Review GTX 580 SLI: The Ultimate Gamer’s Dream!

What can you do to improve the speed of the world’s fastest single-GPU graphics card? Easy, add another one for double the processing power! The few past GeForces have shown impressive performance scaling with SLI, so we expect nothing less from the GTX 580.

Aside from measuring the performance improvement obtained by adding a second GTX 580, some scores from our previous graphics cards tests are also included in the result charts: GeForce GTX 480, Radeon HD 5970, Radeon HD 6870, and Radeon HD 6870 in Crossfire. As for the GX 580, two reference cards were used. One is a sample unit from NVIDIA, while the other comes from MSI; each has a default clock speed. Before moving on to the tests, let’s examine their technical specs first.

Specification

	NVIDIA GTX 580	NVIDIA GTX 480	AMD HD 6870
Codename	GF110	GF100	Barts XT
Fabrication Process	40 nm	40 nm	40 nm
Transistors	3 Billion	3.2 Billion	1.7 Billion
Die Size	320 mm²	526 mm²	–
Core Clock	772 MHz	700 MHz	900 MHz
Stream Processors	512	480	1120
Texture Units	64	60	56
ROPs	48	48	32
Memory Type	GDDR5	GDDR5	GDDR5
Memory Size	1536 MB	1536 MB	1024 MB
Memory Clock (effective)	4008 MHz	3696 MHz	4200 MHz
Memory Interface	384-bit	384-bit	256-bit
DirectX Version	11	11	11
Shader Model	5	5	5
Power Connectors	8-pin + 6-pin	8-pin + 6-pin	2x 6-pin
Min Recommended Power Supply	600 Watt	600 Watt	500 W
Bus Support	PCIe 2.1 x16	PCIe 2.1 x16	PCIe 2.1 x16

SLI Setup

To make an SLI setup, you will need two GeForce cards. It’s better if both cards are identical to each other to ensure maximum compatibility. You will also need a motherboard that provides at least two PCIe x16 slots with Intel series 5 chipsets for Intel users, or nForce chipsets for AMD processors. In addition, for the two GTX 580 graphics cards, you need a power supply with two 6-pin and two 8-pin connectors.

Greenish artifacts were visible on the screen when we tried to connect the two GTX 580s using just one SLI bridge. The problem was solved by adding another bridge. It appears that you will have to use both SLI connectors on the GTX 580 for the setup to work properly. We also ran onto similar issue with the GTX 480.

After the driver has been installed, simply open the NVIDIA control panel and enable the “Maximize 3D Performance” option to activate SLI.