ZOTAC GTX580 3GB AMP2! (SLI) Review

Triple decker cooling with 3GB of VRAM on a flagship overclocked GPU? That’ll be the ZOTAC GTX580 3GB AMP2! We put these aggressive cards into SLI.

Product on Review: ZOTAC GTX580 3GB AMP2! Edition
Manufacturer and Sponsor: ZOTAC
Street Price: £450

If there’s one thing we all agree on here at Vortez it’s that above all else, performance matters. Regardless of whether it is a motherboard, a graphics card or a set of headphones, nobody can deny that no matter how pretty it is, how cheap it maybe, if it does not perform then it will be frowned upon. Most people will be aware that ZOTAC AMP! Edition cards are synonymous with performance so when the very kind people from over the pond offered to send us not one, but two of their GTX580 AMP2! Editions to analyse, you could say we were a little excited.

ZOTAC now have 5 variations of NVIDIA’s finest GPU giving you the choice of reference, overclocked, custom air-cooled, water cooled or a combination of the two so everyone, regardless of requirements is catered for. The AMP! Editions of ZOTAC graphics cards feature maximum possible overclocks yet still retain air cooling. The only options further up the hierarchy are Infinity Editions but for this you will need water-cooling. The AMP2! Edition GTX580’s we have on test today feature a triple slot design giving the maximum possible performance from an air cooled solution.

As you can see from the pictures above, the triple slot cooler will dictate that a lot of motherboards will not be able to make use of SLI due to the slot spacing. I will measure the cards up giving accurate dimensions later in the review but fortunately for us; our test bed motherboard has plenty of free space so we will be testing these cards in both single and SLI configuration. I’m sure you can imagine that a setup with GTX580 SLI will breeze through the benchmarks, more so when you stick two overclocked editions together. As Kelly McGillis of Top Gun fame once said ‘You’re not going to be happy until you’re flying at Mach 2 with your hair on fire…’ – never a truer word was spoken so please, buckle up as we push the envelope and set afterburner to full!

About ZOTAC

ZOTAC International is one of the largest producers of NVIDIA VGA and motherboard solutions worldwide.

ZOTAC International (MCO) Limited was established in 2006 with a mission to deliver superb, high quality NVIDIA graphic solutions to the industry. It has strong backing from its parent group, PC Partner Ltd. – with headquarters in Hong Kong, factories in mainland China and regional sales offices in North America, Europe, and the Asia Pacific region. The scale of support ZOTAC provides is currently unrivalled in the world. With 40 surface mount technology (SMT) manufacturing lines, 6,000 workers and a production facility with over 9,000,000 square feet, ZOTAC employs a full array of state-of-the-art technologies and skilled personnel in order to meet your hardware needs. In addition, ZOTAC has over 130 research & development professionals in Hong Kong and mainland China, working to bring you the best from the cutting edge of the industry. ZOTAC’s international bases of operation work together to enable effective and efficient global as well as localized sales and marketing support.

ZOTAC doesn’t just mean top tier quality, it is also synonymous with high performance, absolute reliability and unparalleled value. With a range of products featuring overclocked performance, excellent cooling properties, and unique packaging ZOTAC products routinely meet – and exceed – users’ expectations.

ZOTAC’s unwavering commitment to our users is to bring the latest products quickly to the market with the best value. Needless to say ZOTAC is the right choice for those who demand the highest quality graphics solutions.

For more about ZOTAC’s philosophy, click here…

Let’s take a look at the graphics cards specification…

Specification

The GF110 chip shares a lot of its roots with the GF100 core. The GPU still packs an impressive 3.2 billion transistors in a die seize 520mm squared. Its default internal configuration has been ported from GF100 in that the GPU features 512 CUDA cores or shader processors as we are more accustomed to. There are organised in a 4x16x32 block where 16 denotes the number of stream multi-processors (SM) and 32 being the number of cores on each SM. Each SM has its own L1 Cache and a common L2 Cache is shared by all 16. The GPU is still manufactured on the 40nm process.

With the GTX480, only 15 of the total 16 SM were enabled to give it 480 CUDA cores and consequently, it boasted 60 texture units. The GTX580 uses a fully-fledged GF110 GPU and thus retains all 16 SM with none being disabled. The result is 512 fully operational CUDA cores and since the number of texture units is based on the number of stream-multiprocessors, the GTX580 sports 64 units instead of the 60. The number of ROPs has remained the same at 48 and the L2 Cache is still 768 KB. In terms of shader and texturing power, having 512 CUDA cores boosts performance by 6.6% over 480 CUDA cores. Nvidia have gone further with the GTX580 though. Not only have they increased the clock speed on the GTX580 compared to the GTX480, but they have also employed the GF104’s superior texture filtering capabilities in their tweaked GF110 GPU. Improvements have also been done to the tessellation engine so the already very capable performance that is expectant of the Fermi architecture has gone a step further.

Making improvements to an already very good graphics card is never an easy proposition. Never being ones to stand still, ZOTAC have however done just that. Immediately apparent is the huge cooler ZOTAC have implemented which will hopefully do a much better job than the reference cooler in both temperature and acoustics tests. The graphics card, being an AMP2! Edition is also overclocked as you would expect with the VGA weighing in at an impressive 815MHz on the core and 4100MHz (effective) memory clockspeed.

