titleNvidia’s GTX580 launched close to a year ago yet is still one of the top performing video cards on the market. When you are a manufacture like EVGA, where do you go after you have introduced a full product line around the GTX580? Apparently if left alone, EVGA’s engineers in collaboration with overclockers “k|ngp|n” and “TiN”) will turn the GTX580 a monster just begging to be overclocked. With a revamped VRM circuitry with solid-state chokes, dual BIOS’s, and power coming from two 8 pin’s AND a 6pin this could very well be the fastest GTX580 on the market when overclocked. Of course the only way to find out is to read farther into our review.

Product Name: EVGA GTX580 Classified 3072MB Air

Review Sample Provided by: EVGA

Review by: Wes

Pictures by: Wes

Image 3

Specifications

Core Clock

855 Mhz

Memory Clock

4212 Mhz Effective

Shader Clock

1710

CUDA Cores

512

Bus Type

PCI-E 2.0

Memory Detail

3072MB GDDR5

Memory Bit Width

384 Bit

Memory Speed

0.4 ns

Memory Bandwidth

202.1 GB/sec

Texture Fill Rate

54.7 GT/s

DirectX Support

11

DVI-I

Two

HDMI

None

Displayport

None

EVBot Connector

On back I/O

OpenGL Support

4.1

Dimensions/Weight

Height: 5.42in – 137.66mm

Length 11in – 280mm

Weight: 3lbs

Accessories

-EVGA Driver/Software Disc with EVGA Precision Tuning Utility

-DVI to HDMI Adapter

-DVI to VGA Adapter

-6 pin PCI-E Power Cable

-8 pin PCI-E Power Cable

-User Guide

Requirements

-600 watt or greater power supply with a minimum of 42 amps on the +12 volt rail.

-PCI Express or PCI Express 2.0 compliant motherboard with one x16 graphics slot

-One 6-pin PCI Express power connector or two available hard disk power connectors and two 8 –pin PCI Express power connectors

-Microsoft Windows 7/Vista/XP

Key Features

Nvidia CUDA Technology with CUDA C/C++, DirectCompute 5.0 and OpenCL Support

-Nvidia PhysX Technology

-Nvidia PureVideo HD Technology

Nvidia 2-way, 3-way, and 4-way SLI Ready

-Nvidia 3D Vision Surround Ready


Packaging

The 580 Classified comes packaged appropriately in an all-black box, with minimal text or graphics on the front of the box. The essentials are there: brand name, model name, and even a few fine-print features such as 3702MN of RAM along the top. This is the kind of packaging that stands out on a shelf because of its simplicity, likely to be neighboring flashier competitors.

Image 12

The back of the packaging reveals much more about the product, including a nice shot of the card, key features, and a brief introduction. The left side easily confirms compatibility with a sketch of the output slot showing off the dual DVI ports and EVGA's EVBot overclocking tool port.

Image 11

Breaking the seal on the side of the box, you will be greeted the tail end of a foam block and a smaller accessories box. You will also note a sticker explaining that EVGA offers customer service on their products, as opposed to returning the product to the place of purchase.

Image 13

Closer examination of the foam piece will reveal that it is not only a cushion, but housing the GTX 580 within. The card is accessible via a cut-out in roughly the same shape as the card. EVGA has wrapped and sealed the 580 within an anti-static bag to prevent any sort of static that may discharge during the cozy ride home.

Image 21

Image 23

Image 24

You will also find a bright, yellow warning insert that foreshadows the unique power situation the Classified GTX 580 is equipped with.

Image 22

The slim accessories box opens to reveal several components, most of which are individually wrapped.

Image 14

You will find the following included with the Classified 580: DVI-to-HDMI adapter, VGA-to-DVI adapter, double Molex-to-8 pin adapter, and an 8 pin-to-double six pin adapter. Once again, this is due to the unique power situation integrated into the card, which will be discussed shortly.

Image 19

Also included is a quick start guide, driver/software installation disc, a case badge, and a nice sized poster.

Image 16

Image 17

Image 18

Image 20

Image 15

 


Board Layout

EVGA designed the GTX580 Classified with four different variations in mind. There are 1.5Gb and 3GB versions with each having both an air and water-cooled version. The model we are testing today is the 3Gb air cooled version. The air cooled versions massive heatsink stands out considerably with its extra tall cooler standing over top of the standard reference design, as you can see in the below image.

Image 4

The added height gives the cooler another area to vent, pushing air over the SLI bridges. Depending on the case this could work perfectly as some cases have a vent directly above there PCI slots. Other cases however don’t have this vent, meaning the extra hot air would be pushed into your case.

