rev. 12</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th width="120" scope="row">CPU:</th>
<td scope="row">Intel Core i7 920 @ 3.8 GHz (Bloomfield, 8192 KB Cache)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Motherboard:</th>
<td scope="row">Gigabyte X58 Extreme 
Intel X58 & ICH10R</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Memory:</th>
<td scope="row">3x 2048 MB Mushkin Redline XP3-12800 DDR3 
@ 1520 MHz 8-7-7-16</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Harddisk:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">WD Caviar Black 6401AALS 640 GB</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Power Supply:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">akasa 1200W</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Software:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Windows 7 64-bit</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Drivers:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">GTX 570 & 580: 263.09 NVIDIA: 260.99 ATI: Catalyst 10.11</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Display:</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">
LG Flatron W3000H 30" 2560x1600 <img src="http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Zotac/GeForce_GTX_580_Amp_Edition/images/zotac.jpg" width="120" height="40"></td>
</tr>
</table>
Benchmark scores in other reviews are only comparable when this exact same configuration is used.

All video card results were obtained on this exact system with the exact same configuration.
All games were set to their highest quality setting

Each benchmark was tested at the following settings and resolution:

1024 x 768, No Anti-aliasing. This is a standard resolution without demanding display settings.
1280 x 1024, 2x Anti-aliasing. Common resolution for most smaller flatscreens today (17" - 19"). A bit of eye candy turned on in the drivers.
1680 x 1050, 4x Anti-aliasing. Most common widescreen resolution on larger displays (19" - 22"). Very good looking driver graphics settings.
1920 x 1200, 4x Anti-aliasing. Typical widescreen resolution for large displays (22" - 26"). Very good looking driver graphics settings.
2560 x 1600, 4x Anti-aliasing. Highest possible resolution for commonly available displays (30"). Very good looking driver graphics settings.

Aliens vs. Predator

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Aliens vs. Predator is based on a merger of the Aliens and the Predators franchise: two legendary alien species that are in conflict with each other, fighting to the death with human marines caught in between. The first person shooter game was developed by Rebellion Studios, who also developed the first AVP PC title and released in February 2010. It was one of the first DirectX 11 games with support for new features like Tesselation, which is why AMD heavily promoted it at the time of their DX 11 card launches. We used the AVP benchmark utility with tesselation and advanced DX11 shadows enabled.

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Battlefield: Bad Company 2

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Battlefield: Bad Company 2, released in March 2010 by Electronics Arts, is the most successful DirectX 11 title so far. Even though it contains a full single-player campaign during which the player has to work with a squad to secure a secret weapon, the game is most well known for its fast paced, exciting multiplayer squad action. Thanks to a CPU-based Havok physics engine and skillful use of scripting, the game has destroyable objects, vegetation and terrain without requiring NVIDIA PhysX.
We tested the truck chase scene of the second single-player mission at maximum settings with DirectX 11 enabled.

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BattleForge

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BattleForge, a card based RTS, is developed by the German EA Phenomic Studio. A few months after launch the game was transformed into a Play 4 Free branded game. That move and the fact that it was included as game bundle with a large number of ATI cards made it one of the more well known RTS games of 2009. You as a player assemble your deck before game to select the units that will be available. Your choice can be from forces of Fire, Frost, Nature and Shadow to complement each other.
The BattleForge engine has full support for DX 9, DX 10 and DX 10.1, we used the internal benchmark tool in DirectX 11 mode to acquire our results.

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Call of Duty 4

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Call of Duty 4 is a first-person shooter that is built on the award winning Call of Duty Series. It is the first version to play in modern times. In a near-future conflict between the United States, Europe and Russia you get to play as a United States Marine and a British SAS operative. The engine is Infinity Ward's own creation and has true dynamic lighting, depth of field, dynamic shadows and HDR. Even though the game plot is scripted you will find yourself in intense battles, often working together with computer controlled team mates.

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Call of Juarez 2

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Call of Juarez 2: Bound in Blood is a prequel to the first Call of Juarez game which was one of the first DX10 titles available on the market. This time the plot evolves around two brothers, before each mission you may pick one to play. Your choices affect the game play since both characters have different ways of handling situations and doing combat.
Call of Juarez 2 uses Techland's Chrome Engine 4 which adds Edge Anti Aliasing as one of the first engines on the market. Edge Anti Aliasing looks similar to normal AA but comes with a considerably reduced performance drop. However, due to the deferred shading design of Edge AA, normal AA can't be used on top of it.