High resolutions, especially when coupled with filters such as Anti-Aliasing, require huge amounts of memory bandwidth and with the average screen size being reported (by Steam) as 1920×1080 it is clear why cards with a 2GB framebuffer are rapidly becoming the norm. Adding huge amounts of memory though does not always solve this issue as the core architecture also needs to have the power to make use of the masses of bandwidth available. We will see later in the review whether the ZOTAC card has got the core power/memory bandwidth balanced later in the review although I fear even a massive 2560×1600 resolution won’t be enough to fully saturate the 3GB framebuffer of the ZOTAC card.

What ZOTAC say about their card:

Supercharge your gaming experience with the tweaked and tuned ZOTAC® GeForce® GTX 580 AMP2!™ Edition. The ZOTAC® GeForce® GTX 580 AMP2!™ Edition extracts every ounce of performance from the world’s fastest graphics processor to deliver record-shattering performance in the latest Microsoft® DirectX® 11 and DirectX® 10 based titles. NVIDIA® PhysX® technology delivers unprecedented realism and more dynamic effects for virtual interaction that rivals reality with the ZOTAC® GeForce® GTX 580 AMP2!™ Edition. NVIDIA® 3D Vision™ readiness enables the ZOTAC® GeForce® GTX 580 AMP2!™ Edition to transform your gaming experience with surreal stereoscopic 3D effects for phenomenal realism and immersion in the latest Microsoft® DirectX® 11 and DirectX® 10 titles.

Product Specifications

Graphics Engine: GeForce GTX 580
Bus Standard: PCI Express x16 2.0
Memory Type: GDDR5 Memory Size(MB) 3072
Memory Interface: 384 bits
Core Clock Speed(MHz): 815
Memory Clock Speed(MHz): 4100
DVI Output: 2 D-SUB Output 2(optional, via DVI to D-Sub adaptor)
HDMI-Output: 1
HDCP Support: Y
HDMI Support: Y
Dual-link DVI: Y
Display Output (Max Resolution): 2560×1600
RAMDACs: 400
DirectX Version Support: 11
OpenGL Version Support: 4.0
SLI Support Y 3-way SLI: Y
Card Dimension(mm): 265x110x55mm

Let’s take a look at the card features…

Features

3D Graphics
•Full Microsoft® DirectX® 11 Shader Model 5.0 support: o NVIDIA PolyMorph Engine with distributed HW tessellation engines
•BC6H and BC7 texture compression formats
•Gather4 extensions
•OpenGL 4.1 support
•Advanced image quality features: o 32× coverage sample antialiasing
•Transparent multisampling and transparent supersampling
•16× angle independent anisotropic filtering
•128-bit floating point high dynamic-range (HDR) lighting with antialiasing; 32-bit per-component floating point texture filtering and blending
•Interactive ray tracing support
•Full-speed frame buffer blending
•Full-speed FP16 texture filtering
•Advanced lossless compression algorithms for colour, texture, and zdata
•Support for normal map compression
•Adaptive z-cull
•Early-Z

GPU Computing
•NVIDIA CUDA™ technology—allows the GPU cores to provide performance improvements for applications such as video transcoding, gaming, ray tracing, and physics. API support includes: o CUDA C
•CUDA C++
•DirectCompute 5.0
•OpenCL
•Java, Python, and Fortran
•Third Generation Streaming Multiprocessor (SM) o 32 CUDA cores per SM
•Dual Warp Scheduler simultaneously schedules and dispatches instructions from two independent warps
•64 KB of RAM with a configurable partitioning of shared memory and L1 cache
•Second Generation Parallel Thread Execution ISA o Unified Address Space with Full C++ Support
•Optimized for OpenCL and DirectCompute
•Full IEEE 754-2008 32-bit and 64-bit precision
•Full 32-bit integer path with 64-bit extensions
•Memory access instructions to support transition to 64-bit addressing
•Improved Performance through Predication
•Improved Memory Subsystem o NVIDIA Parallel DataCacheTM hierarchy with Configurable L1 and Unified L2 Caches
•Greatly improved atomic memory operation performance
•NVIDIA GigaThreadTM Engine o 10x faster application context switching
•Concurrent kernel execution
•Out of order thread block execution

Nvidia Technology
•NVIDIA SLI® technology—patented hardware and software technology allows up to four NVIDIA GeForce GPUs to run in parallel to scale performance and enhance image quality on today’s top games.
•NVIDIA PhysX™ technology—allows advanced physics effects to be simulated and rendered on the GPU.
•NVIDIA 3D Vision™ Ready— GeForce GPU support for NVIDIA 3D Vision, bringing a fully immersive stereoscopic 3D experience to the PC.
•NVIDIA 3D Vision Surround™ Ready—scale games across 3 panels by leveraging the power of multiple GPUs in an NVIDIA SLI configuration. Combine with 3D Vision technology for the ultimate 3 panel stereoscopic 3D gaming experience.

