Zotac GTX 580 AMP! Edition review

1. Introduction2. Zotac GTX 580 AMP! Edition3. Testing Methodology4. Synthetic: Unigine Heaven Benchmark5. Synthetic: 3DMark Vantage6. Synthetic: 3DMark 117. Synthetic: Stone Giant8. Synthetic: ShaderToyMark9. Image Quality: HQV Benchmark 2.010. Gaming: Resident Evil 511. Gaming: Alien V Predator12. Gaming: Far Cry 213. Gaming: Mafia 214. Gaming: Lost Planet 215. Gaming: Dead Space 216. Gaming: Total War: Shogun 217. Gaming: Metro 203318. Gaming: Colin McRae Dirt 219. Gaming: STALKER Clear Sky20. Gaming: Battlefield Bad Company 221. Gaming: Tom Clancy HAWX 222. Technical: Acoustics Performance23. Technical: Thermal Dynamics24. Technical: Power Consumption25. Technical: Overclocking26. Closing Thoughts27. View All Pages

After the somewhat disappointing release of the GTX590, I decided to turn my attention again to one of the best video cards on the market, Nvidia's GTX580. This card has been leading the single GPU charts since it was released and Zotac sent us their fully pimped out AMP! Edition. Is this one of the best ways to blow £450?

Upon first appearance, the Zotac GTX580 AMP! Edition looks slightly uninspiring, after all there isn't a sexy cooler included like the Asus GTX580 Direct CU II we reviewed last month, but with a core clock set at 810mhz this looks to be one of the fastest ‘out of the box' versions available.

Product	nVidia GTX 580	Zotac GTX580 AMP! Edition
Shader Units	512	512
GPU	GF110	GF110
ROPs	48	48
Transistors	3000M	3000M
Memory Count	1536MB	1536MB
Memory Bus Width	384 bit	384 bit
Core Clock	772mhz	810 mhz
Memory Clock	1002 mhz	1025 mhz

As we expected, Zotac's orange dragon is still the central point for the AMP! Edition box artwork.

The bundle is pretty good. You get a free copy of Prince of Persia ‘The Forgotten Sands' and there is a software disc, installation literature and various power and output converters (DVI Adapter, Mini HDMI to HDMI adapter and 2x PCI Express power cables).

Disappointingly, we aren't greeted with a custom cooling solution like Zotac have implemented on their AMP! Editions in the past. Instead we are presented with the very boring nVidia reference cooler.

The GTX580 can work in up to quad SLI formations for enhanced performance and image quality settings.

The card is shipped with two DVI ports and a mini HDMI port, with the supplied adapter you can hook this directly into an HDMI TV or monitor. As we have said before, the GTX580 is seriously outperformed on a connectivity level by the AMD solutions, such as the HD6970 which can support up to 6 monitors. This card can only handle two screens at the same time. If you want to use three screens, be prepared to buy two of these cards.

The HDMI interface is 1.3 compatible which offers DTS-HD, Dolby TrueHD, AC-3, DTS and 7.1 channel audio support. It also has support for HDMI 1.4 3D output.

As this is basically an overclocked reference card design, we aren't surprised to see that it requires a 6 pin and an 8 pin PCI E power connector to operate properly.

GPUz overview of the specifications, showing the enhanced 810mhz core speed and the GDDR5 overclock to 1025mhz.

To test this high end card today we have built a system with suitable matching components, based around a liquid cooled 12 core Intel i7 970 processor overclocked to 4.33ghz with 6GB of GKILL memory running at 1800mhz with tight timings. We will be mixing the resolutions, as we know that less than 1 percent of the audience have access to a 30 inch screen.

Processor: Core i7 970 @ 4.33ghz
Cooling: Coolit Vantage
Motherboard: MSI X58A-GD65 (MS-7522)
Chassis: Thermaltake Level 10
Power Supply: Corsair Ax1200
Memory: 6GB GSkill Performance Gaming ram @ 902.9 MHz (2:10) @ 7-8-7-24
Storage: Kingston SSDNow V+ 512GB Gen 2 SSD (Storage) / Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB (OS boot)
Monitors: Dell U2410 UltraSharp, LaCie 730, Iiyama Prolite E2472HDD x2

Other graphics cards for comparisons:
Nvidia GTX590
Nvidia GTX580
Nvidia GTX570
XFX HD5970 Black Edition 4GB (QuadFireX)
AMD HD6990
AMD HD6970
AMD HD6950
AMD HD6870
AMD HD6850
AMD HD5870
AMD HD5850
MSI N560GTX Ti Twin Frozr II
nVidia GTX570
nVidia GTX460 OC (715/900)

