ASUS MATRIX GeForce GTX 580 1536MB Platinum OC'ed Video Card Review

Introduction

Over the last few months we've seen MSI do some wonderful things to the GTX 580, releasing the model into its Lightning series and then during Computex re-releasing the GTX 580 in 3GB form also under the Lightning series; but in this case it was the Lightning Xtreme Edition. Someone else has done something with the GTX 580, but I can't really remember who; it's probably got something to do with the fact we haven't seen it.

Anyway, the latest company to go all out with the model is ASUS with it getting the ROG MATRIX treatment. Imagine a facial with an electric sander to make everything smooth. It's big, it's fat, it's got lots of extra buttons and it looks powerful. Today we intend to find out if it performs as good as it looks, because oh does it looks good.

We'll start off today by looking at the package ASUS has put together. Once that's done we'll take a close look at the card and see some of the features it offers us when compared to other GTX 580s. We'll then get into the specifications side of things and cover overclocking, as we'll be testing the card overclocked today.

Once we've done all that, we'll take a quick look at our testbed before we then get stuck into the performance side of things to see just what kind of power this GTX 580 is able to offer us. Before we get into the fun stuff, let us first check out this chunky looking package that resembles a ROG motherboard box more than a video card.

Package

There's an absolute heap of information when it comes to the box due to ASUS choosing to follow that typical ROG setup, which sees the box open up to show us all the little extras that the card offers. We can also see the card, but because of the anti-static bag it's in, you don't get the best look.

Moving inside the package isn't as big as I thought it probably would be. With the box being so big, I probably expected to see a bit more inside. With that said, though, and everything pulled out, I'm not really sure what more we could get from them. Apart from some games we probably don't want or a huge sticker, we've really got everything we need to get up and running. This includes SpeedSetup Guide, Driver CD, two Dual-6-Pin to 8-Pin PCI-E connectors, DVI to VGA, large SLI bridge and a nice little ROG case badge.