Advanced Display Functionality
•Two pipelines for dual independent display
•Two dual-link DVI outputs for digital flat panel display resolutions up to 2560×1600
•Dual integrated 400 MHz RAMDACs for analog display resolutions up to and including 2048×1536 at 85 Hz
•HDMI 1.4a support including GPU accelerated Blu-ray 3D support, x.v.Color, HDMI Deep Color, and 7.1 digital surround sound. See www.nvidia.com/3dtv for more details.
•DisplayPort 1.1a support
•HDCP support up to 2560×1600 resolution on all digital outputs
•10-bit internal display processing, including support for 10-bit scan out
•Underscan/overscan compensation and hardware scaling

Video
• NVIDIA® Pure Video® HD technology with VP4 programmable video processor
•Decode acceleration for MPEG-2, MPEG-4 Part 2 Advanced Simple Profile, H.264, MVC, VC1, DivX (version 3.11 and later), and Flash (10.1 and later)
•Blu-ray dual-stream hardware acceleration (supporting HD picture-in-picture playback)
•Advanced spatial-temporal de-interlacing
•Noise reduction
•Edge enhancement
•Bad edit correction
•Inverse telecine (2:2 and 3:2 pull-down correction)
•High-quality scaling
•Motion Compensation
•Video color correction
•Dynamic contrast enhancement and color stretch

Digital Audio
•Support for the following audio modes: o Dolby Digital (AC3), DTS 5.1, Multi-channel (7.1) LPCM, Dolby Digital Plus (DD+), MPEG2/MPEG4 AAC
•Data rates of 44.1 KHz, 48 KHz, 88.2 KHz, 96 KHz, 176 KHz, and 192 KHz
•Word sizes of 16bit, 20bit, and 24bit

Power Management Technology
•Advanced power and thermal management for optimal acoustics, power, and performance based on usage:
•ASPM power management
•Adaptive Clocking
•Adaptive Power States
•Advanced fan control
•Power and temperature monitoring

ZOTAC Exclusive Features
• Factory Overclock to 815MHz Core Clockspeed
• Factory Overclock to 4100MHz Memory Clockspeed
• Factory Overclock to 1630MHz Shader Clockspeed
• 3GB GDDR5 Memory
• Custom designed VGA Cooler
• Extended ZOTAC Warranty Available
• Extreme High Definition Performance
• ZOTAC BOOST Premium Software package
• Assassins Creed Brotherhood game included

Packaging & Contents

Box Front

In trademark orange and black, the package is very striking. The front of the box has a reinforced plastic window displaying the graphics card contained within. To the side of this is a basic rundown of the ZOTAC BOOST software along with the extended warranty badge. You will also notice to the bottom left of the box the Assassins Creed Brotherhood game sticker which is included (via redemption coupon).

Box Rear

The rear of the box goes into greater details regarding the features of the graphics card highlighting that it is built for DirectX11, surround gaming and that it is 3D capable via NVIDIA’s 3D Vision technology. Below this are contents list in multi-language format.

Box Side

The sides of the package detail the feature set and basic specifications of the ZOTAC GTX580 AMP2! 3GB graphics card. The package also opens from the side but rather than have a thin sleeve like most manufacturers, opening the box grants you immediate access to the contents via a flip up lid.

Box Open

The graphics card is well protected by a plastic bubble which doubles as the window to the box. The graphics card is held firmly in position by use of a large foam insert. Beneath the card is a cut out which houses the cables and adapters while hidden underneath the whole compartment are the driver cd and manuals.

Accessories

The accessory list includes the following items: Twin MOLEX to 6pin PCIe power cable, VGA-DVI adapter, mini HDMI adapter, ZOTAC BOOST software guide, VGA Installation manual and a driver/utility CD. I am happy to report the package also comes with Assassins Creed Brotherhood game which is redeemable via a voucher code.

ZOTAC GTX580 3GB AMP2!(x2)

Overall the package is well presented and the included accessories, while pretty much standard have everything there to get you started. I would have liked to have had a twin MOLEX to 8pin PCIe power adapter for completeness but the added game makes up for this oversight (assuming your PSU has an 8pin PCIe cable of course!).

Let’s take a closer look at the card itself…

Closer Look Pt.1

Card Front

The first thing that strikes you when you first see the card is the huge cooler ZOTAC have employed. The card looks like a performance monster with this attached but is only 265MM long. As previously stated though, this beast is 55MM high, taking up three slot spaces on a motherboard. Rather than employing a plastic shroud as with the GTX560 AMP! we reviewed previously, ZOTAC have instead opted for a black aluminium version which is much more sturdy and should last a fair while longer than plastic. The fans are however a little less bright than the ones found on the GTX560 AMP! which is a shame.

Card Rear

The rear of the card reveals the black PCB favoured by ZOTAC. There is no backplate fitted to the card to protect the delicate components or to help disipate the heat of the VRM circuitry. One point worthy of note are the four spring loaded screws which attach the card to the heatsink. These screws stand proud of the backplane by 4mm which is a significant amount should you wish to place two of these cards directly together.

I/O Area

The I/O area is par forthe course and much the same as a reference GTX580 save for the colour co-ordinated DVI twin ports which support a maximum resolution of 2560×1600. Adjacent to the DVI ports is a single HDMI port sporting the latest 1.4a standard. It is worth mentioning that the ports support NVIDIA Surround Technology without requiring DisplayPort as the card is used in SLI configuration.

Card Profile

Here you can see the card from a side view. The main cooler stands proud of the I/O plate by a further 17mm and while the I/O plate is vented, an hot air will be exhausted directly into the case as you can see which means you will need good case fan orientation to get the very best from this cooling design.

