KFA2 MDT X4 – GTX580 1538MB GDDR5 Review

1. Introduction2. KFA2 MDT X4 - GTX5803. KFA2 MDT X4 - GTX580 (Super High Res Gallery)4. Testing Methodology5. Configuring the KFA2 MDT X4 GTX5806. Synthetic: Unigine Heaven Benchmark7. Synthetic: 3DMark Vantage8. Synthetic: 3DMark 119. Synthetic: HQV Benchmark 2.010. Gaming: Alien V Predator11. Gaming: F1 201112. Gaming: Tom Clancy HAWX 213. Gaming: Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 314. Gaming: Far Cry 215. Gaming: Lost Planet 216. Gaming: Hard Reset17. Gaming: Total War Shogun 218. Technical: Acoustics Performance19. Technical: Thermal Dynamics20. Technical: Power Consumption21. Technical: Overclocking22. Closing Thoughts23. View All Pages

While Nvidia prepare to release their next series of cards we are looking at a custom GTX 580 board from KFA2 which can support up to four screens via a single card, with the promise of excellent gaming performance across three screens. It ships in an overclocked state and incorporates 3 fans for improved cooling efficiency. Today we will test across a single and three screens. Is it worth the money?

Nvidia's GTX580 was without question one of the finest video cards to have been released in the last 24 months. I used several in my own gaming rig for a very long time and admired the stunning performance, rock solid Forceware drivers and PhysX acceleration.

The only real downside to owning a GTX580 was the fact that you were limited to playing games on a single screen. Well unless you were rich enough to be able to run two in SLI.

The card supports a total of 4 monitor outputs simultaneously (3 Mini-HDMI, 1 DP). The user has the flexibility to use 3 of the Mini-HDMI ports to combine into a single monitor span in windows, creating a surround gaming environment.

Detailed Specification	KFA2 MDT GTX 580 PCIe 2.0
Cores	512
Graphics Clock(MHz)	840
Processor Clock(MHz)	1600
Memory Clock(MHz)	2004 (effective 4008)
Memory Amount	1536MB
Memory Interface	384-bit GDDR5
Memory Bandwidth(GB/Sec)	192.4
Texture Fill Rate(Bilion/Sec)	51.2

The KFA2 MDT x4 ships in a long, heavy box with graffiti/grunge style artwork. There is primary focus is on the ‘one card = 4 monitor' functionality.

The box is very durable and contains the card, along with a plethora of converters, an installation guide, and software disc.

An extensive bundle, featuring 3 mini HDMI to HDMI cables, several power converter cables, three HDMI to DVI converters and a Displayport to DVI converter cable.

The KFA2 MDT x4 card is beautifully finished, with three fans enclosed in a proprietary cooling system made from metal and tough plastics. The rear of the card has a backplate for protection and improved cooling efficiency.

The KFA2 MDT x4 card is SLI capable in 2,3 and 4 way configurations.

The card requires a single 6 pin and 8 pin power header for stable operation.

The KFA2 MDT X4 is different from any other GTX580 on the market. It has a single full size DisplayPort connector, and three mini HDMI connectors in parallel. KFA2 supply a mini HDMI to HDMI cable for each of these three ports. They also supply a Displayport to DVI converter cable in the box.

The interesting part of the KFA2 operating methodology is that the three mini HDMI ports can be spanned into a single output for 5760×1080 gaming … and if the user has 4 screens, then the panel connected to the DisplayPort can used separately for main desktop duties.

The KFA2 MDT X4  has several rows of heatpipes running in parallel down the side of the card, across the racks of aluminum fins under each fan. It is very heavy.

When the graphics card is installed, the sides of the card glow blue with ‘LED stripes', as shown above. And very nice it looks too!

This particular GTX580 ships with the GF110 core @ 840mhz. It has been a while since we have tested a GTX580, so a quick refresh is in order …. a reference GTX580 is meant to ship with the core clocks at 772mhz, meaning we have a 68mhz overclock, out of the box.

The KFA2 MDT X4 card ships with 1.5GB of GDDR5 connected via a 384bit memory interface. It has 48 ROPS and 512 Cuda Cores.

On this page we present some super high resolution images of the product taken with the 24.5MP Nikon D3X camera and 24-70mm ED lens. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source. You can right click and ‘save as’ to your computer to view later.

