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Point of View / TGT GTX 580 3GB Ultra Charged review

by on03 August 2011

Index

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Review: Overkill or just what the doctor ordered?


Point of View / TGT GTX 580 3GB Ultra Charged is specially designed high performance graphics card for enthusiast who like to play games at very high quality settings and resolutions (above 1920) with the highest antialiasing allowed.

Just to refresh your memory – reference Geforce GTX 580 cards come with 1.5GB of memory, which disappointed many enthusiasts. Naturally, whether average users need more than 1.5GB on a GTX 580 is debatable. Most apps and games don't really need massive video buffers but the fact that several Nvidia's partners have launched 3GB versions shows that there indeed is demand for such cards.

Point of View not only doubled the memory capacity of GTX 580 but tapped into TGT overclocking team's experience as well. The result is the fastest GTX 580 3GB card on the market. The core ticks at 841MHz (reference clock is 772MHz) and the memory was overclocked from 4008MHz to 4104MHz.

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Such high clocks mean increased temperatures as well and we expected to see PoV/TGT strapping the card with some kind of special cooling. However, once we opened the box we saw Nvidia's reference cooler.

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That's not to say that reference cooling doesn't do a good job on reference GTX 580 cards; it works great but gets quite loud at higher overclocks. We'll soon see whether it can handle PoV/TGT GTX 580 3GB Ultra Charged.

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The card is powered via one 6-pin and one 8-pin connector.

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Video outs are standard as well – two dual-link DVIs and one mini-HDMI (mini-HDMI-to-HDMI dongle is included). Air outlets above the video outs are wider than usual in order to let hot air out.

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The following photo shows that memory modules are all on the GPU side of the PCB. There are 12 memory modules in total, just like on reference cards. However, instead of using 128MB modules with 32x32 array design, the company used 256MB modules with a denser 64x32 internal layout.

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Last modified on 03 August 2011
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