PCIe Power

Like all GTX580’s, the ZOTAC GTX580 3GB AMP2! requires both 8pin and 6pin PCIe power cables used in tandem. These ports are placed toward the rear end of the card but still situated on the side so will not interfere with other pc components such as hard drives. Unfortunately, out samples did not equip the package with an 6pin adapter so you will need to ensure your PSU has one of these connectors spare to power the card along with an 8pin adapater (included). ZOTAC recommend a 600w PSU as a minimum to power the GPU which in our view should be more than enough if you intend to run the card in single card configuration.

SLI tabs

Dual SLI tabs are provided should you wish to run multiple card configurations. SLI, TRI-SLI and QUAD SLI (Nf200 required) configurations are feasable should your motherboard support this feature.

ZOTAC GTX580 3GB AMP2!

Overall, the ZOTAC GTX580 3GB AMP2! is a stunning looking peice of kit. The packaging is very good and should ensure your card arrives in A1 condition. I would have liked to see anti-static packaging used but this would perhaps ruin the point of the window but in all honesty, what use is the graphics card looking pretty if it doesn’t arrive in working order? That said, the packaging is substantial enough that there should be no physical damage and you take adequate precautions before handling the card.

While the triple slot design may not suit all due to limited PCI space, especially if SLI is required, the cooler certainly makes the card stand out from the crowd. The cooler however is not of ZOTAC design which I will cover in the next section…

Closer Look Pt.2

ZALMAN Vor ZOTAC?

While the heatsink assembly carries the ZOTAC name it is infact designed by ZALMAN. The VF3000 cooler has proven so popular that ZOTAC have used it to cool there top end GPU and for very good reason as we will see later in the review.

ZALMAN VF3000 Heatsink Assembly

Removing the cooler was a very simple task given that it is only attached via the four large spring loaded screws we mentioned earlier. Thankfully, the assembly is protected by small rubber washes to prevent power circuit shorts.

Heatsink base

The heatsink base was very flat but none to reflective, instead having a brushed rather than mirrored effect. Contact with the GPU was however very good with just the right amount of paste used.

Heatpipes

The heatsink plate is full copper and is soldered to 5x 6mm copper heatpipes which spread the heatload to the aluminium finned heatsink array. 3 of the heatpipes stretch over the power circuitry while the remaining two head off toward the rear of the card. The vented I/O plate is pointless in that no air is directed toward this area due to the orientation of the fins bieing perpendicular to this area.

Heatsink Perspective

Overall I was very impressed with the heatsink design. I do have one reservation though in that the aluminium shroud is very easy to flex and as such during installation I managed to bend the shroud ever so slighty which then interfered with one of the fans rotations. It was however an easy remedy but not something one should have to endure.

Naked Card

Here we see the card partially declothed. Despite having the massive VF3000 cooler, both the memory and VRMs are cooled by an all-in-one aluminium heatsink.

VRM & VRAM Heatsink

The secondary heatsink is held in place via four small Philips screws and makes use of thermal tape as a means of thermal interface material hinting that this card generates quite a lot of heat not just from the core but from other on-board chips as well.

CHiL Voltage Adjustment

The CHiL CHL 8266 voltage controller enables voltage control and monitoring, making it an excellent addition for overclockers. The including Firestorm utility allows for clockspeed adjustment but unfortunately not voltage so should you wish to increase the cards voltage you can still do so by using MSI’s Afterburner utility.

Power Circuitry

All round solid capacitors are used in conjunction with the MagnaChip MOSFETs which should provide solid, clean power to the card ensuring high stable overclocks are afforded.

Hynix Memory Modules

I am pleased to report that ZOTAC have chosen Hynix over Samsung as the manufacturer for their memory. As we have seen in previous reviews, Hynix has consistantly out performed Samsung so I look forward to evaluating the overclocking performance of this memory. Hopefully the H5GQ2H24MFR modules seen on this sample will not disappoint!

GF110 Core

Finally, we arrive at the heart of the ZOTAC GTX580 AMP2!, the GF110 core. PAcking over 3 billion transistors, it is currently the best core NVIDIA has to offer until the advent of Kepler. Thankfully all of those transistors are protected by a nickel plated copper integrated heatspreader which acts both to spread the heatload of the core and to protect the silicon beneath.

Let’s move on to the test setup we will be using for todays review…

Test Setup

We have recently made a slight amendment to our selection of hardware and our test setup. The reason for this is that we felt the current crop of resolutions were not stressing the latest generation of graphics cards enough. With this in mind, we have added a Dell 3007 WFP-HC to our system, allowing us to stress the cards by utilising a 2560×1600 resolution. We will however, still include 1920×1200 results as this is one of the most popular resolutions used by gamers.