Image 5

Where that added space really helps is in the size of the fan built into the cooler. Frankly the Classified’s fan is gigantic; at 8CM it’s larger than anything else on the market. The fan itself is takes up most of the heatsink. What’s interesting is the use of reference “style” fan at all, but for those of you who prefer your video card push the air out rather than just around the case this is still the best design.

Image 7

One of the other major changes in the GTX580 Classifieds design is in the power connector configuration. When compared to the reference design you can see they added another 8pin connecter giving you a total of two 8 pin connection and one 6 pin. This is more than you will find on any other video card and when running in SLI configurations you will struggle to find enough connections to hook everything up. Thank goodness they included a few adapters along with each card

Image 8

Similar to our reference design and like most other EVGA products the GTX580 Classified has a black PCB. Taking a look at the back of the card you can see that everything from the rear I/O panel to just past the GPU mounting bracket are very similar in design to the reference design. Beyond that you can see EVGA’s 14 + 3 phase power design that will help deliver over 1000Watts if needed. The only thing missing is a nice backplate but EVGA decided not to include one standard because they cause overheating issues in multi card configurations. You can still pick one up if you would like directly from them and it will sport the Classified logo in case you are wondering.

Image 35

On the top edge you can see a small switch with normal and OC on each side. This is how you turn on the OC BIOS, turning off thermal monitoring for those looking to do extreme overclocking using Ln2.

Image 36

Two SLI connections mean support for up to quad-SLI. This is also the only section of the PCB that is the same height as a standard GTX580. The reason of course is to make sure its compatible with other 3Gb GTX580 cards, not just matching Classified cards.

Image 38

Image 33

The back panel comes standard with one of EVGA’s high flow brackets that allow for more air flow than the stock back plate, something needed with that massive fan blowing air out of the back. For connections they have kept it very simple with just two DVI-I plugs and an odd looking proprietary plug for their EVBot overclocking tool. No HDMI or mini HDMI plugs to worry about, this card keeps its focus on only what you will need for top overclocking performance.

Image 26

Topping it all off on the front of the card is the Geforce GTX 580 logo with EVGA’s Classified badge below it.

Image 2

Removing five screws will remove the shroud off of the GTX 580’s cooler reveling the heatsink and fan. In this picture you can see the touch cooling, just like the reference design but there are additional cooling fins added to the top for a boost in cooling.

inside 1

In this photo the fan looks a lot less intimidating. You can see how the fan pulls the air in and with the help of the shroud; it forces the air across the heatsink and out the PCI slot. In this photo you can also see the additional fins in the bottom and top right corners. The coolers metal baseplate has these fins to help do a little additional cooling.

inside 2

 


Our Test Rig

Intel i7 930 CPU Running at 2.8 (Stock)

Gigabyte X58A-UD5 Motherboard

Patriot Sector 7 Ram Triple Channel

Seagate Constellation 2tb Hard drive

Cogage True Spirit

Cooler Master Gold Series 1200 Watt PSU

http://www.highspeedpc.com/ Test Bench

Image 10

 


Our Testing Procedures

All of our in game performance testing was run at 1920x1080, you can see the exact settings below. Here are the details for each of our tests.

Battlefield Bad Company 2 (1920x1080 – high settings, first scene starting after the cut scene, recorded using fraps)

Dirt 2 (1920x1080 – 4x MSAA – high settings, in-game benchmark)

Dirt 3 (192x1080 - 4xMSAA - high settings, in-game benchmark)

Metro 2033 DX11 (built-in benchmark, 1920 x 1080; DirectX: DirectX 11; Quality: Very High; Antialiasing: MSAA 4X; Texture filtering: AF 4X; Advanced PhysX: Enabled; Tessellation: Enabled; DOF: Disabled)

Metro 2033 DX10 (built-in benchmark, 1920 x 1080; DirectX: DirectX 10; Quality: Very High; Antialiasing: MSAA 4X; Texture filtering: AF 4X; Advanced PhysX: Enabled; Tessellation: Enabled; DOF: Disabled)

Total War: Shogun 2 Direct X11 Benchmark High setting

Synthetic Benchmarks For video cards our synthetic benchmarks are limited to 3DMark Vantage and 3DMark Vantage 2011. 3DMark Vantage is run with PPU turned off with results from both the performance and high settings. In 3DMark Vantage 2011 we run both performance and extreme benchmarks.