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Crysis

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After the tremendous success of Far Cry, the German game studio Crytek released their latest shooter Crysis in 2007. The game was by far the most hyped and anticipated game in 2007, the forums were full of "Can my system run Crysis?" threads because of the high hardware requirements of this game. Just like in Far Cry the plot evolves on a small island with a thick and richly detailed jungle world. A lot of attention has been given to small details like correct physics. For example when you fire on a tree trunk, it will shatter and the tree will fall over leaving a stump behind. Enemies in a car can be stopped by shooting the tire of the car. The game graphics are by far the best ever seen in a PC game so far, yet the game still runs well on most computers.

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Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 2

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Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II by Relic Entertainment is an RTS game based on the Warhammer 40,000 universe. Unlike other Dawn of War titles there is no base-building element in the game, you simply command units on the battlefield. Due to the non-linear mission design, the choices which mission and objective you pick to pursue have considerable impact on game play and mission difficulty. A "hero" unit concept adds RPG elements to the game, allowing you to advance the unit in terms of levels and abilities. Dawn of War 2 uses the Essence Engine 2.0, version 1.0 was used in the Company of Heroes Series.

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DiRT 2

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DiRT 2 is the first game to offer basic DirectX 11 features, even though they are very limited, the title has been used extensively by AMD to market their DX11 products. The game features a large number of different racing events all over the world with tracks ranging from off-road, over stadiums to complex city courses. We chose not to benchmark DX 11 at this time because the number of DX11 effects is not worth the performance hit.

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Formula One 2010

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F1 2010 is an official implementation of the Formula One 2010 season with accurate teams, drivers and cars. One highlight of the game are the extensive realism options and the detailed weather effects. You pick a driver and get to race over several seasons, constantly improving your skill and trying to impress the big teams to score a contract with them to enjoy the faster car to race for the world championship. The game is based on an improved Dirt 2 engine and features the latest in DirectX 11 technology. We used the highest details setting for our testing.

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Far Cry 2

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Four years after the success of Far Cry, Ubisoft has published the sequel called Far Cry 2. While the first part was set on an island, Far Cry 2 takes you deep into Africa with game play that resembles Grand Theft Auto much more than the original Far Cry, which was a classical 3D shooter. Ubisoft engineered a completely new 3D engine called "Dunia" which offers a large amount of popular features like DirectX 9 and DirectX 10 support, destructible environments, physics and non-scripted AI while not being as much of a resource hog as Crytek's CryEngine. We tested the Ranch Medium level at DirectX 10 with highest details.

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Tom Clancy's HAWX

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Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. is one of the very few recent flight simulator games on the market. Being a console conversion it emphasizes "flight" more than "simulator". It is set in a near future in which private military companies have begun fighting conflicts for nations with their own military gear. You are playing an elite pilot who was recruited by such a private company. During the game you get to fly over 50 different aircrafts, ranging from the MIG 21 to the mighty F22 Raptor. One notable feature of its engine is the use of GeoEye satellite imagery for terrain generation which offers one of the most realistic incarnations of battlefield terrain available today.

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Metro 2033

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Metro 2033 is a first-person shooter game that is set in a post apocalyptic Moscow - as the name suggests inside the metro system. You will fight mutants or other humans who like to take away your shelter. The game has many gameplay elements similar to STALKER, also the engine has similar features. This is because two STALKER engine programmers left GSC Game World and started their own company which is now making Metro 2033.
The engine has support for all the latest eye candy like DirectX 11 and Tesselation. Unfortunately it leaves a less than optimized impression, making it a candidate to surpass Crysis for the highest hardware requirements. We tested in DirectX 11 mode with details set to "Very High".

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The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena

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The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena is a first person shooter game set in a far future. You are Riddick, a notorious space criminal played by Vin Diesel in the movies. Dark Athena continues where Escape from Butcher Bay ended. A major aspect of the game is its tactical use of shadows and stealth so that enemies can't detect you. Vin Diesel's voice acting also adds greatly to the game experience.
The 0.0 FPS scores for NVIDIA cards at 2560x1600 are caused by driver crashes which seem to be related to card with 512 MB memory and below. Since it works fine on ATI this is not a game problem but an NVIDIA driver issue.

