Verdict and Conclusion
When I first laid eyes on the Gigabyte GTX580 Super OverClock I was impressed. Now that I have actually tested it out I am even more impressed.
The cooler is fantastic, the performance is excellent, there really aren’t any down sides to speak of, unless you count the current retail price of $520 or so. On one hand that’s a lot of money, but on the other hand you’re getting the fastest single core card on the planet. That’s hard to argue with!
For extreme overclocking there is some software to be had (I can’t say where, sorry) that removes all the voltage limitations and really lets the card fly with Dry Ice or Liquid Nitrogen cooling.
For more normal overclocking the OC Guru software has everything you need, and more features than most cards allow you access to. The only down side is that the vcore is limited to 1.15v, less than some cards that allow 1.23v.
The card is fairly long, fitting it into a tight compact case is going to be a fairly good trick. Plus given that the cooler doesn’t force the hot air out the back of the case and the exposed mosfets on the rear of the card you need to have decent airflow anyway, something that tiny cases are not good at.
I would like to see a full sized HDMI port, but that would mean getting rid of one of the DVI ports and nvidia may simply require that there be two of them, I don’t know. Performance wise the card is excellent, much better than the slightly cheaper reference GTX580s.
All told I have absolutely no issue at all giving the Gigabyte GTX580 SuperOverClock a rating of 9.0/10 and a Recommended badge.
SCORE
9/10
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