The GTX570 is a truly fantastic product. Nvidia has succeeded in achieving what they set out to fix on the GF110 core and the result is a high performance graphics card with low thermals, power consumption and noise levels. Its closest competitors on the market today are the GTX480, at significantly reduced pricing to reflect its EOL status, and the AMD HD6970. In both cases, the GTX570 does a great job out competing both despite the fact that on paper; the latter has much lower memory bandwidth, a lower framebuffer and shares a lot in common with its GTX470 predecessor. It highlights the tweaks that Nvidia has done to the GPU internally to allow it to match other cards with slightly higher specifications.

If we first take a look at the comparison between the GTX570 and the GTX480, we can observe the subtle difference that has given the GTX570 the advantage. Overall, the reference clocked GTX570 was a mere 1% ahead of the GTX480, a significant victory given the other advantages of the GF110 core. It is important to note that in many cases, the GTX480 does end up the superior card thanks to its larger framebuffer. In games reliant on the on-board memory such as Metro2033, Resident Evil 5 and Unreal Tournament 3, the GTX480 manages to claim a win over the reference GTX570. In other situations, the use of AA closes the performance margin between the two cards, often allowing the GTX480 to leap ahead of its cousin. Far Cry 2, Crysis Warhead and Battlefield Bad Company 2 are some of the examples where this is the case. However, the sheer speed of the GTX570 gives it the overall lead at resolutions 1920x1200 and below. Inno3D’s card has been overclocked to alleviate some of its memory deficiency and the result is a card that is approximately 7.4% ahead of the GTX480. It can be argued that the GTX480 can also be overclocked but looking at both graphics cards overclocked to their maximum reveals the same trend. The performance gap is reduced to 6.2% but Inno3D’s card still stays ahead.



Nvidia’s battle against AMD on our battleground reveals Nvidia to be the victor. The reference Nvidia GTX570 manages to take a 3% lead over its main rival, the HD6970. Taking a closer look at all the games, it becomes clear that although the GTX570 is the better card overall, the 2GB framebuffer on the HD6970 allows it to close performance gaps in most games. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the framebuffer advantage is enough to beat the GTX570 outright, thanks to the raw power of the Nvidia card. Crysis Warhead, Metro2033, Battlefield Bad Company 2, Mafia with AA on and 3DMark are some of the instances where the GTX570 loses out. Thankfully, Inno3D addresses the issue by overclocking this particular card out of the box. Looking at overclocked results, AMD simply can’t compete with the sheer headroom available on the GF110 core and the HD6970 loses by a staggering 13% in overall performance.

Inno3D have done an excellent job with their GTX570. It boasts one of the highest pre-overclocks out of the box compared to other vendors and they have decided to stick with the mightily good vapour chamber cooler to avoid added expenses. Unfortunately, we don’t have the pricing information for the overclocked model but the reference card, which will be no doubt capable of such speeds, can be obtained for £279.99. The price is very competitive against the HD6970 and my personal choice out of the two would be Nvidia’s card for it raw performance, low power consumption, thermal performance and overclockability. For the 6-7% difference between the GTX570 and GTX580, it also represents much better value for money. Another viable option is to get the HD6950 at a lower price point and unlocking it to HD6970 levels. The only complaint I have with the Inno3D card is the instability produced by their overclock but a small voltage increase was all that was needed to alleviate the problem. Overall, it’s a worthy replacement to the GTX480.



Inno3D’s GTX570 rightly deserves the Vortez Silver Award. Had they addressed the stability issue, it would have received the Gold Award.