Factory overclocked GTX 580 cards are on the rise but many Nvidia partners still haven’t launched their fastest cards. Point of View / TGT announced the GTX 580 Ultra Charged, which is our today’s guest, but we must admit we’re still anxious to see the faster, Beast Edition. Although GTX 580 gave Nvidia the single-GPU graphics throne, the fight is far from over, especially since AMD plans its single-GPU, Cayman-based HD 6970 for the next month.
GTX 580 Ultra Charged is factory overclocked to 841MHz for the GPU and 1026MHz (effectively 4104MHz) for the memory. In comparison, reference GTX 580 cards run at 772MHz while the shaders run at twice that - 1544MHz. The reference clock for the 1.5GB of GDDR5 memory is 1002MHz and the memory is paired up with a 384-bit bus.
Geforce GTX 580 is based on a “new” and improved GF100 (GTX 480) chip that now bears the GF110 moniker and it has 512 shaders and all eight clusters turned on, the same number that was possible on a fully enabled GF100 chip.
Point of View / TGT chose to stick with reference cooling for their GTX 580 Ultra Charged, but as you already know this cooler comes with the quite popular vapor chamber. Unlike the GTX 480, the new Nvidia card is much better when it comes to thermals and noise. The TDP is somewhat lower compared to the GTX 480 as the chip was slightly tweaked and the board has better power management. The novelty here is the clock speed throttling logic which reduces clock speeds when an extremely demanding 3D application such as Furmark or OCCT is run. Additionally, the power current regulation circuits regulate the speed of the fan with more precision than before.
With an average selling price of €440 for the cards based on reference speed and listings going all the way to €499, we cannot say it’s really a bargain. GTX 580 Ultra Charged clocks are pretty high compared to the reference ones but so is the price – it’s priced at €520. However, you should know that Point of View / TGT sweetened this deal with a gift game - Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands.