NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 580: Fermi Refined

Crysis: Warhead

Kicking things off as always is Crysis: Warhead, still one of the toughest game in our benchmark suite. Even 2 years since the release of the original Crysis, “but can it run Crysis?” is still an important question, and the answer continues to be “no.” One of these years we’ll actually be able to run it with full Enthusiast settings…

Right off the bat we see the GTX 580 do well, which as the successor to what was already the fastest single-GPU card on the market is nothing less than we expect. At 2560 it’s around 16% faster than the GTX 480, and at 1920 that drops to 12%. Bear in mind that the theoretical performance improvement for clock + shader is 17%, so in reality it would be nearly impossible get that close without the architectural improvements also playing a role.

Meanwhile AMD’s double-GPU double-trouble lineup of the 5970 and 6870CF both outscore the GTX 580 by around 12% and 27% respectively. It shouldn’t come as a shock that they’re going to win most tests – ultimately they’re priced much more competitively than the GTX 580, making them price-practical alternatives to the GTX 580.

And speaking of competition the GTX 470 SLI is in much the same boat, handily surpassing the GTX 580. This will come full circle however when we look at power consumption.

Meanwhile looking at minimum framerates we have a different story. AMD’s memory management in CrossFire mode has long been an issue with Crysis at 2560, and it continues to show here with a minimum framerate that simply craters. At 2560 there’s a world of difference between NVIDIA and AMD here, and it’s all in NVIDIA’s favor. 1920 however roughly mirrors our earlier averages, with the 580 taking a decent lead over the GTX 480, but falling to multi-GPU cards.