Gigabyte GeForce GTX 580 SOC Super Overclock 1536MB Graphics Card Review
Andy Ruffell / 13 years ago
A Closer LookBeing honest with you, I thought the card would be bigger, but having a smaller design than first anticipated is a good thing. The majority of the card is taken up by the patented triple fan design of the Windforce 3X. The Windforce 3X is a set of 3 PWM fans on top of a vapor chamber design with copper heat pipes to give the quietest, most efficient cooling possible with up to a 30% decrease in temperatures compared to a reference cooling design.
Even though the cooler sounds like it’s been developed with the most extreme conditions in mind, it has a relatively small design and only takes up two expansion slots in your case.
The fans feature a translucent blade design with the Gigabyte logo taking centre stage which as you can see includes a reflective surface which looks really nice in the right light. The surrounding area of the fan is made from brushed metal and has an elegant, up-market feel to it.
The card features a unique feature in the form of the Xtreme button, when depressed, it lights up red, though when pressed in, it lights up blue. The Xtreme button caters for the extreme dual BIOS that Gigabyte have invested in with this board. The first BIOS is for the standard SOC speeds and features whilst the second BIOS is for users trying to get around the cold bug issue when under LN2 that the GF110 GPU is known for.
We’re not going to lie, the card uses a fair bit of power, of which we will test later, but only requires a single 8-pin PCI-Express adapter, and a single 6-pin PCI-Express adapter.
Along the top of the card we find two SLI bridge connectors, which allow this card to be run alongside another one or more cards for the most extreme performance.
The rear panel is nothing out of the ordinary with a twin expansion bay design. The first top slot is taken up by ventilation ports, whilst the bottom part includes two DVI ports and a Mini HDMI port and all come with dust caps to protect the connections and is also the case with the SLI connectors.
Taking a look at the specifications and clocks on the card, the most noticeable difference is that the core clock speed has been raised up to a whopping 855MHz so that it can be sold under the “Super Overclock” branding as Gigabyte intended.