Display – Dell 3007 WFP-HC
Case – Lian Li PC-P80
CPU Cooler – Prolimatech Super Mega (2xProlimatech 140mm Vortex)
CPU – Intel Core i7 920 @ 4GHz
RAM – 6GB (3x2GB) OCZ Blade DDR3 1600mhz 7-8-7-20 C1
Motherboard – ASUS Rampage III Extreme
Power Supply –Antec High Current Pro 1200W
Hard Drive – GSkill Falcon 128GB & Hitachi 250GB

Please note: PSU requirements
While a 600w PSU is recommended by ZOTAC for a single card configuration I feel it is important to stress the need to use a quality PSU. All to often we are contacted by people encountering difficulties in powering and overclocking high spec systems who insist they are using a high wattage PSU. Do not be fooled by inferior, poor quality power supply units that claim high wattage figures. At best a poor PSU will not be able to maintain those values and perhaps more importantly could potentially be a fire hazard! PSU rail stability can have a dramatic effect on overclocking too so while it may appear that the component is at fault, it could very easily be the PSU that has high amounts of ripple which is causing the hardware/overclocking errors.

A PSU is the single most important component in a modern high powered PC. If you are going to spend money in any area of your PC, the PSU should be considered first as a quality sample will likely out last any other aspect of your PC and thus investment in a good example is a very wise decision. For this reason ANTEC have kindly sponsored our test bed by providing the immense, top quality High Current Pro 1200W PSU which will satisfy even the most power hungry of PC configurations! PSU’s of this calibre are at the very top of the performance hierachy and while they may seem expensive compared to inferior quality PSUs, they are worth their weight in gold as a PSU such as the ANTEC High Current Pro 1200W provides both future proofing and perhaps most importantly, piece of mind that your valuable PC components are in safe hands.

As you can see from the picture above, the two cards on test today are easily accomodated by the Rampage III Extreme but bare in mind this motherboard has very good slot spacing and some motherboard may not have sufficient spacing for two triple slot cards.

Graphics Cards:

ZOTAC GTX580 3GB AMP2! + SLI – Forceware 275.33

GIGABYTE GTX570 1280MB ‘SOC’ Edition – Forceware 275.33
ZOTAC GTX560 1GB AMP! Edition 950/4200MHz – Forceware 275.33
SLI NVIDIA GTX560 1GB 950/4200MHz – Forceware 275.33
HIS HD6970 2GB IceQ Mix@ 880/5500MHz – ATI Catalyst 11.5
Lucid HydraLogix = HIS HD6970 2GB IceQ Mix & MSI nGTX580 3072MB Lightning Xtreme Edition @ Factory clockspeeds
MSI nGTX580 3072MB Lightning Xtreme Edition @832/4200MHz & 975/4400MHz Overclocked – Forceware 275.33
ASUS HD6990 @830/5000MHz & AWSUM enabled (pre-overclocked) 880/5500MHz & Further Overclock of 930/6000MHz – ATI Catalyst 11.5
HIS HD6970 2048MB IceQ Turbo @ 900/5600MHz Pre-overclocked & 1000/6000MHz Overclocked – ATI Catalyst 11.5
Gigabyte GTX560 1024MB @ 830/4008MHz & 841/5016MHz Overclocked – Forceware 275.27
MSI R6970 2048MB Lightning @ 940/5500MHz Pre-overclocked & 1010/6000MHz Overclocked – ATI Catalyst 11.4 (8.840.3.0)
Inno3D GTX560Ti 1024MB @ 820/4008MHz & 950/4300MHz Pre-overclocked –Forceware 266.66
Inno3D GTX570 1280MB @ 732/3800MHz, 800/4000MHz Pre-overclocked & 901/4220MHz Overclocked – Forceware 263.09
ASUS GTX580 1536MB @ 782/4000MHz & 903/4220MHz Overclocked – Forceware 262.99
ASUS HD6970 2048MB @ 890/5500MHz & 949/5896MHz Overclocked – ATI Catalyst 11.4 (8.840.3.0)

Driver versions are extremely important when comparing a graphics card. It is however often important to update a driver version, especially when a new GPU is released and thus any change in driver will be clearly stated.

Overclocking
For today’s review we will use the Afterburner utility from the MSI to overclock the test subject.

Games:
Crysis Warhead
Metro 2033
Dirt 3
Mafia II
Battlefield: Bad Company 2
Far Cry 2
Alien vs. Predator

The games above represent equal bias toward both AMD and NVidia and are among the most demanding games available at present. Future releases will be evaluated for consistency and accuracy and then potentially added to the list when they become available

Synthetic benchmarks:
Futuremark 3DMark 11
Unigine Heaven 2.5
Tessmark 0.2.2
Furmark 1.9.0

Synthetic benchmarks are used to stress each feature of a GPU which may not be present in today’s games. While nothing is certain, the benchmarks above do at least give us an insight into the possible future performance of the graphics card on test, invaluable when evaluating the potential lifespan of a graphics card.

Temperature, power consumption and acoustics:
Furmark 1.9.0

The above application is feared by most manufacturers as it has been known to destroy GPU’s. While it is not indicative of ‘real world’ performance, it does represent the maximum possible stress your GPU could be placed under making it the hardest test to pass. For that reason alone, it is worthy of inclusion in our suite of benchmarks. Power consumption will be evaluated from the wall and will be a total system draw of the specification above.

Sound will be measured from a distance of 20 cm from the actual GPU with the case open. All system fans will be set to their lowest settings. Readings will be taken at both idle and 100% load.

Bundled Software

The ZOTAC driver and utilities disc comes with a number of free software and trials. A few of them are GeForce-accelerated, taking full advantage of Nvidia’s CUDA. Here’s a description of the applications included.