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S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Clear Sky

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STALKER Clear Sky is GSC Gameworld's prequel to the 2007 hit "STALKER". Just like in the first part the game is set around the Russian area of Chernobyl and Pripyat, most well known for the nuclear accident that occurred there. You play the role of a mercenary who spends his days in The Zone trying to make a living. The Zone is an area which is affected by so-called anomalies which cause mutants to appear and laws of physics to change. While you investigate these anomalies the plot leads up to the events that happened right before the first game starts. A new in-game faction system encourages you to befriend various groups in The Zone in exchange for information or items. While the graphics of Clear Sky are based on the first Stalker game engine, there are numerous improvements, including support for DirectX10 and depth-of-field/volumetric effects. The 0.0 FPS scores for NVIDIA cards at 2560x1600 are caused by driver crashes which seem to be related to card with 512 MB memory and below. Since it works fine on ATI this is not a game problem but an NVIDIA driver issue.

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Supreme Commander 2

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Supreme Commander 2 is a real-time strategy game by Gas Powered Games who also designed the first part of the series which features epic battles between hundreds of units. Compared to the second part the number of different units and buildings has been reduced, as well as changes to the tech tree and a general reduction of map size.
Even though the engine is DirectX 9, it features state of the art global illumination and handles even large numbers of objects and effects with decent speed.

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Unreal Tournament 3

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The fourth game in Epic's highly successful Unreal Tournament Series is simply called Unreal Tournament 3. It is based on the Unreal 3 engine which is a major step forward from the previous engine. The game principle is centered about an arena style gameplay where several contestants try to reach a certain kill count or capture a flag for example. For its time, the graphics were top notch, with large and detailed textures. Unreal Tournament 3 is an important benchmark because its engine has been used in a large number of other titles, and there are even some in development using it. One major drawback of the way the engine is designed is that there is no support for Anti-Aliasing.

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3DMark03

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Futuremark Corporation is the number one player in the world of synthetic benchmarking. The 3DMark series is the most popular test suite for video card testing and is used by gamers, overclockers and manufacturers alike to determine how fast their hardware is. Even though it is a few years old, 3DMark03 can easily stress today's video cards.

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3DMark05

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Another benchmark from Futuremark is 3DMark05 which comes with four completely new game tests that make massive use of shaders and lighting effects. 3DMark05 is a great test for modern video card architectures - in some tests you are often close to the 30 fps mark, below which your games will feel sluggish.

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3DMark06

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Even though it's based on Futuremark's 3DMark05, the new 3DMark06 adds new tests for Shader Model 3.0 and HDR rendering. It is also the first 3DMark to incorporate a CPU score into the final 3DMark score. All tests have received an overhaul, for example in the Canyon Flight test you can now see beautiful sun glare effects with the help of High Dynamic Range rendering.

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Unigine Heaven 2.0

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Unigine Heaven was one of the first demos that supported DirectX 11. Heaven is a technology demonstration for Unigine engine which supports DirectX 9 through 11 and OpenGL too. Version 2.0 adds more scenes and optionally more complex tesselation features. While there is some controversy surrounding the benchmark whether it is an accurate representation of what to expect from future games in regards to DirectX 11 we still chose it as test to get an insight into potential future gaming.

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Power Consumption

Cooling modern video cards is becoming more and more difficult, especially when users are asking for quiet cooling solutions. That's why the engineers are now paying much more attention to power consumption of new video card designs.

For this test we measure power consumption of only the graphics card, via PCI-Express power connector(s) and PCI-Express bus slot. A Keithley Integra 2700 with 6.5 digits is used for all measurements. Again, the values here reflect card only power consumption measured at DC VGA card inputs, not the whole system.

We chose 3DMark03 Nature as a standard test representing typical 3D usage because it offers: - very high power draw - high repeatability - is a standard benchmark that is supported by all cards - drivers are actively tested and optimized for it - supports all multi-GPU configurations - easy to obtain - fairly compact in size - test runs a constant duration and renders a non-static scene with variable complexity just like any normal game.

