Manufacturer: EVGA
Product Name: GTX 580 Classified
Model Number: 03G-P3-1588
Price As Tested: $599.99 at Newegg

Full Disclosure: The product sample used in this article has been provided by EVGA.

The EVGA GTX 580 Classified is one of the most powerful single card solutions on the market. With a 14+3 VRM design, a new cooler and the Classified logo many users want to know "How far can the EVGA GTX 580 Classified go?" Benchmark Reviews is here to answer this question armed with the Beta EVTUNE software to allow us to really push the voltage and is yearning to see how far this card can go. So please join us as Benchmark Reviews overclocks and benchmarks the EVGA GTX 580 Classified.

When NVIDIA introduced the Fermi architecture in April 2010 with the GF104 and the GTX 480 it ran hot, and was very power hungry. Fast forward to November 2010 and NVIDIA is releasing the GTX 580 using the GF110 which uses the same Fermi architecture but now has access to all 16 streaming multiprocessors while at the same time bringing down power consumption and more importantly giving off less heat. Since then many radical designs have been released to help further control heat output but few have been designed from the ground up to set overclocking records.

This is where EVGA comes in with its Classified line for its GTX 580 which was built from the ground up for extreme overclocking using LN2and Liquid Helium Cooling. EVGA included a 14+3 VRM design, 2 x 8 + 1 x 6 power inputs, a second BIOS developed to deal with the Fermi cold bug, an 8 cm blower fan, and a somewhat redesigned heatsink. To top it off EVGA has also added a generous 73MHz overclock to the core clock bringing the core clock on the Classified to 855Mhz.

Since this is a top of the top of the line card we will only be using the most powerful of benchmarks. With a majority of upcoming titles being designed to take advantage of the DX11 APIs, Benchmark Reviews will focus on only the most powerful of DX11 benchmarks both synthetic and real world.

EVGA GTX 580 Classified Features :

• Microsoft DirectX 11 Support
• NVIDIA CUDA Technology with CUDA C/C+, DirectComputer 5.0 and OpenCL Support
• NVIDIA PhysX Technology
• NVIDIA PureVideo HD Technology
• NVIDIA 2-way, 3-way, and 4-way SLI Ready
• NVIDIA 3D Vision Surround Ready
• PCI Express 2.0 Support
• Two Dual-Link DVI-I HDCP Capable Connectors
• One EVBot Connector
• OpenGL 4.1 Support.

GTX 580 Classified Specifications :

• Core Clock: 855Mhz
• Memory Clock 4212 Mhz Effective
• Sharder Clock: 1710 Mhz
• CUDA Cores: 512
• Bus Type: PCI-E 2.0
• Memory Detail: 3072MB GDDR5
• Memory Bit Width: 384 Bit
• Memory Speed: 0.4 ns
• Memory Bandwidth: 202.1GB/sec
• Texture Fill Rate: 54.7GT

Overclocking Methodology

The Microsoft DirectX-11 graphics API is native to the Microsoft Windows 7 Operating System, and will be the primary O/S for our test platform. DX11 is also available as a Microsoft Update for the Windows Vista O/S, so our test results apply to both versions of the Operating System. The majority of benchmark tests used in this article are comparative to DX11 performance, however some high-demand DX10 tests have also been included.

According to the Steam Hardware Survey published for the month ending May 2010, the most popular gaming resolution is 1280x1024 (17-19" standard LCD monitors). However, because this 1.31MP resolution is considered 'low' by most standards, our benchmark performance tests concentrate on higher-demand resolutions: 1.76MP 1680x1050 (22-24" widescreen LCD) and 2.30MP 1920x1200 (24-28" widescreen LCD monitors). These resolutions are more likely to be used by high-end graphics solutions, such as those tested in this article.

In each benchmark test there is one 'cache run' that is conducted, followed by five recorded test runs. Results are collected at each setting with the highest and lowest results discarded. The remaining three results are averaged, and displayed in the performance charts on the following pages.

In order to get the highest stable overclock, my preferred method is to slowly increase the core clock speed by 10MHz and make five runs through our Crysis 2 benchmark. This creates enough stress to quickly discern if the overclock is stable, and if so I continue increasing the overclock by another 10MHz until NVIDIA's Forceware driver's crash. From that point I fine tune my overclock to get the most stability out of the system.

EVGA GeForce GTX 580 Tested

After much deliberation I finally settled on 940MHz at 1.3v as the highest fully stable overclock that I could attain. Although this voltage is high for the speeds reached the Classified was designed to handle the higher voltages that are needed for record breaking speeds attained using extreme cooling solutions such as LN2 and Liquid Helium .

It should be noted that since no software will correctly advertise the voltage being used by the Classified I used a multimeter to attain the actual voltage of the Classified while overclocking.

Intel P67 Test System

• Motherboard: MSI P67-GD65
• System Memory: 4 x 4GB 1866Mhz 9-10-9-28 1.65v
• Processor: Core i5 2500k 3.3Ghz @ 4.7Ghz
• Audio: Creative X-fi Titanium Fatal1ty
• Video: ASUS GTX 580
• Disk Drive 1: Patriot Inferno 60GB
• Disk Drive 2: 2 x 1TB Seagate 7200RPM RAID 0 Array
• Disk Drive 3: 1 x 500GB Seagate 7200RPM
• Optical Drive: DVD Burner
• Enclosure: Silverstone Raven RV02-EW
• PSU: Cooler Master SilentPro 1000w
• Monitor: ASUS 27.5" 1920x1200
• Operating System: Windows 7 64-bit Professional

DirectX-11 Benchmark Applications

• 3dMark 2011
• Crysis 2 | Ultra Settings (Ultra Quality, 4x AA, DX11, Edge Blur, Hi Resolution Textures)
• Aliens vs Predator | Extreme Settings: (Very High Quality, 4x AA, 16x AF, SSAO, Tessellation, Advanced Shadows)
• BattleForge v1.2 | Extreme Settings: (Very High Quality, 8x Anti-Aliasing, Auto Multi-Thread)
• Lost Planet 2 | Extreme Settings: (16x AA, Very High Shadow Detail, High Texture, High Render, High DirectX 11 Features)
• Unigine Heaven Benchmark 2.5 | Extreme Settings: (High Quality, Exteme Tessellation, 16x AF, 8x AA)