Image 25

 


Overclocking

When installing the software included with the GTX 580 EVGA includes the required drivers along with a few of EVGA’s applications. Included in those are their Precision and OC Scanner applications and also Nvidia’s Endless City demo and Alien VS. Triangles demo. With those four programs you can overclock, test, and enjoy your new GTX 580 Classified.

installsoftwarewm

Most people by now have used EVGA’s Precision software, even if you don’t own one of their products. For Nvidia GPU’s this is one of the most well-known applications for overclocking and controlling your fan speed. As you can see from the photos below you have core clock, shader clock, memory clock, and fan speed options. You can also see how your card is doing with temperatures, usage, and fan speed. The software is fairly simple in design but they have included integration with Logitech devices like the g15 and g19 along with an on screen display so you can keep an eye on your GPU temperature while your game.

405 precision app 00

OC Scanner is what you follow up with after tweaking using Precision software. Its job is to stress test your overclocked GPU and to scan for artifacts. Both will help you determine if you have a stable overclock. The most amazing part is that all of this comes from the company who sold you your video card. They obviously stand behind their product.

ocscannerwm

Although I have spent more than enough time overclocking CPU’s toying with GPU’s has been limited to small overclocks here and there. Because of that I was excited to put to use EVGA’s software to see what we could push the GTX 580 Classified to. Starting with a core clock speed of 855 Mhz, a 1710 Shader Clock, and a memory clock of 4213 MHz (effective) I jumped into the software to gain a little bit of an edge.

Image 9

To get the most out of the card I started with the core clock speed inching it up 20 Mhz at a time then running a quick test in their OC Scanner. Just to be sure that cooling wouldn’t be an issue I cranked the Classifieds massive cooler up to 100%. Just as I hit 935 MHz I ran into issues. I slowly took the clock back down 5 MHz at a time until I was able to complete the OC Scanners tests without any problems (920 MHz). Next I dropped down to the Memory Clock. Surprisingly even the slightest bump here caused problems. Curious to see if this had anything to do with my Core Clock overclock I set the core clock back to its stock clock and retested. This time I had no trouble overclocking the memory. Knowing I would see a bigger performance increase from the core clock I went back to the 920 MHz overclock for our testing.

Image 34

Although 920 MHz is a nice clock when compared to the stock 855 MHz, I know the classified is capable of doing a lot more. I was curious to see if heat was a factor. I took our fan speed down to 30% and retested. At no point did the cooler spool up, nor did the GPU heat up in any considerable amount. My experience from overclocking CPU’s told me that I needed more voltage. After digging around in Precision I found nothing to adjust GPU voltage. A little research online showed EVGA’s motherboard and GPU software E-l33t to be a way to change our voltage. After setting it up I found the option. There is one more voltage above the stock setting but selecting it and clicking apply only reset it back to the stock voltage.

image001

To continue with our testing I stuck with the 920 MHz that we were able to edge out of the card without any voltage. Once we find out of EVGA plans on allowing software voltage adjustment higher than the stock we will update this section. All of our overclocking results have been placed in with our normal performance numbers to give you an idea of how the overclocked card stands next to other cards and configurations on the market.

temps2

temps3

image002

*update* EVGA has confirmed that voltage control will be corrected in ELEET very soon. You can also currently adjust voltage using the EVBot. We will revisit our overclock once the ability to change the voltage is opened up. 

3DMark Vantage

Our 3DMark Vantage results were so surprising that we reran the tests a few times just to be sure. The “performance” results came out as expected. The Classified at stock speeds show a nice bump over the 1.5Gb GTX 580 but most impressive is the 1000 point jump in performance with the overclock. Where we were confused was with our “high” setting results. Even after retesting the overclocked results were lower than the stock clock results. Both results are still a thousand over the 1.5Gb GTX 580. Overclock or not the GTX Classified 3Gb card still tops them all.

3dmarkvantageperfwm

3dmarkvantagehighwm

Image 32

 


3DMark 2011

3DMark 11 had similar results to what we saw with 3DMark Vantage when testing in the “performance” setting. The 3GB Classified shows a full thousand points over the 1.5Gb card and even more to AMD’s closest competition. The overclock results have the numbers pushing very close to what you would get with two HD6850’s in crossfire. The “extreme” setting results are similar with the overclocked Classified being within 200 points of the HD 6870’s in crossfire, imagine what two would do in SLI.