The four result values are as following:

Idle: Windows Vista Aero sitting at the desktop (1280x1024 32-bit) all windows closed, drivers installed. Card left to warm up in idle until power draw is stable.
Average: 3DMark03 Nature at 1280x1024, 6xAA, 16xAF. This results in the highest power consumption. Average of all readings (12 per second) while the test was rendering (no title screen).
Peak: 3DMark03 Nature at 1280x1024, 6xAA, 16xAF. Highest single reading during the test.
Maximum: Furmark Stability Test at 1280x1024, 0xAA. This results in a very high non-game power consumption that can typically be reached only with stress testing applications. Card left running stress test until power draw converged to a stable value.
Blu-ray Playback: Power DVD 9 Ultra is used at a resolution of 1920x1200 to play back the Batman: The Dark Knight disc with GPU acceleration turned on. Playback starts around timecode 1:19 which has the highest data rates on the BD with up to 40 Mb/s. Playback left running until power draw converged to a stable value.

NVIDIA modified large portions of the GF100 transistor design to reduce power consumption. Based on our testing they did an excellent job with that, shaving off a large chunk off the GTX 480 power consumption. The most noteworthy improvements are certainly in idle power and Blu-ray power consumption where NVIDIA is now more power-efficient than the latest HD 6800 Series from AMD.

As mentioned in other articles, the GTX 580 comes with a current limiter system which reduces clocks and performance in case the card senses it is overloaded. We disabled this feature for our "Maximum" testing to give you proper worst-case testing of the card.

The results are just as we expected. ZOTAC's AMP! Edition delivers similar numbers as the NVIDIA reference design, with slightly higher power consumption in 3D due to the increased clocks.

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Fan Noise

In the past years users would accept everything just to get more performance. Nowadays this has changed with people being more aware of the fan noise and power consumption of their graphic cards.
In order to properly test the fan noise a card emits we are using a Bruel & Kjaer 2236 sound level meter (~$4,000) which has the measurement range and accuracy we are looking for.

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The tested graphics card is installed in a system that is completely passively cooled. That is passive PSU, passive CPU cooler, passive cooling on the motherboard and Solid-State HDD.
This setup allows us to eliminate secondary noise sources and test only the video card. To be more compliant with standards like DIN 45635 (we are not claiming to be fully DIN 45635 certified) the measurement is conducted at 100 cm distance and 160 cm over the floor. The ambient background noise level in the room is well below 20 dbA for all measurements. Please note that the dbA scale is not linear, it is logarithmic. 40 dbA is not twice as loud as 20 dbA. A 3 dbA increase results in double the sound pressure. The human hearing is a bit different and it is generally accepted that a 10 dbA increase doubles the perceived sound level. The 3D load noise levels are tested with a stressful game, not Furmark.

Fan noise of the ZOTAC AMP! Edition is essentially the same as the reference design - which is decent overall given the performance of the card.

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Performance Summary

To create this graph we took all performance results of the five resolutions we tested, threw them together and calculated the relative performance of each card, compared to our review sample. In a sixth graph we also combined all tests in all resolutions to calculate the total relative performance of the review sample. Cards that do not support DX11 were given a score according to their performance in all other non-DX11 tests, which means cards were not penalized for not having DirectX 11 support.

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Performance per Watt

This graph was created by taking the relative performance numbers and putting them in contrast to the average power consumption results.

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Performance per Dollar

If you are looking for the best bang for the buck, then you will love this graph. We looked up the current USD price of each card on the popular online shop Newegg and used it and the relative performance numbers to calculate the Performance per Dollar Index.

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Overclocking

To find the maximum overclock of our card we used a combination of GPUTool and our benchmarking suite.
The overclocks listed in this section were achieved with the default fan and voltage settings as defined in the VGA BIOS. Please note that every single sample overclocks differently, that's why our results here can only serve as a guideline for what you can expect from your card.

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The overclocks of our card are 895 MHz core (10% overclock) and 1170 MHz Memory (14% overclock). An additional overclock of 10% over the already increased out of the box clocks is very respectable and seems to be higher than that of other reference design cards. According to ZOTAC some special card binning is happening at the factory which could explain this improvement.

Overclocked Performance

Using these clock frequencies we ran a quick test of Call of Duty 4 to evaluate the gains from overclocking.

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The actual 3D performance gained from overclocking is 8.0%.

