Gadgetory

from an aside we have the brand-new GeForce GTX 580 this is an NVIDIA GPU features all of the latest technologies including GeForce CUDA and Vidia sli physics 3d vision including 3d visions two-round with up to three monitors we've also got some other cool points here check this out so this is a special sticker that goes on USA Canada and Mexican models so they've got a three-year warranty in all of those countries and this particular MSI card features all solid capacitors for improved lifespan so we can actually find some more details about that on the back so ten years ultra long lifetime with no explosion I think what they actually mean to say is no leaking because typically capacitors although they can't explode typically they're just gonna leak so you've also got lower temperatures higher efficiency but bear in mind your card will not explode very good so we've got a little list of the features here so that is DirectX 11 SLI that is up to three way and even four-way SLI surround physics CUDA Direct compute Nvidia purevideo HD technology is a PCI Express 2.0 card you can read this I'm sure oh hey cool we got HDMI 1.4 a so that means that you are able to play with appropriate software 3d blu-ray óó appropriate software and appropriate TV that's gonna cost you minimum system requirements are as follows here so Nvidia recommends a minimum 600 water greater power supply with a minimum of 42 amps on the 12 volt rail and up here this is one of the coolest things about MSI video cards is that they all come compatible with MSI Afterburner which is if you follow my blog and outstanding little overclocking utility that I personally use very frequently and I really really like and MSI has just done a great job in their partnership with rivet tuner basically well they've reskin the program and they've added a couple features they've made it really simple to use and they've also added their little combustor utility which is in partnership with the firm art guys so they've given you the all the means to overclock and test your ethics card out-of-the-box which is pretty cool so accessory-wise we've got a six pin to eight pin power connector we've also got a dual 4-pin molex to single six pin power connector and then we have that's a nice long cable to look at that so we've got what looks to be about a six foot mini HDMI to HDMI cable for me to see what else we've got pleated here and then I'll stop teasing you guys and look at the card itself next we've got a DVI to VGA adapter finally we have a utilities and Driver DVD or CD I don't know what it is but either way throw it away download the latest from the msi website we've got a quick users guide which is big there we are so they show some other msi products how to plug it into your computer all that good stuff throw that back together and then finally we've got the 580 GTX series so this shows you how to use their live update for the drivers and also access stuff well you want to get a quick start guide so there you have it two Quick Start guides true for the price of one you know someone should run that Pirlo on GTX 580 s I bet they'd sell a lot of GTX 580 s if they did two for the price of one so one of em s eyes kind of unique little things as they include these little blue covers on all of your connectors which means that people like me can safely handle the card without touching the contacts actually everyone gives me a hard time about this but I'm finally going to explain why I don't care about touching the contacts like this okay here let me show you guys so you see where my finger touches the side of the PCB I actually am NOT making contact with the little golden contacts along the edge of the PCI Express 16x connector look at that see no matter how hard I press on there I'm not going to touch them so I'm only touching a completely inert part of the PCB when I handle a video card like this so there you go now you know let's have a look at the back of this video card so you can see here where the GPU is situated so that's going to be where most of the bulky cooling power is done now bear in mind the GTX 580 and the reference design does use a vapor chamber design so it's not using standard heat pipes next we have some vrm cooling our VRM VRMs here so that is delivering the power from these six pin and eight pin power connectors over to all the power-hungry parts that need them speaking of power-hungry the GTX 580 improves over the 480 in a lot of ways one of which is performance another of which is heat that is to say it gives off less heat than the 580 and last but not least is power consumption so the 580 performs better runs cooler and doesn't consume as much power as the GTX 480 so I think we've looked at the back of the card fairly in-depth here so oh you can actually see there's a little vent here so when this fan spins it's gonna exhaust just a little bit of air out the back cool off those solid caps and make sure that they're all staying nice and not toasty so that is performing very well so MSI has put on their customized branding on the card here so we've got an MSI logo to go along with the GeForce one on the top and then we've got a little looks like some kind of like a jet or something what is this here there's a bigger one here if you guys can tell me what that is I would very much appreciate it maybe it's like a spaceship I'm not actually sure anyway so it's stuck on afterburner branding on it as well as MSI branding on it and they've called out the name at the end 580 GTX right there you've got a standard fan that is to say a rear exhaust fan which NVIDIA has been using on their reference high-end cards for quite some time because it does allow you to remove the heat from the card and exhaust it out the back of your case rather than exhausted into your case where it's just going to mean that all of the other components are going to run hotter which isn't to say that it's the only approach that works but it's worked quite well for end video over the last little while so they've continued to use it on the back we've got two DVI ports as well as a mini HDMI and MSI has generally as generously included the mini HDMI to HDMI cable because not many people have televisions that run off mini HDMI so thank you for checking out my unboxing of the MSI GTX 580 this is a 1.5 and gigabyte graphics card that's the amount of memory and it also has the fastest graphics processor in the world right there don't forget to subscribe to - tech tips