For the review today we are using three Dell U2410 monitors and have built a high end system based around a liquid cooled Intel Core i7 3960X Extreme Edition Processor.

System validation is available here.

Processor: Intel i7 3960X EE
Motherboard: Asus Rampage IV Extreme
Cooler: Antec H20 920
Memory: 16GB G.Skill 2400mhz DDR3
Graphics Card: KFA2 MDT X4 – GTX580 1538MB
Power Supply: Enermax Platimax 1200W
Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive
Chassis: Lian Li PC-A77FR Aluminium Red Full Tower Case
Monitors: Dell U3011, 3x Dell U2410, LaCie 730 (IQ testing).
Boot Drive: Patriot WildFire 120GB
Secondary Drive: 1TB Samsung

Comparison cards:
AMD HD7970
Nvidia GTX570
AMD HD6970

Software:
Windows 7 Enterprise (64-bit).
FRAPS Professional.
SiSoft Sandra.
Windows Media Player/VLC Player.
CPUz.
GPUz.
CPUID Hardware Monitor.
3D Mark Vantage.
3DMark 11.
Forceware 285.54 & 290.36

Games:
Alien V Predator
F1 2011
Tom Clancy HAWX 2
Far Cry 2
Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
Total War: Shogun 2
Lost Planet 2

Setting up this system isn't quite as straightforward as a standard build. As Nvidia don't officially support 3 monitor gaming with a single GTX580, KFA2 have had to come up with the procedure themselves.

The software supplied with the KFA2 MDT X4 contains the drivers and the overclocking tool.

We were quite surprised to see such an old driver bundled with the card and decided to head over to the official KFA2 site to check the revisions, as we were told this card might need specific drivers. Their main product page lists all the cards in the MDT range but we need to head over to the support page to check out the software. They say “NVIDIA released their new official 285.54 drivers, these new drivers enable 1080p gaming on our MDT Graphic Cards.”

We decided to ignore this and went with a much newer set direct from Nvidia, ForceWare V290.36.

On this page KFA2 have created software for the card which they call ‘EZY display‘. I found their website painfully slow, taking almost 30 minutes to get the software downloaded. Sadly it wasn't included on the optical disc either, which seems an oversight. At least this way they force the user to get the newest version.

A quick recap on how this is meant to work. There are three mini HDMI ports on the rear of this card and a DisplayPort. For gaming, the user has to connect three screens to the HDMI ports, leaving the four slot free for a main ‘desktop' panel. As a quick test we connected two screens to two of the mini HDMI ports and a Dell U3011 to the Displayport connector.

As the Nvidia display panel above shows, the Dell U3011 connected via the DisplayPort shows separately, which is how it should be.

‘GM-Quadrant-B' is the listing for the two 1080p panels we have connected to the mini HDMI ports. Combined they measure 3840×1080, which is correct. We decided to fire up the EZY software.

The software shows the two linked monitors and the single screen (C). These can be split up into 3 separate resolutions via the software.

We rebooted with three screens attached to the mini HDMI ports. The three monitors were correctly detected in the EZY software package.

The system detected these correctly, configuring them into a single spanned panel. The only problem is that the resolution is set to 3840×720. We need to set up a custom configuration in the nVidia driver panel at the right resolution.

Custom resolutions can be created via the Nvidia driver panel and only takes a few minutes.

We manually set a resolution of 5760×1080@50hz. We tested with 60hz, and although the monitors might support the refresh natively, it has to be 50hz via this card or it won't work. It is worth pointing out that not every game supports 5760×1080 over 3 screens, so some of our testing today will focus on single screen performance.

Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.

Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:

• Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
• Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
• Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
• Multicore CPU support
• Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
• Powerful C++ API
• Comprehensive performance profiling system
• Flexible XML-based data structures

We use the following settings: 1920×1080 resolution. Anti Aliasing off. Anisotrophy 4, Tessellation normal. Shaders High. Stereo 3D disabled. API: Direct X 11.

The GTX580 still holds up well, aided by the modest overclock applied by KFA2 in the factory. The average frame rate is 71 fps, which is around 11 fps less than the reference clocked AMD HD7970.

Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7. This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings.

The overclocked GTX580 scores 27,455 points which places it around 5,000 points ahead of the HD6970, but around 4,000 points behind the current generation HD7970. Great scores however.

3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.