Enhance

Easily stabilise, brighten, and sharpen your high-definition videos using powerful enhancement technology with vReveal. Harnessing the power of NVIDIA CUDA technology and ZOTAC GeForce series graphics cards, vReveal processes videos up to 5x faster than with a CPU.

Edit

Edit your home videos with extreme precision and stunning effects with Nero Vision Xtra. Advanced features such as picture-in-picture effects, multi-track timeline, full key frame control and master effect track lets anyone transform home videos into cinematic masterpieces easily with Nero Vision Xtra.

Note that this is the trial version only.

Experience

Experience online photos and videos like never before with Cooliris, a revolutionary browser plug-in. Cooliris transforms your web browser (Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome) into the ultimate media browser that scrolls through infinite amounts of photos and videos in a matter of seconds with the option to view the content instantly.

Entertain

Transform your PC into a digital entertainment hub with the open-source and award winning XBMC media centre. Enjoying digital audio, video and image content with XBMC media centre is a breeze, whether the content is on physical media such as CDs, flash drives, memory cards, or stored on another system over the network, XBMC media centre can access and play it with ease.

Enjoy

Enjoy web browsing on your high-definition television set with the big-screen optimised Kylo web browser. Kylo is the ultimate TV web browser with big fonts and big buttons for easy usability while relaxing on the sofa.

ZOTAC FireStorm is the brand’s take on the already populated world of overclocking utilities. Nonetheless, it is still a good touch for those unfamiliar with other applications such as MSI Afterburner.

The utility is fairly simplistic in design and functionality providing three sliders for basic clock speed adjustments and fan control. Nonetheless, it works as promised but those wanting a higher degree of customisation should look at MSI’s Afterburner application instead.

Assassins Creed Brotherhood

It’s great to see that ZOTAC have also included a free copy of Assassins Creed Brotherhood which is presented as a redeemable coupon and allows the game to be downloaded from UBISOFT. I am the first to criticise manufacturers when they include cheap, out of date games and inflate the price of the product. More so, I find it frustrating when manufacturers don’t include any game at all, especially on mid/high range cards. While some may argue adding a game will only increase the cost, I would retort that manufacturers will not be paying full retail price for a game, especially if it is in digital format so this should be taken advantage of but only if it enhances the overall package. Including a poor quality game does nothing to make the overall package attractive and indeed it can actually hinder the appeal, especially if the products price is inflated.

ZOTAC however have struck a very good balance by including a popular, new game while managing to keep costs under control so if the package was not attractive enough already, it certainly is now!

Let’s move on to the product testing section of the review…

Overclocking & Temperature Analysis

Overclocking

As you can see above, the stock card is pre-overclocked on the core from 772MHz to 815MHz which is a good, if somewhat conservative overclock. The same principle has been applied to the memory with just a 25MHz (100MHz effective) overclock applied. While this values are nothing to be scoffed at I had confidence the ZOTAC GTX580 3GB AMP2! had much more to offer, especially as the card affords overvoltage settings (even if the Firestorm utility does not). So using the Afterburner Utility which does allow voltage adjustment on the core I set about overclocking the card.

Because of the massive cooling capabilities of the card I set the voltage to maximum and began a thorough testing. The card reached 950MHz on the core before locking the test setup up. Dropping the core down gradually I settled for a maximum overclock of 911MHz. Not the best overclock we have seen but its still very good giving a 7.8% increase over the factory overclock and almost 20% over stock GTX580 speed! The good news doesn’t end there either becuase the memory, as suspected clocked very well giving us an extra 145MHz(580MHz effective) over the already pre-overclocked value hitting 4684MHz!

Temperature

To measure the temperature of the card we first measure the ambient temperature. Our review station resides in an air conditioned room with the temperature set to a comfortable 23c.

We expected good results from this card because of the sheer size of the cooler however we were not expecting results as good as this. While the idle results are nothing out of the ordinary, hitting a maximum 62 celcius while placed under the extreme load of Furmark is a fantastic achievement. The cooler is clearly very capable and can absorb a great deal of heatdump but can it perform quietly?

Let’s find out…

Power Consumption & Acoustics

Acoustics

Often overlooked when purchasing a graphics card is the noise that it emits. We all hear (no pun intended) of graphics cards that run like a jet engine which can have a detrimental effect on a gaming session, regardless of the FPS it churns out. It is therefore extremely important that a graphics card should operate as quietly as possible.

To test for this we will be using a sound meter and microphone setup which will be placed 20cm away from the GPU. The test will take place in a quiet (not sound proof) room with the results for the GPU fan at low (30%) and highest (100%) settings.

Results

I am pleased to report that unlike it’s smaller sibling, the GTX560 AMP!, the GTX580 3GB AMP2! cooler is very quiet, even when running at 100%. We held our previous best cooler, the WindForce by GIGABYTE in very high regard but this cards ZALMAN cooler edges the WindForce cooler out by a small but significant margin, especially when you consider the additional heatload generated by the ZOTAC GTX580 compared to the GIGABYTE GTX560. So the cooler not only cools very well in does so with very little noise.

