[McG]

Natural Born Winner: nVidia GeForce GTX 580

Nvidia claims in its marketing materials that the GeForce GTX 580 features higher energy efficiency compared to its predecessor and also had a lower TDP. The GeForce GTX 580 does not have a lower peak power draw in 3D applications compared to the previous flagship model. By the way, the result of 70 watts when playing HD video from a Blu-ray disc is not quite right. As the power consumption graph suggests, the card doesn't drop its clock rates immediately and this peak value is in the first part of the graph. The card's power consumption lowers in the video playback mode down to 30-35 watts after a while.

The GF110 may be indeed slimmer than its predecessor due to optimizations, but the difference may be something like "3.09 billion now against 3.15 billion before" and that would sound far more realistic than the loss of 200 million transistors at a time, the two GPUs having the same architecture and the same number of functional subunits. The structure of the new graphics core has remained intact.

The GeForce GTX 580 is a perfect offer for any gamer who can afford a $500 graphics card. It can’t become a bestseller for obvious reasons but it deservedly gets the title of the best premium-class product. We will see if it can hold it for long because the ATi Radeon HD 6900 series is already coming up!