After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.

If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page.

The overclock helps push the performance of this card well ahead of the HD6970, delivering an overall score of 7,429 points. The same system with AMD HD7970 scores just over 8,000 points.

HQV Benchmark 2.0 is an updated version of the original tool and it consists of various video clips and test patterns which are designed to evalute motion correction, de-interlacing, decoding, noise reduction, detail enhancement and film cadence detection.

There are two versions of the program, standard definition on DVD and high definition on Bluray. As our audience will be concentrating on HD content so will we.

This has a total of 39 video tests which is increased from 23 in the original and the scoring is also up from a total of 130 to 210. As hardware and software gets more complicated, the software has been tuned to make sure we can thoroughly maximise our analysis.

Read our initial analysis over here.

	KFA2 GeForce GTX 580
Dial	4
Dial with static pattern	5
Gray Bars	5
Violin	5
Stadium 2:2	5
Stadium 3:2	5
Horizontal Text Scroll	3
Vertical Text Scroll	5
Transition to 3:2 Lock	5
Transition to 2:2 Lock	0
2:2:2:4 24 FPS DVCAM Video	5
2:3:3:2 24 FPS DVCam Video	5
3:2:3:2:2 24 FOS Vari-Speed	5
5:5 FPS Animation	5
6:4 12 FPS Animation	5
8:7 8 FPS Animation	5
Interlace Chroma Problem (ICP)	5
Chroma Upsampling Error (CUE)	5
Random Noise: Sailboat	5
Random Noise: Flower	5
Random Noise: Sunrise	5
Random Noise: Harbour Night	5
Scrolling Text	5
Roller Coaster	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Bridge Traffic	5
Text Pattern/ Scrolling Text	5
Roller Coaster	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Bridge Traffic	5
Luminance Frequency Bands	5
Chrominance Frequency Bands	5
Vanishing Text	5
Resolution Enhancement	15
Theme Park	5
Driftwood	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Skin Tones	5
Total	192

The hardware scores 192 points out of a possible 210 which is close to the leading AMD result (only 4 points higher).

Aliens V Predator has proved to be a big seller since the release and Sega have taken the franchise into new territory after taking it from Sierra. AVP is a Direct X 11 supported title and delivers not only advanced shadow rendering but high quality tessellation for the cards on test today.

To test the cards we used a 1080p resolution with DX11, Texture Quality Very High, MSAA Samples 1, 16 af, ambient occulsion on, shadow complexity high, motion blur on. We use this with most of our graphics card testing so cards are comparable throughout reviews.

This Direct X 11 benchmark requires a lot from the partnering hardware, although as we can see there are no real problems for any of the four solutions on test when paired up with the Core i7 3960X EE system. The AMD HD7970 comes out on top, with a clear performance margin, averaging 93 fps. The overclocked KFA2 card averages 76 fps, 11 fps ahead of the last generation HD6970 solution.

F1 2011 is the newest Direct X 11 racing game from industry pioneers CodeMasters. The 2011 Formula One season is the 62nd FIA Formula One season. The original calendar consisted of twenty rounds, including the inaugural running of the Indian Grand Prix before the cancellation of the Bahrain Grand Prix. Pirelli returns to the sport as tyre supplier for all teams, taking over from Bridgestone. Red Bull Racing are the reigning Constructor’s Champions. Red Bull Racing’s Sebastian Vettel is the defending Drivers’ Champion, one of five World Champions appearing on the grid.

We remove Anti Aliasing, Anisotropic filtering and change the preset to ‘medium' and change resolution to 5760×1080 in DX9 mode across three screens.

Performance is actually really impressive from the KFA2 GTX580 solution, averaging 32 fps across three monitors. The HD7970 performs noticeably better, maintaining a frame rate above thirty at all times.

Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. 2 is an arcade-style flight action game developed by Ubisoft Romania and published by Ubisoft. After the events of the first game, the H.A.W.X squadron is sent to Middle East, where a high level of violence is being registered, and the appearance of various insurgents leaders in various hotspots. The team also has to investigate the mysterious disappearance of Russian nuclear weapons. The player will be controlling three groups: one American (Hunter), one British (Munro) and one Russian (Sokov), each with its own pilots and supporting characters. There will also be references to other characters in the Tom Clancy universe.

We are testing in full DX11 mode with all settings to maximum.

