Palit NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 3GB Dual Fan Video Card Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Palit NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 3GB Dual Fan Video Card Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
2011-03-30
so guys I've been informed I should keep
it down on account of as to shooting
some kind of fail video in the room next
to me you should subscribe to our
channel if you want to see her videos
NCIX Esther so today I'm going to be
unboxing the pilot GeForce GTX 580 now
this isn't like your your dad's or your
Grandpa's GTX 580 this is a somewhat
different GTX 580 first of all it has a
dual fan cooler second of all it has a
DisplayPort output and third of all it
has three gigs yes three gigs of memory
on a single single GPU card so it
supports DirectX 11 3d business around
physics CUDA SLI it supports Nvidia
surround without 3d vision as well but
you'll need two cards for that and this
is actually one of the few situations
where I would really recommend a card
like this with three gigs of memory and
I'll get into that a little bit more why
later
so here are some logos for all of that
stuff that I mentioned before it's
compatible with Windows 7 it bloody well
better be if it's DirectX 11 ready
supposedly okay there's some kind of
sticker there there's the palette frog
page for branding some more branding no
more frogs yeah we got another frog on
the back there's their frog guy yeah
yeah okay what else we got so technical
specifications NVIDIA GeForce chipset
OpenGL the rack docks okay built for
DirectX 11 surround gaming yet more on
that later playing 3d 3d is good it is a
PCI Express 2.0 16 X card which we will
see when we open it up and it requires a
minimum 600 watt or greater power supply
with at least 12 rather at least 42 amps
on the 12 volt rail remember that's a
combined 42 amps if you have dual 12
volt rails you have one that's like you
know 30 and one another that's 30 that's
still good enough to be 42 amps
alright inside the box we will find some
stuff mostly we will find foam no video
cards sorry not today I'm just kidding
there's a video card in here okay so
there's the GTX 580
but I'm just kidding I'm going to show
you guys the accessories first but there
is a dual 6 pin - 8 pin PCIe adapter how
exciting that's it in there next we have
a DVI to vga adapter you're seriously
still running a VGA monitor and a card
like this and yes I stand by what I said
a lot of people are complaining about
that particular common but I think it's
true I think if you're buying a $500
graphics card you ought to upgrade your
monitor if you're still actually running
a VGA monitor here's a quick
installation guide here's a driver disc
don't use it download the latest from
the Nvidia website and finally here is I
think I'm already yes yes I am already
going to like this card because it has a
matte black PCB awesome I'm a big fan of
the matte black PCB 2 0 reflection
nothing just matte black awesomeness
everything looks good when it's in
silver and matte black so here's a
standard GTX 580 PCB for contrast see
how shiny that is see how shiny this is
not at all all right so here's our
standard PCI Express 16x connector
here's our dual sli fingers so this card
does support up to a two way and
three-way and even four-way SLI on
supported motherboards a little 4 Way
SLI isn't a great value I mean I there's
three way but four way really isn't a
great value three-way is probably about
as high as I would go even for an
extreme gaming rig here on the back of
the card we find that non-standard
output set up that I talked about so
we've got dual DVI full-sized HDMI and
DisplayPort so we'll contrast that with
a standard GTX 580 where we find dual
DVI and mini HDMI so that's a little bit
different
we also do not have a full pci bracket
width for exhaust and the reason for
that is we are using a non-reference
cooler so right here we're using kind of
a dual fan these look like oh it's hard
to say I think they're probably 80 mils
but they might be seven emails I can't
quite tell they're low profile fans this
is still a dual slot card so you don't
need three slots for the card itself
though I would still recommend leaving
the next slot over vacant so that these
fans do have some room to breathe
most of the exhaust it looks like due to
the shape of the cooler is being done
out the back of the card here where you
can see it's just full of dense dense
fins that's a very dense aluminum thin
cooler there's your two fans plugged in
so this is a fully custom PCB not just
the colour but the entire PCB design
because it has actual fan inputs for
both of these fans rather than just one
and then obviously here on the other
side so you can see the the fins through
there but that one's not gonna be able
to exhaust as much should be okay it's
only a single GPU card so it's not like
we have to worry about two GPUs getting
equal cooling or anything like that so I
would expect it to perform at least as
well as the stock cooler if not it
should actually be better and you look
at this to God how many fat heat pipes
is that on there it looks like you got
about four heat pipes in there I
carrying heat over here to the other
side as well as over to the front of the
card up here on the top looks fairly
standard so like I said you got your SLI
fingers you've also got a four pin and a
three pin connector so just because it
has more memory doesn't mean that it
needs more power it uses the same amount
of power as a standard GTX 580 so that's
pretty much everything I wanted to say
about this card except why you would buy
one so a three gig GTX 580 what is it
for well it's for SLI running triple
monitor HD plus resolution
configurations or if you play with like
ridiculous high texture high res texture
packs in your favorite games because the
reality of it is 1.5 gigs is plenty of
RAM for a GTX 580 unless you're running
an extreme usage scenario so remember in
SLI doing let's say you're doing Nvidia
surround with three 2560
1,600 monitors each card has to store
all of the textures has to use its own
frame buffer to store all of the
information necessary for that entire
like six times HD resolution that you're
talking about with a setup like that I
think it worked let is it something like
12 megapixels so when you're in SLI you
don't actually get to double your frame
buffer when you put two cards together
so you run two of these you don't have
three gigs of memory effectively you
actually only have 1.5 still so if you
run two of these or three of these you
only have three gigs of effective memory
no matter how many cards you're running
together so that is why if you are
running a great big resolution or if
you're running got mostly just big
resolutions something like this could be
really handy because it could be the
difference like you don't just get a
linear performance increase from more
memory it would be the difference
between its playable at you know like 40
FPS or it runs at like 6 FPS because
it's completely out of memory and it has
to swap so it has to swap to the drive
so there you go thank you for checking
out my unboxing of the pallet GTX 580 3
gig don't forget to subscribe to Linus
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