Temperatures

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Temperatures seem to be well optimized. A little higher idle temperature for less idle fan noise would be something I'd prefer, but overall the temperature looks good. (Tested with Crysis, not Furmark).

Voltage Tuning

It has been a long known fact that overclocking headroom increases as soon as you increase the operating voltage. Until recently, software voltage control on VGA cards has been the exception and most users were not willing to risk their warranty by performing a soldering voltmod. Nowadays almost all current graphics cards have voltage control in order to achieve low power consumption by lowering voltage when in idle or slightly loaded.
In this section we will increase the GPU operating voltage step by step and record the maximum clock speed possible. Voltage is listed as the value that the voltage regulator reports via software, not actual measured voltage. The card was installed in-case, with fan settings at the default, memory will not be overclocked either. If a card has thermal throttling we will reduce the operating frequency to keep performance at maximum for a given voltage. Please note that the fan profile will have an effect on observed temperatures: if the card gets hotter the fan will ramp up to reduce temperatures or keep them from rising fast.

The following graph shows the overclocking potential we saw on our sample. GPU clock is represented by the blue line, which uses the vertical clock scale on the left. The scale starts at the default clock to give a feel for the overclocking potential over the base clock. Temperature is plotted in red using the °C scale on the right side of the graph. An additional graph shows the full system power draw in orange measured at the wall socket when running at the given voltage, clock & temperature.

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The card gains nicely with voltage increases - just like the reference design. Unfortunately it hits a heat wall around the 900 MHz mark which could have been solved if ZOTAC used a different thermal solution.

Clock Profiles

Modern graphics cards have several clock profiles that are selected to balance power draw and performance requirements.
The following table lists the clock settings for major performance scenarios and the GPU voltage that we measured. We measure on the pins of a coil or capacitor near the GPU voltage regulator.

<table border="1" class="resulttable" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3">
<tr>
<th></th>
<td>Core 
Clock</td>
<td>Memory 
Clock</td>
<td>GPU Voltage 
(measured)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Desktop</th>
<td align="right">51 MHz</td>
<td align="right">68 MHz</td>
<td align="right">0.96 V</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Blu-ray Playback</th>
<td align="right">405 MHz</td>
<td align="right">162 MHz</td>
<td align="right">0.96 V</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>3D Load</th>
<td align="right">815 MHz</td>
<td align="right">1025 MHz</td>
<td align="right">1.04 V</td>
</tr>
</table>

Value and Conclusion

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<td>

ZOTAC's GeForce GTX 580 AMP! Edition is available for $550.

</td>
</tr><tr>
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<td>

Fast!
Overclocked out of the box
Quieter than other cards in this performance class
Better overclocking potential than reference design
Reduced power consumption
CHiL voltage regulator with I2C voltage control support
Native HDMI output
Prince of Persia full game included
Support for DirectX 11
Support for CUDA / PhysX

</td>
</tr>
<tr>
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<td>

High price
Uses reference design cooler
Still not as power efficient as AMD's designs
Power draw limiter could complicate advanced overclocking
Still limited to two active display outputs per card
DirectX 11 relevance limited at this time

</td></tr>
<tr><th>9.0</th>
<td>ZOTAC's GeForce GTX 580 AMP! Edition does not bring many improvements to the table. The card is a complete implementation of NVIDIA's reference design with higher clocks. Its increased clock speed of 815 MHz, vs. 772 MHz on the reference design, can deliver a small performance improvement in our benchmarks - up around 3%. If you are willing to do some additional overclocking then you can expect a higher clock headroom on the AMP! Edition than on other reference design cards. According to ZOTAC, some special binning is performed at the factory where GPUs are picked that can handle the highest clocks. Compared to other reference designs, which max out at around 830 MHz, the 895 MHz on the AMP! Edition are a good improvement. 
Whereas the GTX 480 AMP! Edition used a Zalman cooler, ZOTAC's GTX 580 AMP! comes only with the reference cooler. I talked to ZOTAC about the cooler and they mentioned that they were planning on using a different cooling solution but at the end it didn't work out for what were mostly political reasons beyond ZOTAC's influence. 
Overall the GTX 580 AMP! Edition is a solid card but feels a bit too expensive with a $50 price premium over the normal clocked cards.
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