HAWX 2 is an Nvidia favourite which is easily seen by the results above. The GTX580 outpaces the HD7970, and the GTX570 outclasses the HD6970 at the bottom of the chart.

Modern Warfare 3 features a new mode, called Survival Mode. This game mode features one or two players fighting endless waves of enemies, with each wave becoming increasingly difficult. Despite being much compared to the World at War Nazi Zombies mode, enemies do not spawn at fixed locations like the zombies do; instead, they appear at tactical positions based on the current location of the player. The mode is available on all multiplayer maps in the game. Players earn cash for items such as weapons, upgrades, ammo, air/ground support and equipment.

No problems at 1080p. We then removed anti aliasing and lowered the texture quality settings from extra. Increasing the resolution to 5760×1080.

The KFA2 MDT X4 maintains a solid frame rate above 30 at all times. Not the most demanding engine, but still, impressive results.

Far Cry 2 (commonly abbreviated as “FC2 or “fc2″) is an open-ended first-person shooter developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. It was released on October 21, 2008 in North America and on October 23, 2008 in Europe and Australia. It was made available on Steam on October 22, 2008. Crytek, the developers of the original game, were not involved in the development of Far Cry 2.

Ubisoft has marketed Far Cry 2 as the true sequel to Far Cry, though the sequel has very few noticeable similarities to the original game. Instead, it features completely new characters and setting, as well as a new style of gameplay that allows the player greater freedom to explore different African landscapes such as deserts, jungles, and savannas. The game takes place in a modern-day East African nation in a state of anarchy and civil war. The player takes control of a mercenary on a lengthy journey to locate and assassinate “The Jackal,” a notorious arms dealer.

Far Cry 2 is still a popular game and the open world environment can be taxing on even the latest hardware available today.

Settings: 1920×1080, D3D10, Disable Artificial Intelligence(No), Full Screen, Anti-Aliasing(8x), VSync(No), Overall Quality(Ultra High), Vegetation(Very High), Shading(Ultra High), Terrain(Ultra High), Geometry(Ultra High), Post FX(High), Texture(Ultra High), Shadow(Ultra High), Ambient(High), Hdr(Yes), Bloom(Yes), Fire(Very High), Physics(Very High), RealTrees(Very High).

Solid performance, outclassing the HD7970 with this particular engine. We now lower most of the image quality settings to high, and lower Anti Aliasing to 4x enabling the other monitors for 5760×1080 testing.

At higher resolution the AMD HD7970 claws back the performance lead, averaging 46 frames per second, a few more than the overclocked GTX580.

Lost Planet 2 is a third-person shooter video game developed and published by Capcom. The game is the sequel to Lost Planet: Extreme Condition, taking place ten years after the events of the first game, on the same fictional planet. Lost Planet 2 runs on the MT-Framework 2.0, an updated version of the engine used in several Capcom-developed games.

We are testing at 5760×1080 with 0MSAA and 4AF, dx11features=middle, dxlevel=11, RenderDetail=middle, textures=middle, shadows=middle motionblur=on.

This is a tough game to power at high resolution, but by disabling anti aliasing and lowering a few of the image quality settings, we are able to get playable frame rates from both cards. The AMD HD7970 outperforms the KFA2 MDT x4 GTX580 by around 14 fps.

Hard Reset is a PC-exclusive FPS from The Flying Wild Hog, a Polish developer that is made up from members of the team behind Painkiller (People Can Fly), and former developers from CD Projekt Red and City Interactive.

An attractive game which can cause problems for lower powered solutions. Both of these flagship cards score well at these settings, averaging between 70 and 80 frames per second.

Shogun 2 is set in 16th-century feudal Japan, in the aftermath of the Ōnin War. The country is fractured into rival clans led by local warlords, each fighting for control. The player takes on the role of one of these warlords, with the goal of dominating other factions and claiming his rule over Japan. The standard edition of the game will feature a total of eight factions (plus a ninth faction for the tutorial), each with a unique starting position and different political and military strengths.

We are using the built in benchmark which is available via the STEAM client for this game.

Good results, averaging 137 fps at 720p and 53 fps at 720p. The AMD HD7970 is significantly faster with this particular Direct X 11 title.

