KFA2 GTX570 1280MB Review

👤by Richard Weatherstone Comments 📅19-10-11
Test Setup
We have recently made a slight amendment to our selection of hardware and our test setup. The reason for this is that we felt the current crop of resolutions were not stressing the latest generation of graphics cards enough. With this in mind, we have added a Dell 3007 WFP-HC to our system, allowing us to stress the cards by utilising a 2560x1600 resolution. We will however, still include 1920x1200 results as this is one of the most popular resolutions used by gamers.


Display - Dell 3007 WFP-HC
Case - Corsair 650D
CPU Cooler - Corsair H100
CPU - Intel Core i7 920 @ 4GHz
RAM - 6GB (3x2GB) Kingston DDR3 1600mhz 8-8-8-20 C1
Motherboard - ASUS Rampage III Extreme
Power Supply -Antec High Current Pro 1200W
Hard Drive - GSkill Falcon 128GB & Hitachi 250GB


Please note: PSU requirements
While a 550w PSU is recommended by MSI for a single card configuration I feel it is important to stress the need to use a quality PSU. All to often we are contacted by people encountering difficulties in powering and overclocking high spec systems who insist they are using a high wattage PSU. Do not be fooled by inferior, poor quality power supply units that claim high wattage figures. At best a poor PSU will not be able to maintain those values and perhaps more importantly could potentially be a fire hazard! PSU rail stability can have a dramatic effect on overclocking too so while it may appear that the component is at fault, it could very easily be the PSU that has high amounts of ripple which is causing the hardware/overclocking errors.



A PSU is the single most important component in a modern high powered PC. If you are going to spend money in any area of your PC, the PSU should be considered first as a quality sample will likely out last any other aspect of your PC and thus investment in a good example is a very wise decision. For this reason ANTEC have kindly sponsored our test bed by providing the immense, top quality High Current Pro 1200W PSU which will satisfy even the most power hungry of PC configurations! PSU's of this calibre are at the very top of the performance hierachy and while they may seem expensive compared to inferior quality PSUs, they are worth their weight in gold as a PSU such as the ANTEC High Current Pro 1200W provides both future proofing and perhaps most importantly, piece of mind that your valuable PC components are in safe hands.

Graphics Cards:
KFA2 GTX570 1280MB - Forceware 280.26

MSI GTX570 1280MB Power Edition OC - Forceware 280.26 - **NOTE - New Driver Installed**
ZOTAC GTX580 3GB AMP2! + SLI - Forceware 275.33
GIGABYTE GTX570 1280MB 'SOC' Edition - Forceware 275.33
ZOTAC GTX560 1GB AMP! Edition 950/4200MHz - Forceware 275.33
SLI NVIDIA GTX560 1GB 950/4200MHz - Forceware 275.33
HIS HD6970 2GB IceQ Mix@ 880/5500MHz - ATI Catalyst 11.5
Lucid HydraLogix = HIS HD6970 2GB IceQ Mix & MSI nGTX580 3072MB Lightning Xtreme Edition @ Factory clockspeeds
MSI nGTX580 3072MB Lightning Xtreme Edition @832/4200MHz & 975/4400MHz Overclocked - Forceware 275.33
ASUS HD6990 @830/5000MHz & AWSUM enabled (pre-overclocked) 880/5500MHz & Further Overclock of 930/6000MHz - ATI Catalyst 11.5
HIS HD6970 2048MB IceQ Turbo @ 900/5600MHz Pre-overclocked & 1000/6000MHz Overclocked – ATI Catalyst 11.5
Gigabyte GTX560 1024MB @ 830/4008MHz & 841/5016MHz Overclocked - Forceware 275.27
MSI R6970 2048MB Lightning @ 940/5500MHz Pre-overclocked & 1010/6000MHz Overclocked – ATI Catalyst 11.4 (8.840.3.0)
Inno3D GTX560Ti 1024MB @ 820/4008MHz & 950/4300MHz Pre-overclocked –Forceware 266.66
Inno3D GTX570 1280MB @ 732/3800MHz, 800/4000MHz Pre-overclocked & 901/4220MHz Overclocked - Forceware 263.09
ASUS GTX580 1536MB @ 782/4000MHz & 903/4220MHz Overclocked - Forceware 262.99
ASUS HD6970 2048MB @ 890/5500MHz & 949/5896MHz Overclocked - ATI Catalyst 11.4 (8.840.3.0)

Driver versions are extremely important when comparing a graphics card. It is however often important to update a driver version, especially when a new GPU is released and thus any change in driver will be clearly stated.

Overclocking
For today's review we will use the Afterburner utility from the MSI to overclock the test subject.

Games:
Crysis Warhead
Metro 2033
Dirt 3
Mafia II
Battlefield: Bad Company 2
Far Cry 2
Alien vs. Predator

The games above represent equal bias toward both AMD and NVidia and are among the most demanding games available at present. Future releases will be evaluated for consistency and accuracy and then potentially added to the list when they become available

Synthetic benchmarks:
Futuremark 3DMark 11
Unigine Heaven 2.5
Tessmark 0.2.2
Furmark 1.9.0

Synthetic benchmarks are used to stress each feature of a GPU which may not be present in today's games. While nothing is certain, the benchmarks above do at least give us an insight into the possible future performance of the graphics card on test, invaluable when evaluating the potential lifespan of a graphics card.

Temperature, power consumption and acoustics:
Furmark 1.9.0

The above application is feared by most manufacturers as it has been known to destroy GPU's. While it is not indicative of 'real world' performance, it does represent the maximum possible stress your GPU could be placed under making it the hardest test to pass. For that reason alone, it is worthy of inclusion in our suite of benchmarks. Power consumption will be evaluated from the wall and will be a total system draw of the specification above.

Sound will be measured from a distance of 20 cm from the actual GPU with the case open. All system fans will be set to their lowest settings. Readings will be taken at both idle and 100% load.

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