Nvidia Finally Gets It Right

[txnetcop]

Well for about 20 months now I have switched from ATI RADEON to Nvidia video cards simply because it handles jaggies in FSX so much better especially in the VC...but ATI 5870/5970 was always kicking it's rear end when compared to the GTX480 in speed and other gameplay. There is more to life tan just Fs9 or FSX. When the 6800 series came out I was deeply concerned for Nvidia's staying power...I need not have worried. The new King of the Hill is the GTX580 for performance, though still a bit power hungry. It is now the fastest single GPU available today. Of course, you know that will change again in a few months, right?

Everyone who has talked to me knows that I was no blind fan of the GTX470 and GTX480. There too many driver issues and for the money it just didn't produce what the 5800 and 6800 series ATI did. That does not mean the GTX470/480 was a bad video card...in fact it was innovative to say the least. However I found that the 460(256 bit interface only) and 465 OC were a great buy and could really play just about any game as good as the 5800 series video cards and even excelled over a few.

The GTX580 is a not just a remake or redux of the GTX480 with better transistor handing when it comes to instruction set and GPU/CPU interface. For the 580GTX to be a real success it had to be more than marginally faster than the GTX480 and ATI 6800 series video cards...IT IS! It's not just a GTX480 on steroids. It really is a different animal and most all of the review sites agree the Nvidia finally got it right. This is the FERMI they should have released 7 or 8 months ago!
Check out the reviews for yourself:

GeForce GTX 580
@ HardwareHeaven (http://www.hardwareheaven.com/reviews/1061/pg1/gigabyte-nvidia-geforce-gtx-580-sli-review-introduction.html)
@ Bjorn3D (http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=1950)
@ Legit Reviews
(http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1461/1/) @ Benchmark Reviews
(http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=614&Itemid=72) @ Hardware Canucks
(http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/37789-nvidia-geforce-gtx-580-review.html) @ Neoseeker
(http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/nvidia_gtx_580/) @ OCC
(http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/nvidia_gtx580/) @ MadBoxPC
(http://www.madboxpc.com/review-nvidia-geforce-gtx-580/) @ t-break
(http://tbreak.com/tech/2010/11/zotac-geforce-gtx-580-review/)
Congratulations Nvidia for a successful King of the Hill in all arenas...and I hope ATI kicks you in the rear end with their next series just so Nvidia will stay competitive!
Ted

[Bone]

I have a question about the memory on vid cards. When you load/start FSX, does it use the vid card memory first once the sim starts running, and then when additional memory is needed the MoBo memory comes into play, or is it the other way around?

[txnetcop]

I have a question about the memory on vid cards. When you load/start FSX, does it use the vid card memory first once the sim starts running, and then when additional memory is needed the MoBo memory comes into play, or is it the other way around?

The software draws on what it needs or you can artificially designate it yourself in your game cfg. There are many workarounds when it comes to GPU memory usage. The neat part about he 580 boards is the 384 bit interface which is one heck of a data freeway in gaming.
Ted