We have changed our method of measuring noise levels. We have built a system inside a Lian Li chassis with no case fans and have used a fanless cooler on our CPU. We are using a heatpipe based passive power supply and an Intel SSD to keep noise levels to a minimum. The motherboard is also passively cooled. This gives us a build with completely passive cooling and it means we can measure noise of just the graphics card inside the system when we run looped 3dMark tests. Ambient noise in the room is around 20-25dBa. We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the closed chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation.

Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the video card. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.

KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refridgerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

The card is quiet, even when gaming, rating between 29 dBa and 33.3 dBa. When pushed under Furmark synthetic conditions, the fans spin up higher, emitting more noise.

The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 25c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this.

Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load measurements were acquired by playing Crysis Warhead for 30 minutes and measuring the peak temperature. We also have included Furmark results, recording maximum temperatures throughout a 30 minute stress test. All fan settings were left on automatic.

Idle temperatures were measured at 34c, which is class leading. This rises to 67c when gaming with only very moderate noise levels. The Furmark stress test increases this to a maximum of 74c, with a 54 percent fan speed at 2,600rpm.

To test power consumption today we are using a Keithley Integra unit and we measure power consumption from the VGA card inputs, not the system wide drain. We measure results while gaming in Crysis Warhead and record the results.

The card demands around 22 watts of power when idle, which rises to 245 watts under gaming load. Pretty much as we would expect from an overclocked GTX580.

KFA2 supply software with the card, called ‘Xtreme Tuner HD' which allows for clock changes and voltage ramping.

We managed to achieve a 8% overclock on the core, and a 7% overclock on the memory speeds. These are quite good, especially considering the card is supplied in an overclocked state out of the box.

The additional overclock helps to boost the scores by a further 500 points, right behind the reference clocked AMD HD7970.

The Nvidia GTX580 seems to have been topping the charts now forever and there is clearly some life yet in the old horse, as our test results show today. The KFA2 MDT X4 GTX580 is certainly one of the more interesting versions of the card released to date as it has totally rewritten the Nvidia reference rulebook.

Firstly, the KFA2 solution is supplied in a heavily overclocked state, meaning the performance parameters are significantly higher than the reference board. It certainly isn't as fast as the new AMD HD7970, but we can't imagine anyone could need more performance with a single monitor, even at the highest resolutions. KFA2 have included a custom three fan cooling solution which maintains load temperatures well under 70c when gaming.

Noise emissions are also noteworthy, and while it isn't the quietest card we have tested, there is still plenty of overhead for pushing the clocks higher by manually overclocking. KFA2 have tried to make life easier for the end user by bundling their own dedicated software for clock ramping and voltage tweaking.

The custom cooler is an impressive beast, incorporating custom blue LED lighting so it stands out within a new windowed case system build. We feel the appearance of the card will appeal to the Nvidia fans, much in the way the customised XFX HD7970 Double Dissipation has with the AMD audience.

The main talking point however will be the ability to power four screens from a single GTX580 and to game across three. We wouldn't imagine a huge percentage of gamers can afford a high end computer like the system we used today with three screens, but the KFA2 MDT X4 GTX580 is capable of handling many modern game engines at 5760×1080 resolution, if you dial down some of the image quality settings and disable anti aliasing. Obviously if you can afford two of them then you would get much higher frame rates and could even power eight 24 inch screens, but be prepared to invest in a huge computer desk!

As this solution isn't officially supported by Nvidia, the configuration of the KFA2 MDT X4 GTX580 isn't quite as straightforward as many might expect. We wouldn't say it was complex either, but you need to set up a custom resolution and install the KFA2 software to correctly configure the multi screens. The option to fun a fourth screen separately via the DisplayPort is an intuitive idea, especially when using the machine outside of gaming.

KFA2 have informed us that this card will be available very shortly, with only a small price premium over the reference solution. Retail price will be around £400 inc vat, which is very competitive.

Pros:

• Great cooler.
• Nice overclocks ‘out of the box' with potential for more.
• Software covers all bases.
• Bundle has all the cables and adapters for a four screen configuration.

Cons:

• Nvidia's new series of hardware won't be that long.
• Multi screen configuration isn't quite as ‘smooth' as an official solution would be.

Kitguru says: There is no doubt this is a killer GTX580 design … it is our favourite on the market today. The only potential issue for KFA2 is that Nvidia may be replacing the card very shortly with a new high end flagship model.

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