8 Years Later: Does the GeForce GTX 580 Still Have Game in 2018?

[Julio Franco]

Today we're turning our clocks all the way back to November 2010 to revisit the once mighty GeForce GTX 580, a card that marked the transition from 55nm to 40nm for Nvidia's high-end GPUs and helped the company sweep its Fermi-based GeForce GTX 480 under the rug.

Read the full article here.

https://www.techspot.com/article/1565-geforce-gtx-580-eight-years-later/

 

[OcelotRex]

Great article. I think this reinforces what most agree to: Unless you have to pay for the latest and greatest the mid-range option offers better value when you upgrade every other generation or so compared to dropping the $500+ for the top of the line.

 

[QuantumPhysics]

I'm not sure what game has the highest Minimum CPU and GPU requirements (Help?)

I personally prefer overkill so that I can rebuild computers ever 3 years or so.

I just got an Alienware 17 laptop with the Core i77820 and GTX 1080. I can't imagine going any lower than a 980ti to run games in 1080p, but I'd rather use a 1080ti or above on my desktop which is why I bought a single Titan Xp before prices skyrocketed. Now a 1080ti costs more than my Titan Xp.

 

[EClyde]

You got an article out of this? Way to go.

 

[RCynic]

Keeping in mind modern vc prices and lack of a plot in a majority of mordern titles, is there a chance you'll test modern low-budget cards in older titles? like farcry2-3, FEAR, and/or any of stalkerz? ty

 

[MarkHughes]

Is it supposed to say "lower is better" on the graphs ? or should it be Higher ?

 

[Cycloid Torus]

Based on my local electrical charges, I would spend about $0.50 USD more per day for my average evening of game play. So a $50 used GTX 580 card would cost me an additional $150 per year in energy when compared to the GTX 1050. I think I would pick the $125 card.

Your rates may vary.

 

[fps4ever]

They do make 580 3GB cards. Wonder how much that would make a difference? Of course then you are probably getting into 680 pricing then.

 

[Evernessince]

Great article. I think this reinforces what most agree to: Unless you have to pay for the latest and greatest the mid-range option offers better value when you upgrade every other generation or so compared to dropping the $500+ for the top of the line.

That is unless you buy AMD. The sad part here is that the GTX 580 was going against the 7970 yet here it's beaten by the 7950 in both performance and power consumption by a wide margin. AMD cards just typically have a longer life span and are better for people who want to keep one card over a long time. That's probably why I have a 1080 Ti, because I'll upgrade every generation.

Is it supposed to say "lower is better" on the graphs ? or should it be Higher ?

Nice catch. It is supposed to say Higher is better on every graph except the power consumption one. After all, more FPS is always better.

 

[GeforcerFX]

Based on my local electrical charges, I would spend about $0.50 USD more per day for my average evening of game play. So a $50 used GTX 580 card would cost me an additional $150 per year in energy when compared to the GTX 1050. I think I would pick the $125 card.

Your rates may vary.

What the heck do you pay per kilowatt? For this card to cost me $0.50 in a night is impossible, I would have to run it maxed for 20-24 hours, that's close to my weekly gaming time.

 

[GeforcerFX]

I still run fermi, but mine are 1/4 to 1/5 that GPU

 

[Cycloid Torus]

What the heck do you pay per kilowatt? For this card to cost me $0.50 in a night is impossible, I would have to run it maxed for 20-24 hours, that's close to my weekly gaming time.

A lot more than you do, I guess. To run the system with the 580 would cost me more than $2.50 @ day. The power itself is about $0.14, but I also count the 9 other fees (transmission, distribution, government this, government that, official bypass, unofficial bypass, nuclear decommissioning, etc) - I think there is even a fee for making up the fees.

 

[hahahanoobs]

Great article. I think this reinforces what most agree to: Unless you have to pay for the latest and greatest the mid-range option offers better value when you upgrade every other generation or so compared to dropping the $500+ for the top of the line.

That is unless you buy AMD. The sad part here is that the GTX 580 was going against the 7970 yet here it's beaten by the 7950 in both performance and power consumption by a wide margin. AMD cards just typically have a longer life span and are better for people who want to keep one card over a long time. That's probably why I have a 1080 Ti, because I'll upgrade every generation.

The real sad part is when you buy AMD cards, you're waiting sometimes months for proper drivers from launch. If anything, it makes more sense to buy used AMD cards after drivers have topped out performance for said card.

