Introduction

NVIDIA came up with a new generation enthusiast-grade graphics card out of freaking nowhere. The GeForce GTX 580 is touted by its makers to be the single most powerful GPU, and an efficient GPU compared to the previous generation (if efficiency doesn't matter to you, heat and fan-noise just might). Since the GTX 580 is now the best NVIDIA has to offer, the only thing better than a GTX 580 is two or more of them in SLI multi-GPU. If you haven't read our review of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 already, please do so, to understand what the card is worth in its single GPU form.

The GeForce GTX 580 has two SLI bridge connectors, with which you can set up 2-way, 3-way, and even 4-way SLI, if your motherboard and power supply permit. SLI lets you upscale performance beyond what a single-GPU is capable of, sometimes giving you close to twice the performance. It appeals to both enthusiasts with a lot of cash to blow (buying a number of cards at once), as well as value-conscious high-end users, who will buy one of these cards now, and pair it with another one in the future when it's not keeping up with the eye-candy needs of tomorrow's games (when a single GTX 580 would have become a bit more affordable).

In this review we're going to show you what to expect from NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 580 SLI, a multi-GPU configuration of two of these cards, a roughly $1000 solution at present.

Test System

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

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.