Software:
Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
Catalyst 11.4
Forceware 266.58 WHQL
Fraps Professional
Steam Client
FurMark
ShaderToy
Stone Giant Benchmark
HQV 2.0 Software

Technical Monitoring and Test Equipment:
Keithley Integra unit
Thermal Diodes
Raytek Laser Temp Gun 3i LSRC/MT4 Mini Temp
Extech digital sound level meter & SkyTronic DSL 2 Digital Sound Level Meter

Games:
Mafia 2
Resident Evil 5
Far Cry 2
Alien V Predator
Lost Planet 2
Metro 2033
Colin McRae Dirt 2
STALKER: Clear SKy
Battlefield: Bad Company 2
Dead Space 2
Total War: Shogun 2

All the latest BIOS updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests all games across five closely matched runs and average out the results to get an accurate median figure.

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 test at 1080p so that all video cards can be compared throughout our reviews. Obviously driver updates might enhance performance slightly over time, but as a rule, its a useful way for us to present the findings.

The final score places the GTX580 AMP! Edition top of the single GPU card list, around 2 and a half frames more than the reference clocked GTX580.

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.

Yet another healthy result for the GTX580 AMP! Edition, scoring over 1,000 points more than the reference clocked card.

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.

A score of over 6,200 points indicates that this is the fastest single GPU card we have tested in our labs, to date.

Stone Giant is a benchmark tech demo that showcases and measures DirectX 11 performance using the BitSquid Engine. This is a very heavy tessellation dependant benchmark which runs very well on nVidia hardware. AMD optimised their drivers for tessellation performance recently. We are using the default driver settings.

We can see that the GTX580 AMP! Edition is producing around 4 frames more than the reference clocked card.

ShaderToyMark is an OpenGL benchmark, developed with GeeXLab, and focused on pixel shaders only.

In the words of the author … Why ShaderToyMark? Simply because I recently played with the pixel shaders available with Shader Toy, a great WebGL tool for testing GLSL shaders. And I said to myself: that would be nice to see several of these shaders running at the same time in the same 3D window… ShaderToyMark was born.

The contributors of Shader Toy are all famous demomakers and their shaders are real gems. It’s just amazing to see what can clever people do with some sin/cos and other math tricks.

We are using the default settings for our testing today.

The Zotac GTX580 AMP! Edition leads the pack, generating 53 frames per second at our chosen settings.

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.

	Zotac GTX580 AMP!
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 a very strong result indeed.

Resident Evil 5, known in Japan as Biohazard 5, is a survival horror third-person shooter video game developed and published by Capcom. The game is the seventh installment in the Resident Evil survival horror series, and was released on March 5, 2009 in Japan and on March 13, 2009 in North America and Europe for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. A Windows version of the game was released on September 15, 2009 in North America, September 17 in Japan and September 18 in Europe. Resident Evil 5 revolves around Chris Redfield and Sheva Alomar as they investigate a terrorist threat in Kijuju, a fictional town in Africa.

Within its first three weeks of release, the game sold over 2 million units worldwide and became the best-selling game of the franchise in the United Kingdom. As of December, 2009, Resident Evil 5 has sold 5.3 million copies worldwide since launch, becoming the best selling Resident Evil game ever made.

The Zotac GTX580 AMP! outperforms AMD's HD6970 by a considerable margin, averaging 27 fps more.

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 comparible throughout reviews.

We are beginning to see a pattern here, the GTX580 AMP! Edition is leading the way, behind the dual GPU cards.

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: 1920×1200, 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)

The overclocked card generates significantly more frames than the reference board, averaging 112, up from 98. All of the cards on test today are capable of handling these settings however, even right down to the lowly HD6850.

Mafia II is a gritty drama which chronicles the rise of World War II veteran Vito Scaletta, the son of Sicilian immigrants. As the game progresses, Vito will join the Falcone Crime Family and become a made man. There are 15 chapters in the game, connected into one storyline.

We tested at 2560×1600 with fullscreen: on, antialiasing:on , Anisotrophic filtering: 16x, Shadow Quality: High, Ambient Occlusion: on, Geometry Detail: High and APEX PhysX: medium.

This is an intensive game with physX enabled at this resolution, but the GTX580 AMP! Edition leads the performance pack, by a couple of frames per second.

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 which is also made by Capcom, taking place ten years after the events of the first game, on the same fictional planet. The story takes place back on E.D.N. III 10 years after the events of the first game. The snow has melted to reveal jungles and more tropical areas that have taken the place of more frozen regions. The plot begins with Mercenaries fighting against Jungle Pirates.

