Acoustics
Often overlooked when purchasing a graphics card is the noise that it emits. We all hear (no pun intended) of graphics cards that run like a jet engine which can have a detrimental effect on a gaming session, regardless of the FPS it churns out. It is therefore extremely important that a graphics card should operate as quietly as possible.
To test for this we will be using a sound meter and microphone setup which will be placed 20cm away from the GPU. The test will take place in a quiet (not sound proof) room with the results for the GPU fan at low (30%) and highest (100%) settings.
Results
I am pleased to report that unlike it's smaller sibling, the GTX560 AMP!, the GTX580 3GB AMP2! cooler is very quiet, even when running at 100%. We held our previous best cooler, the WindForce by GIGABYTE in very high regard but this cards ZALMAN cooler edges the WindForce cooler out by a small but significant margin, especially when you consider the additional heatload generated by the ZOTAC GTX580 compared to the GIGABYTE GTX560. So the cooler not only cools very well in does so with very little noise.
Power Consumption
For this test, we will be using a wall meter with the test setup plugged in minus the Monitor. Readings were taken at both stock and overclocked conditions each having readings also taken in idle and 100% load (Furmark). FurMark is perhaps not indicative of a true gaming environment and indeed is not recommended by NVIDIA or AMD to test stability of a card but in my view, much like Prime95 for CPU's, it puts the graphics card under the highest possible stress and presents a good 'worst case' scenario. So while it is unlikely your card will ever be stressed as much under normal conditions, it is a good indicator of a theoretical maximum.
Results
Unsurprisingly, the ZOTAC GTX580 3GB AMP2! consumed a little less power than it's nearest compititor, the MSI GTX580 XE given that its overclocked clockspeeds were slightly lower. The results fell directly between the MSI cards stock and overclocked settings which is precisely where I would expect it to be given that the overclocked clockspeeds were between the stock and overclocked settings of the MSI card.
Let's get to the meat of the review now as we evaluate the ZOTAC GTX580 3GB AMP2!'s performance...
Often overlooked when purchasing a graphics card is the noise that it emits. We all hear (no pun intended) of graphics cards that run like a jet engine which can have a detrimental effect on a gaming session, regardless of the FPS it churns out. It is therefore extremely important that a graphics card should operate as quietly as possible.
To test for this we will be using a sound meter and microphone setup which will be placed 20cm away from the GPU. The test will take place in a quiet (not sound proof) room with the results for the GPU fan at low (30%) and highest (100%) settings.
Results
I am pleased to report that unlike it's smaller sibling, the GTX560 AMP!, the GTX580 3GB AMP2! cooler is very quiet, even when running at 100%. We held our previous best cooler, the WindForce by GIGABYTE in very high regard but this cards ZALMAN cooler edges the WindForce cooler out by a small but significant margin, especially when you consider the additional heatload generated by the ZOTAC GTX580 compared to the GIGABYTE GTX560. So the cooler not only cools very well in does so with very little noise.
Power Consumption
For this test, we will be using a wall meter with the test setup plugged in minus the Monitor. Readings were taken at both stock and overclocked conditions each having readings also taken in idle and 100% load (Furmark). FurMark is perhaps not indicative of a true gaming environment and indeed is not recommended by NVIDIA or AMD to test stability of a card but in my view, much like Prime95 for CPU's, it puts the graphics card under the highest possible stress and presents a good 'worst case' scenario. So while it is unlikely your card will ever be stressed as much under normal conditions, it is a good indicator of a theoretical maximum.
Results
Unsurprisingly, the ZOTAC GTX580 3GB AMP2! consumed a little less power than it's nearest compititor, the MSI GTX580 XE given that its overclocked clockspeeds were slightly lower. The results fell directly between the MSI cards stock and overclocked settings which is precisely where I would expect it to be given that the overclocked clockspeeds were between the stock and overclocked settings of the MSI card.
Let's get to the meat of the review now as we evaluate the ZOTAC GTX580 3GB AMP2!'s performance...