Power Consumption

For this test, we will be using a wall meter with the test setup plugged in minus the Monitor. Readings were taken at both stock and overclocked conditions each having readings also taken in idle and 100% load (Furmark). FurMark is perhaps not indicative of a true gaming environment and indeed is not recommended by NVIDIA or AMD to test stability of a card but in my view, much like Prime95 for CPU’s, it puts the graphics card under the highest possible stress and presents a good ‘worst case’ scenario. So while it is unlikely your card will ever be stressed as much under normal conditions, it is a good indicator of a theoretical maximum.

Results

Unsurprisingly, the ZOTAC GTX580 3GB AMP2! consumed a little less power than it’s nearest compititor, the MSI GTX580 XE given that its overclocked clockspeeds were slightly lower. The results fell directly between the MSI cards stock and overclocked settings which is precisely where I would expect it to be given that the overclocked clockspeeds were between the stock and overclocked settings of the MSI card.

Let’s get to the meat of the review now as we evaluate the ZOTAC GTX580 3GB AMP2!’s performance…

Crysis Warhead

Following the success of Crysis, the stand alone expansion “Warhead” was hotly anticipated to bring more game play, more weapons, improved visuals whilst maintaining better performance, the latter being what gamers wanted most. After all how many people upgraded their rigs just to play this game… In the game, you play as the upbeat Brit Sergeant “Psycho” Sykes, chasing down a Korean nuclear warhead. Throw in some ice shooting aliens and we’re bound to have a great game. It sure delivered.

Testing was done using Framebuffer’s Crysis Warhead benchmarking tool. The tests were configured to DirectX 10 at Enthusiast levels. Each test on the Ambush map was looped three times from which the average FPS was recorded.

Far Cry 2

One of the most hyped games of 2008, Far Cry 2 had some big shoes to fill. It was built to be the next best thing since well… Far Cry I suppose. Combining an open-world game play with highly detailed graphics, physics and AI, what more could we possibly want? The game puts us in the body of a malaria inflicted mercenary hunting down the “Jackal” in the heart of Africa, in a bid to stop an on-going conflict between two rival factions. The storyline can be hard to follow sometimes but I’m no game reviewer, so let’s concentrate on the graphics and performance. After all, we all need to know if our hardware will be able to handle the scorching savannah burning at the hands of our flamethrowers.

The bundled benchmarking tool was used on Far Cry 2, configuring the settings to Ultra and DX10. The small ranch level was chosen and each configuration was looped three times from which the average FPS was recorded.

Metro 2033

Based on the novel by the same name, Metro 2033 is a first person shooter with elements of survival horror. As Artyom, you trawl through the mutant infested metro systems of post-apocalyptic Moscow. The game delivers presents a grim ambience that reflects on the overall atmosphere of the underground setting. Metro 2033 uses the setting as a back drop to showcase some of the best visuals of any games out now, making it the ideal benchmark for those looking for the best graphics card.

The bundled benchmarking tool was used on Metro 2033, configuring the settings to Very High and making use of DirectX 11. The frontline scene was looped 3 times for each configuration. The average FPS was recorded at the end.

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Alien Vs. Predator

Spawned from the popular Alien and Predator franchises, Rebellion have collaborated to bring the legendary war to us through the medium of a first-person shooter. The game forces you to hunt, prey and most importantly survive in the swamp colony of Freya’s prospect as a Predator, Alien or Marine. The stunning visuals add to the sense of dread and terror that we have become so accustomed to seeing with the series.

The stand-alone Alien VS Predator benchmark tool was used for testing here. All the settings were set to very high and Tessellation was applied. The average FPS was recorded at the end.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2

Battlefield Bad Company 2 is the new rendition of the widely successful Battlefield series of game. Having more in common with the console release of Bad Company, the sequel hopes to inject the DNA of the timeless Battlefield 2 online experience with the witty action packed single player shooting adventure of the original. As Private Preston Marlowe, your goal as a member of Bad Company is to once again save the world by securing a scalar weapon device.

Fraps was used to test performance. Each test was conducted at the start of the ‘Cold War’ level ensuring that the same actions and paths were taken during the 2 minute sample. All settings were set to the highest available in game with AF set to 16x and HBAO turned on. The average FPS was recorded by FRAPS at the end of each walk through.

DiRT 3

As players race to elevate their global standing, DiRT 3 is back delivering mud, sweat and gears world over: from the intense weather-beaten rally stages of Europe, Africa and the US, to executing performance driving showcases and career challenges where car control is pushed to spectacular limits.

The in-game benchmarking tool was used to test performance. All the display settings were set to the maximum available and DirectX 11 was applied. The average FPS was recorded at the end.

Mafia II

Following the success of Mafia back in 2002, the third person action adventure game is back with a new grittier and darker world. As Vito Scaletta, an aspiring made man, your job is to work through the twist and turns of Mafia lifestyle. The more blood spilt, the more you get in return but the lifestyle was never meant to be an ideal one. Set in the visually stunning Empire City, the wartime references provide the ever present back drop to a rife period in America’s history, in which potential for exploitation becomes Vito’s key focus.

The in-game benchmarking tool was used to test performance. All the display settings were set to the maximum available in-game. PhsyX was only enabled if specified in the charts. The average FPS was recorded at the end.