After destroying a mine, the Mercenaries continue on to evacuate the area, in which a Category-G Akrid appears and attacks them. After being rescued, they find out their evacuation point (Where the Category-G appeared) was a set-up and no pick up team awaited them. 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 in DX11 mode with all settings on the highest. Direct X 11 features are on high.

Lost Planet 2 is rather mundane title, but the Direct X 11 elements are a good test of modern hardware. nVidia hardware scores well with this engine, and we can see the GTX580 AMP! Edition is only 7 frames per second behind the dual GPU HD6990 at the slower bios setting.

Dead Space 2 is a survival horror third-person shooter. The player controls Isaac Clarke from a third-person point of view, looking over the character’s right shoulder. The game features no HUD elements, relying on holograms projected from the player character and his weapons to show information such as messages and ammunition count, respectively. Player health and stasis is shown by a visual indicators located on Isaac’s back. Isaac must fight an alien organism that infects and takes control of human corpses, turning them into “Necromorphs”, mutating their bodies.

Necromorphs must be dismembered as the alien organism controls host bodies via tentacles extending into their limbs. Other, larger types of Necromorphs that cannot be dismembered will often have yellow, glowing pustules, indicating weak spots. Occasionally, when an enemy gets close enough to Isaac, they will grab a hold of him, and the player must repeatedly press a key to fend off the enemy, with failure to do so leading to death of the player character.

A great game, with a very modest engine. Meaning any of the hardware in the above graph can handle it at high resolution with maximum settings. The AMP! card scores well, and slightly higher than the reference board.

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.

All settings are pushed to ultra with hardware shadows and SSAO enabled.

Decent performance from the GTX580 hardware, although it is significantly outclassed by the dual GPU cards.

Metro 2033 is an action-oriented video game with a combination of survival horror and first-person shooter elements. The game is based on the novel Metro 2033 by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky. It was developed by 4A Games in Ukraine and released in March 2010 for the Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows.

The game utilizes multi-platform 4A Engine, running on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Microsoft Windows. There is some contention regarding whether the engine is based on the pre-release X-Ray engine (as claimed by Sergiy Grygorovych, the founder of GSC Game World, as well as users who have seen the 4A Engine SDK screenshots, citing visual similarities, shared resources, and technical evaluation of the pre-release 4A Engine demo conducted at the request of GSC Game World), or whether the engine is an original development (as claimed by 4A Games and Oles’ Shiskovtsov in particular) who claims it would have been impractical to retrofit the X-ray engine with console support). The PC version includes exclusive features such as DirectX 11 support and has been described as “a love letter to PC gamers” because of the developers’ choice “to make the PC version [especially] phenomenal”.

Metro 2033 is a tough game to power at this resolution, although the GTX580 doesn't run into any problems, even at the reference clocks. The overclocked Zotac board generates a couple of extra frames per second which helps smooth out the more intensive sections.

Colin McRae: Dirt 2 (known as Dirt 2 outside Europe and stylised, DiRT) is a racing game released in September 2009, and is the sequel to Colin McRae: Dirt. This is the first game in the McRae series since McRae’s death in 2007. It was announced on 19 November 2008 and features Ken Block, Travis Pastrana, Tanner Foust, and Dave Mirra. The game includes many new race-events, including stadium events. Along with the player, an RV travels from one event to another, and serves as ‘headquarters’ for the player. It features a roster of contemporary off-road events, taking players to diverse and challenging real-world environments. The game takes place across four continents: Asia, Europe, Africa and North America. The game includes five different event types: Rally, Rallycross, ‘Trailblazer,’ ‘Land Rush’ and ‘Raid.’ The World Tour mode sees players competing in multi-car and solo races at new locations, and also includes a new multiplayer mode.

This engine support DX11 and was one of the integral releases for ATI when they launched the 5xxx series cards a while ago. Hardware tessellation is used on the crowd, as well as water and cloth objects. DirectCompute 11 accelerated high definition ambient occulsion is also integrated with full floating point high dynamic range lighting.

We are testing in full DX11 mode.

Colin McRae Dirt 2 is a fantastic looking game, even after all this time since it was launched. There is no problem at these settings, even for the GTX460 which is good to see. The GTX580 AMP! leads the performance charts at these settings.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky is a very eerie game. The Zone is a huge abandoned territory, with twenty-year-old dilapidated buildings, overgrown with forests and anomalous vegetation. It is a territory with deserted surface and underground research facilities, neglected military bases and testing grounds for new technologies. The radioactive land is covered with sores of burned out soil, poisonous fogs, and deadly gravitational anomalies. It is a world of a terrible anthropogenic disaster, and in the center of this hell sit the remains of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

The in-game Zone is a reconstruction of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and the 30-kilometer Exclusion Zone around it. Moving along the storyline, the player will visit such places as the Swamps, the Red Forest, the Limansk city and, of course, the sarcophagus of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Many in-game locations have real prototypes.

