Review ZOTAC GeForce GTX 580 – The Fastest Single-GPU Card, Plus a Worthy Bonus

Graphics Card

This is the graphics card itself. It’s a reference card, obviously. The cooler bears ZOTAC’s sticker to distinguish it from any other card of its kind.

NVIDIA’s reference-standard vapor chamber HSF on this product does a good job of suppressing the heat. We recorded a maximum temperature of 73 degree Celsius at full load (fan speed at 55%). Idle temps hovered at around 30 degree Celsius with the fan reverting back to a less-noisy 40%. Pretty decent for one of the fastest graphics cards on the planet.

Like most other modern graphics cards, ZOTAC’s GTX 580 uses the PCI Express x16 v 2.1 interface to transfer huge amounts of data. It’s also backward compatible with earlier PCI Express revisions (2.0 and 1.0).

Two SLI connectors on the top side can be used to connect the graphics card with one or two identical pairs for 2-way or 3-way SLI processing. With certain motherboards, you can even combine up to 4 GeForce GTX 580 cards in 4-way SLI mode.

You need at least a 600 watt PSU for a single GTX 580 card. Power is supplied through one 8-pin and one 6-pin PCI connectors.

Display output selection consists of two DVI connectors and one mini-HDMI port. ZOTAC provides a mini-HDMI to HDMI converter so you won’t have to look for one when you need to hook up an HDMI display device to your computer.

The PCB layout as seen from the back. Contrary to NVIDIA’s previous flagship model, the GTX 480, the GeForce GTX 580 does not need an extra ventilation hole on this part.