 

[OcelotRex]

That is unless you buy AMD. The sad part here is that the GTX 580 was going against the 7970 yet here it's beaten by the 7950 in both performance and power consumption by a wide margin. AMD cards just typically have a longer life span and are better for people who want to keep one card over a long time. That's probably why I have a 1080 Ti, because I'll upgrade every generation.

I'd like to see the topic explored to a greater depth but I imagine AMD and Nvidia have both had cards hard to give up at the 24 month mark. By 36 months usually 2 generations have passed and it's time no matter which midrange card you own.

 

[Evernessince]

The real sad part is when you buy AMD cards, you're waiting sometimes months for proper drivers from launch. If anything, it makes more sense to buy used AMD cards after drivers have topped out performance for said card.

As of recent that's definitely true. The 7970 was a pretty good card when it came out though. The only driver issue I remember was screen flickering when running two displays.

 

[cliffordcooley]

I'm still happy with my GTX 660.

 

[hahahanoobs]

As of recent that's definitely true. The 7970 was a pretty good card when it came out though. The only driver issue I remember was screen flickering when running two displays.

AMD has released many great cards, and flickering has plagued them for years. You'll still constantly see it as an issue in driver changelogs. I remember flickering so bad when using two 6950's to run Crysis 2 and BFBC2 after BF3 was already out. Let's just say I was very disappointed.

 

[Axiarus]

Why does everyone reference the 1.5gb version of the 580 and not the 3gb version?

 

[Steve]

Why does everyone reference the 1.5gb version of the 580 and not the 3gb version?

Because the vast majority of models sold packed 1.5 GB's of VRAM. The 3GB models came later and at the time they made no sense, it was a reasonably large additional cost for no performance gain. It wasn't until about 4 years later that the 3GB models started to make sense. At which point owners of the 1.5 GB models had well and truly moved on.

 

[Boilerhog146]

Good stuff Steve.
My SLI GTX 480's still rock.WOT is about the newest game I play on that rig.power consumption is the only issue.though we can just build a few more coal fired boilers.and turn off the electric heat.bring the carbon capture tech already, create some jobs.and help save the environment,I know,MY BAD. dirty old Boilermaker.lol.
though with all the crypto mining going on these days,doesn't seem too many are concerned about the environment,Economy is #1 .in Canada and the U.S. anyway.

 

[Cryio]

That is unless you buy AMD. The sad part here is that the GTX 580 was going against the 7970 yet here it's beaten by the 7950 in both performance and power consumption by a wide margin.

Lol what?
The 580 was going against the HD 6970 (and it did beat it, most of the time anyway) and if we're talking about AMD's newer tech, HD 7870 absolutely destroyed the GTX 580, lol. The HD 7970 was twice as fast as the 6970 and today it's probably more than twice faster, also more than twice faster than the 580 as well probably. The 7970 these days is smacking the GTX 780 around.

 

[cliffordcooley]

Cliffordcooley couldn't have said it better his self, oh wait he did.

 

[captaincranky]

Good one! (y)

 

[GeforcerFX]

So just to get some dates in there for the whole this card competed against this card crap. HD 5870 was launch in Sept 2009, the GTX 480 launched in March 2010, these were both companies first dx11 architectures. The HD 6970 launched Dec 2010, the GTX 580 launched Nov 2010, this puts there second gen refreshed gpus in close competition for launch time. The HD 7970 launched Jan 2012, the GTX 680 launched march 2012.

The closest competitor the GTX 580 had from AMD at launch was the HD 6970, they were pretty close in performance, Nvidia could pull higher frames from certain games over AMD but did so with an additional 75-100 watts of power, the 6970 tended to overclock better as well. The HD 6970 got a driver improvement through 2011 that closed the performance gap (AMD has a tendency to do this), it was always more power efficient. In today's world the Fermi architecture wins (in the sense of whether you should buy it used or not) simply because nvidia still supports it with drivers, the HD5xxx and HD6xxx gens lost driver support at the end of 2015/early 2016.

 

[sliderider]

They do make 580 3GB cards. Wonder how much that would make a difference? Of course then you are probably getting into 680 pricing then.

It wouldn't matter. There is an excellent video on YouTube comparing the 1050ti to the 680 and the 1050ti matches or exceeds the performance of the 680 across all the games tested. With a less advanced gpu, the 580 would still be slower than the 1050ti even with 3gb of memory on board.