Critical.
Authoritative.
Strategic.
Subscribe to CIO Magazine »

Nvidia announces its fastest graphics card to date

Nvidia's next-generation GTX 580 GPU resolves heating and noise issue that plagued the GeForce GTX 480

Nvidia on Tuesday announced its next-generation graphics processing unit, the GeForce GTX 580, which the company said is its fastest-performing GPU to date.

The GTX 580 is the first product based on the new GF110 architecture. Depending on the application, it can be 20 percent to 35 percent faster than its predecessor, the GTX 480, said Justin Walker, GeForce product manager at Nvidia. The GTX 580 has 512 processing cores, while the GTX 480 had 480 cores.

The GPU is designed for enthusiasts such as gamers, Walker said. It will support DirectX 11, a set of tools for delivering realistic images and sound when playing games on Windows 7 PCs.

The company has re-engineered the chip at the transistor level to generate less heat and consume less power than its predecessor, Walker said. The GTX 480 attracted a lot of criticism for generating excess heat.

With the GTX 580, Nvidia has resolved the heating and noise issues that plagued the GTX 480, said Kelt Reeves, CEO of Falcon Northwest, which makes PCs for enthusiasts.

"[The GTX 480] was hot and loud, and putting two of them in a system cooked each other and everything else in the box," Reeves said.

The GTX 580 also provides a significant speed increase over the GTX 480, while reducing the noise level, Reeves said.

In benchmarks gathered by Falcon Northwest, two GTX 580s in a two-way SLI (scalable link interface) configuration outperformed three GTX 480s in a triple-SLI configuration. In SLI configurations, multiple graphics cards can be placed next to each other in a single system to boost graphics performance.

In trying to push performance, GPU makers are always concerned about excess heat dissipation and power consumption, said Dean McCarron, principal analyst at Mercury Research.

"It's normal for that segment of the market," McCarron said. GPU makers try to push performance in an effort to get an edge over the competition.

Nvidia competes with Advanced Micro Devices in the graphics market. However, the companies take different approaches to developing GPUs. Nvidia looks at how much performance can be delivered, while AMD favors lower power consumption over performance, McCarron said. The differing approaches have their own benefits and attract different buyers, McCarron said.

The GTX 580 will become available worldwide on Nov. 9. Graphics cards with the GTX 580 GPU will be available in retail starting at $499, according to an Nvidia spokesman.

Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.

More about: Advanced Micro Devices, Advanced Micro Devices, AMD, eForce, Mercury Interactive, Mercury Research, Nvidia, SLI-Consulting
References show all

Comments

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
Users posting comments agree to the CIO comments policy.
Login or register to link comments to your user profile, or you may also post a comment without being logged in.
Related Coverage
Related Whitepapers
Latest Stories
Community Comments
Tags: Components, Graphics boards, graphics cards, nvidia, processors
Latest Blog Posts
Whitepapers
  • Oracle Exadata - Extreme performance, lowest cost.
    As organizations contend with escalating demands for greater quantities of information, more sophisticated data analysis, and a burgeoning user population, Oracle Exadata makes database workloads faster, easier to manage, and less expensive. Oracle Exadata is the world’s first database machine to provide extreme performance for both data warehousing and online transaction processing (OLTP) applications. Read this whitepaper.
    Learn more »
  • Seven SOA Practices to Unlock Business Value
    The fact is that companies are increasingly using SOA to gain competitive business advantage. Distilled down to seven essential SOA practices, the following list enables IT professionals to tightly align SOA investments with their organization’s business priorities. Using these practices can help with driving competitive advantage and adding measurable business value...and that’s a sure way for IT pros to win recognition and ongoing support within their companies.
    Learn more »
  • Case Study: NZ Bus Develops Applications 60% Faster, Improves Database Performance by up to 35%
    Key Benefits: Developed applications 60% faster, Created development and test environments in minutes compared to days and weeks previously, Reduced server costs by 30% with server virtualisation, Saved NZ$40,000 in database administrator training costs, Provided high availability features that keep the database and core applications up and running in the event of a server failure, Introduced compression capabilities that improved database performance by 30% to 35%. Read on.
    Learn more »
All whitepapers
rhs_login_lockGet exclusive access to Invitation only events CIO, reports & analysis.
Recent comments