The GTX580 is a perfect card for STALKER at this resolution, managing to keep the frame rates above 30 at all times. The overclocked AMP! produces a couple of extra frames per second when directly compared to the reference card.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (also known as Bad Company 2 or BF: BC2) is a first-person shooter video game developed by the Swedish firm EA Digital Illusions CE and published by Electronic Arts for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 systems. It is a part of the Battlefield series and was released worldwide in March 2010.

The game is primarily a squad-level online first person shooter based in a contemporary modern warfare setting. Additionally, the game includes a single player campaign, where the player reassumes the role of Preston Marlowe, the protagonist of the original game. The game’s Frostbite 1.5 engine allows for destructible environments, and multiplayer maps contain a wide selection of vehicles, aircraft and emplacements and allow for five different game modes.

We are testing in full Direct X 11 mode.

An intense engine at higher resolutions, causing some problems for the lower end hardware on test today, even the HD6970 struggles a little at these settings, dropping to 24fps on one instance. The GTX580 delivers a smoother experience with a much higher minimum rate.

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.

The additional overclock from the Zotac AMP! card manages to push the performance past the dual GPU HD6990. Not often you will hear a reviewer saying that. Hawx 2 however is massively slanted towards nvidia hardware due to the intentional design.

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 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

Yep, identical results to our previous tests of this card with the same reference cooler.

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.

The new version of Furmark puts a considerable load on the GPU, and we get a maximum peak figure of 89c, with the fan spinning at 76%, around 3,200 rpm.

Return to ambient is a feature we have recently added to our reviews … we measure the time it takes for a solution to return to idle temperatures, immediately after full load. The faster the time, the better the cooler – for example a Noctua NH D14 cooler will return an Intel processor to idle temperatures much faster than a reference cooler. This is a good indication of how quickly a heatsink can dissipate heat.

The reference cooler isn't too bad, but it does take a fair amount of time for it to return the core to idle temperatures, around 30 seconds. We would expect this with a reference cooler however.

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.

This article is also worth a read if you own a GTX580 – GPUz can be used to disable power throttling.

With the current limiter disabled the card demands 322 watts running Furmark ‘burn in' test. When gaming it is a more modest 239 watts under load.

To overclock today, we used Rivatuner, which works well with the Zotac GTX580 AMP! Edition.

Our overclocking experience was fairly positive, achieving another 8.6% on the core clock, peaking at 880mhz. Memory overclocking was limited to around 15%, reaching 1180mhz. This helped the card to render another couple of frames per second in Lost Planet 2 and Metro 2033.

When KitGuru originally reviewed the GTX580, it earned our highest award, and deservedly so. It is the fastest single GPU card on the market, and that hasn't changed since it was released. The reference card was released around £420 and it delivered class leading performance with a pretty good standard cooling solution – it was the card the GTX480 should have been.

In the months since we last reviewed the reference sample, Asus released their GTX580 Direct CU II which is easily one of the best nVidia oriented graphics cards on the market – especially when factoring in the proprietary dual fan cooling solution. This monster card can be yours for £390, which in today's market is actually fantastic value for money.

The Zotac GTX 580 AMP! Edition is clocked higher than the Asus card, but the sample we received failed to manually overclock to the same levels. The biggest problem however has yet to come … the price.

Scan are selling the Zotac GTX 580! AMP Edition for £453 inc vat, £63 more than the Asus Direct CU II, which is supplied with a custom PCB and twin fan cooling system – the Zotac card is basically a reference card with a different bios setting. Things get worse as it is not only more expensive than the Asus GTX580 card, but it is £153 more expensive than the Asus HD 6970 Direct CU II. No matter what way I look at it, Zotac have the pricing very wrong, because even if they reduced the price by £60, the custom Asus GTX580 card offers better value for money.

While we love the GTX580, this particular AMP! Edition is pricing itself out of the market. If Zotac had given this the full AMP! treatment, complete with enhanced cooling and custom PCB then it might have made more sense.

Pros:

• GTX580 is Nvidia's finest hour
• great image quality
• good ‘out of the box' clocks

Cons:

• same old reference cooler
• price point is silly
• competition is offering better solutions for less money

KitGuru says: GTX580 rocks, but Zotac need to drop the price, significantly. Worth buying if you can find it at a lower price.

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