3dmark11perfwm

3dmark11extremewm

Image 30

 


Battlefield Bad Company 2

Going from the 1.5 gig card to the 3Gb Classified didn’t show much of an improvement at the resolution we are running. But both cards run at a healthy 80 to 90 Frames per Second, considerably more than the closest competition. Overclocking in this case was good for two extra frames per second, not worth the added heat in my opinion.

bfbc2wm

Image 28

 


Dirt 2 and 3

Dirt 2 results show not even one full frame per second jump with overclocking the Classified. Dirt 3 on the other hand was more responsive to both the overclock and the added video memory of the Classified. Our results for both stock clocks and overclocks on the Classified outperformed the HD 6870’s in crossfire and even come close to our results of the two 1.5Gb GTX 580’s in SLI. I suspect that at that point we are pushing the limits of our test rig more than the cards though.

dirt2wm

dirt3wm

Image 27

 


Metro 2033

Overclocking showed little to no improvement on our Metro 2033 DX10 and DX11 benchmarks. Going from the 1.5Gb to the 3Gb did however gain 4 FPS in DX10 and 1 FPS in DX11. All of the GTX 580 results tower above all of the competition showing how powerful these cards are, especially when running Metro 2033.

metrodx10wm

metrodx11wm

 


Total War: Shogun 2

Total War results show a completely different story from what we have seen in all of our other results. AMD drivers are much more optimized to run Shogun 2 than Nvidia drivers and its obvious in the results. Overclocking gives a 3 FPS bump over the stock clocks on the Classified but those results are just two and 5 FPS more than the HD 6970. The 1.5Gb GTX580 is actually 2 FPS less than the HD 6970.

shogun2wm

Image 6

 


Noise Output and Cooling Performance

With that massive fan and extra-large heatsink I expected the cooling performance to be a notch above stock, but I wasn’t sure how it all would affect the noise output of the Classified. As it turns out, because it does such a good job cooling it actually keeps the card quieter. When the fan is ramped up to 100% the noise is barely bearable, but anything less than 30% isn’t even audible on our open air test bench. With a max RPM of 5000 the GTX 580 Classified could easily suck a bird in if given the chance. Even when overclocking, there were only a few times where the card ramped up to an audible level.

Image 29

 

The only exception to this was furmark testing (1080p benchmark) where we did see temperatures and noise rise up to 69c with the fan reaching nearly 80%. If you expect to pick up this card and run it at 100% load you can expect it to repay you with noise levels that will be unbearable. In "normal" use and in game the cooler for the GTX580 performed flawlessly.

furmark

furmark2

 

For those of you wondering, here are idle temperatures with the cooler on auto at 40% and also 100%

temps

temps2

 


Overall and FV

When EVGA announced the GTX 580 Classified, I along with everyone else followed the thread over on EVGA’s forums closely waiting to get details as they trickled out. When I received it and opened everything up its massive cooler was finally in front of me I could tell right away that EVGA accomplished something. It’s rare than anything short of a new video card from Nvidia or AMD gets people foaming at the mouth like EVGA did with the GTX 580 Classified. I think the three power connectors did a good job of getting everyone’s attention also. So in the end is it worth it?

Image 31

On one hand the Classified really does require a professional overclocker to reach its full potential. We were able to get more of an overclock on this card than we have seen on our other GTX 580’s, but we barely scratched the surface of what it’s truly capable of. If the price different between this card and a standard 3Gb GTX 580 wasn’t so close I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone other than professional overclockers. But the reality is this card as it sits today is $10 more than a standard card. For $10 you are getting a card that is built to be pushed to the limit and should have no problem running for a very long time at the loads the average gamer is going to put it under. You are also getting upgraded cooling at still continues to (mostly) push the hot air out of the back and support from EVGA who actually encourages you to overclock the card!

Image 1

The downside for the average gamer is those three require power connectors. If you plan on running SLI in the future you are going to need a total of four 8 pin connections and two 6 pins. Because of that you will be shopping for triple SLI power supplies. Even though I love the cooler, I was a little disappointed to find out that the added inch on top vents hot air directly into your case. This is still an improvement over other high end coolers, but when you are trying to push the hot air out of a case the last thing you want to have to fight with is more hot air from your video card.

fvrecomendededitorschoice

Author Bio
garfi3ld
Author: garfi3ldWebsite: http://lanoc.org
Editor-in-chief
You might call him obsessed or just a hardcore geek. Wes's obsession with gaming hardware and gadgets isn't anything new, he could be found taking things apart even as a child. When not poking around in PC's he can be found playing League of Legends, Awesomenauts, or Civilization 5 or watching a wide variety of TV shows and Movies. A car guy at heart, the same things that draw him into tweaking cars apply when building good looking fast computers. If you are interested in writing for Wes here at LanOC you can reach out to him directly using our contact form.

Log in to comment

garfi3ld's Avatar
garfi3ld replied the topic: #20102 28 Sep 2011 00:04
A monster from EVGA! Check it out guys
Wingless92's Avatar
Wingless92 replied the topic: #20105 28 Sep 2011 00:48
Love the review Wes. Great to see us doing more "High End" GPU reviews.

We have 1607 guests and no members online

supportus