Is my GTX 580 really pulling 72A?

[qubit]

How are you finding the card Qubit? Really, really having to stop myself from getting one on my credit card

Yeah, it really is the business, LOM. Just like my GTX 285 was two years ago - and it's still powerful today.

3D performance is really excellent with smooth frame rates at high rez and high Q settings on the latest games,* which is one half of the equation. The other half, is that the card is quiet for the performance it offers. It takes something like Unigine Heaven to really stress it out and then, while it does make significant noise, it's a wooshing white noise kind of sound, with no whine in it which is a factor of ten more pleasant and more tolerable than a quiet fan with a whine to it.

Prices for these are starting to drop now. Look on www.amazon.co.uk and enter "GTX 580" in the search bar (I'd give you a direct link, but the product listings seem to change daily) and you'll see that a regular Zotac 580 is about £350, while my Amp edition is about £385.

I'll bet if you can wait another two weeks to a month, the prices will drop significantly. The drop seemed to start with the launch of the GTX 590 and it's dodgy reviews.

The only real caveat besides the price, is to be sure that your PC can take the card, particularly the PSU and the case, which should be large and have really good airflow, or leave the side panel off.

*I've run Metro 2033 at high Q in DX11 at 1920x1200 and the frame rates are much smoother than you'd think from the reviews, maintaining a solid vsynced 60fps most of the time. At times the drop is actually caused by my CPU too, not the card.

 

[the54thvoid]

Yeah, I have to agree with Qubit. The 580 is worth the painful price but as he says, the price is coming down. Scan and OcUK have good prices and the Amp version is on Ebuyer for c350 quid.

The twin Frozr version is on OcUK on offer at about 360 right now

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-116-MS

I play BFBC2 most of the time and i run at 16 AF, 8+ MSAA (or whatever crazy setting it uses) with everything on high at 1920x1200. I use vsync to keep the gfx card running below 76 degrees and therefore, really quite quiet.

From here, with my case 50 cm from my head, i can't hear the fan idle.

Best card I've owned. Just wished I'd waited and got a non reference. But my card OC's to 850 stable on 1.088v so i can't complain

Buy one!

 

[qubit]

Re my original post, thanks for the clarification about the current and the power draw everybody, especially to cheesy999.

I ended up getting confused over which rail was chewing through 72A, which is why I got a bit nervous about it. I've now realized that VDDC is patently not the 12V rail, but the tiny 1V or so at the chip, so that current draw now makes sense. If there are three of those points, then I guess the chip could really be pulling 200A, which is just scary. 200 amps at any voltage is a lot. It causes lots of heat and stress and any weakness in the circuitry will be teased out by it and can make the thing go bang (think GTX 590 ). This will be why the 200A load will be spread over several power inputs, to reduce this extreme.

 

[Infinity9]

i think GPU-Z show Real Voltage and Wattage !

what are you thinking about this ?

lol Difference with msi ab 16 watt !
Difference with gpu-z 20watt !

and new test :

i think this is real wattage ! because power consumption is 223.5W