GIGABYTE GV-N580SO-15I Pro Reviews

Gigabyte should be proud of its GTX 580 Super Overclock card as it is one of the last and best NVIDIA GF110 graphics cards on the market. Even though there are some other models like the ASUS MATRIX and EVGA Classified that are more impressive visually, the Gigabyte card gets almost the same things done but with a much more conservative looking design and specs. We know that the GeForce GTX 580 isn't going to be the top option from NVIDIA for long but in today's market, it is one of the best NVIDIA-based graphics cards options you can buy.

Gigabyte's GeForce GTX 580 SOC is a perfect example of what a high-end graphics card should be. At first glance, it may seem like the product is "hardcore" but somehow that just isn't accurate. The card is surprisingly practical, which is certainly not how we would describe most premium AMD or Nvidia GPUs. With the factory overclock enabled the card remained whisper quiet. When stress tested or when gaming, Gigabyte's card was barely audible over other components in the system such as the case fans, power supply and CPU cooler. Like most other high-end overclocked graphics cards, the GTX 580 SOC is quite long and consumes a lot of power. However, because it operates at very low temperatures and generates very little noise, those two negate the disadvantages in our opinion, and it's a tradeoff we think most enthusiasts would be content with.

For $535, Gigabyte provides the card with the highest factory overclock in our roundup. Along with that, you get a much quieter card than the reference design. At this highest setting, the Gigabyte board is so quiet, in fact, that it generates less noise than the reference cooler on Sparkle's X580 Captain at its stock speed. And it achieves all this while maintaining excellent temperatures at overclocked frequencies. For this reason, Gigabyte's Super Overclock card is a good choice for performance enthusiasts who want to run high fan speeds without excessive noise pollution, and aren't interested in a water-cooled setup.

Is it worth spending this kind of cash for a high end GPU? In our opinion, $540 may be a ton of money but it buys you a card which will last a long, long time before obsolescence comes knocking.

Gigabyte has produced yet another impressive addition to its award-winning Super Overclock range. The GTX 580 SOC is without a doubt the fastest single-GPU solution in our high-end line up, and the card's substantial out-the-box performance is supplemented by plenty of additional overclocking headroom. A new revision of the excellent WindForce 3X cooler keeps the cherry-picked GPU remarkably cool under load, and its trio of fans are suitably quiet, too. But there's a pretty hefty catch in the form of what's likely to be a £450-odd price tag. For that amount of money, a couple of mid-to-high-end graphics cards in SLI or CrossFire configurations will deliver greater performance at a lower cost. However, if it's single-GPU performance you're after, or a platform on which to set new overclocking records, they don't come much better than Gigabyte's GTX 580 Super Overclock.