GeForce GTX 580 SLI review - Introduction

GeForce GTX 580 SLI gets tested

You know, we see 'enthusiast' performance in the graphics card vs gaming arena, but also 'extreme' performance. And to manage that we often produce articles where we take the best of the best in terms of performance, and then double, triple or quadruple it up thanks to multi-GPU performance.

If your wallet allows it, you can quite easily double up that GPU shader processor count and thus performance with the help of NVIDIA's SLI technology. Let's say that you pick two 479 EUR (499 USD) GeForce GTX 580 cards with 1.5 Gigs of memory each. Doubled up in SLI two of these puppies would bring seriously more performance to the table than a single 580, obviously.

Yes, Multi-GPU gaming has grown to become more popular over the past few year thanks to NVIDIA's SLI solutions initially, and obviously later on when ATI CrossfireX joined that path as well. So today we take two GeForce GTX 580 cards and place them into 2-way SLI mode. We'll throw in a combo Radeon cards setup in CrossfireX, both platforms armed with the very latest drivers, patches and games.

Over the next few pages we'll tell you a bit about multi-GPU gaming, the challenges, the requirements and of course a nice tasty benchmark session. We'll have a peek at temperatures, power consumption and we'll also overclock both GeForce GTX 580 cards in SLI mode to squeeze out every last ounce of performance.

Have a peek at the coolness in the photo below and then let's startup this article.