TessMark 0.2.2

TessMark 0.2.2 is an OpenGL benchmark and tech demo that uses the new hardware tessellation (or GPU tessellation) features exposed by the OpenGL 4 API. Hardware tessellation makes it possible to divide a polygon into smaller ones (according to the tessellation level factor) in order to increase polygons density: the higher the tessellation level, the higher the polygon density. A high tessellation level requires much GPU processing power.

TessMark was run in fullscreen, benchmark mode using map set 1 and configured to use OpenGL 4.

3DMark 2011 & Unigine Heaven 2.5

3DMark 11 is the latest version of the world’s most popular benchmark. Designed to measure your PC’s gaming performance 3DMark 11 makes extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.

Unigine Heaven 2.5

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine™ engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.

Conclusion

The ZOTAC GTX580 3GB AMP2! is an all-round excellent performer. I could easily end the conclusion right there because it is very hard to find fault with a card such as this. Before we get carried away though, let’s look at each section of today’s sample in greater depth.

To begin with the packaging is good but alas not great. There are still some minor improvements I would like to see such as a full foam enclosure and not just a bracket holding the card in place. While the foam insert used by ZOTAC is adequate and certainly an improvement over the GTX560 AMP!’s, I feel that not having a complete foam base does not give the whole package as much physical shock protection as packaging used by other manufacturers. A separate compartment, perhaps a simple cardboard box would also be a welcome addition. I am being very picky here though as the package, for all intents and purposes is enough to ensure the card should arrive in tip-top condition. What minor faults there are or more than compensated for by ZOTAC included a free copy of Assassins Creed Brotherhood.

The card itself is a behemoth. Being a triple slot design it is hard to see anything other than a maximum of two cards used in a system at any one time. 3 cards could potentially fit on an E-ATX board but that would be a rarity. What the cooler lacks in demeanour it certainly makes up for in performance, both via acoustics and cooling. The noise is the lowest we heard from a cooling design when set to 100% and when coupled with one of the best results from cooling we have seen this is an amazing achievement. The ZALMAN/ZOTAC VF3000 cooler is clearly a very well designed piece of equipment. I can however still find a minor fault with this and that is that the cooler shroud is easily flexed which could result in the fan either catching the bracket or indeed stopping completely, not what you want when running the card under load. That said, out of the two cards we received, only one card needed a slight adjustment to ensure the cooler performed flawlessly.

The performance of the card was great throughout our suite of benchmarks as you would expect from a pre-overclocked flagship product. The additional 1.5GB of GDDR5 ensured we didn’t run into VRAM limitations, even at 2560×1600 resolution with all the trimmings added. Indeed, we actually suffered CPU limitations at times during the SLI testing which when you consider we use a Core i7 920 at 4GHz is not easy to do, such is the extreme performance capabilities when two of these beasts play together. As a single card there is nothing out there that this card could not cope with. When you add a second card, the performance is simply sublime and topped our suite of benchmarks on almost every occasion. My one minor disappointment was that I failed to get more MHz from the core. While 911MHz is a very good achievement, this is nothing ground breaking and not quite up to the clockspeed achieved on other samples. That said we may have just been unlucky with the sample we received as with most cases, it’s the luck of the draw and as such I find it hard to criticise the ZOTAC for that. However, with cooling so good as the design found on this card I couldn’t help but get greedy with the core clockspeed as temperatures were never an issue.

The card does however present one major problem and it is one aspect that cannot so easily be dismissed: Price. At first glance £450 appears very expensive. The ZOTAC card is however very competitive when you compare it to other GTX580 3GB cards as most reference cooled versions weigh in at a similar price point. When you consider the ZOTAC version has a £40 cooler attached and a free quality game, the overall package does begin to compensate for the high price. Ultimately though, the higher performing HD6990 at just £50 more presents a serious headache to NVIDIA as you would either have to have spacing problems (length) or serious NVIDIA fan boy issues not to go for the AMD card at this price point because it offers better performance for not a lot more money. The AMD card is however, a LOT louder so it really would come down to whether you wanted ultimate performance at the sacrifice of acoustics (AMD HD6990) or great performance with the pleasure of silence (ZOTAC GTX580 3GB AMP2!). It’s certainly a tough quandary to have but I fear that most would opt for performance.

To summarise, the ZOTAC GTX580 3GB AMP2! is an astonishing piece of hardware and would suit anyone who yearns for high performance without sacrificing silence. Couple two of these cards together and the performance really will blow you away, they are THAT good. Were it not for the few very minor issues and of course the high price, this card would have laid claim to our very top award, the Vortez Platinum. On this occasion though, it will have to ‘settle’ for Gold. The Gold award is a brilliant achievement in itself but like the overclocking, despite being great, I was left with a bitter taste of frustration as this card could be so much more had it clocked 50MHz more and cost £50 less!

In addition to the GOLD award, we have also granted the cards in SLI configuration the prestigious ELITE award. We could not award the single card Elite as it was outperformed by other GPU’s, however with the two cards in SLI (regardless of the £900 price tag), they offer the best all round performance, cooling and acoustics we have seen thus far from a multi GPU setup at Vortez and rightly deserve our top performance award.

Pros:
– Fantastic Performance
– Class Leading cooling
– Very quiet operation
– 3GB of GDDR5
– Included free game

Cons:
– The Price
– Triple slot design may be an issue for some
– No protective backplate
– No 6Pin adapter