Following up from Nvidia's newest high-end generation launch covered here earlier this month, we're back with EVGA's GeForce GTX 580 Superclocked edition. This factory overclocked card features the same board and cooler design as the reference Nvidia GeForce GTX 580 but is backed by EVGA's stellar lifetime warranty as well as board validation for the overclocked GPU core and memory. The GF110 inside EVGA's Superclocked 580 is hand tested to ensure stability and longevity, with a small price premium over the manufacturer's suggested e-tail price (SEP) of $499. The additional $30 gets you a lifetime warranty, access to EVGA's step up program, and a stable guaranteed overclock - plus the new 3DMark 2011, when it releases shortly.

Nvidia's Fermi architecture was first seen in late 2009, as NVIDIA began to generate excitement and interest in their new DirectX 11 product line. NVIDIA missed the Microsoft Windows 7 launch and Christmas sales bubble, but delivered four GPUs in seven months, beginning in April 2010. The Fermi architecture remains the basis for new products in the GeForce, Quadro and Tesla product lines, with GeForce the most interesting to us as it's the consumer, desktop line. Currently Fermi GPUs power seven products, ranging from the entry level GeForce GT 430, the mainstream gamer and performance enthusiast GTS 450 and GTX 460 series, through to the high end enthusiast and ultra enthusiast cards - GTX 465, GTX 470 and GTX 480.

EVGA GeForce GTX 580 SuperClock

EVGA GTX 580 Superclocked Specifications

• $529 SEP

• 3Bn Transistor 40nm GF110 core

• 512 CUDA Cores

• 16 Streaming Multi-Processors (SM) in 4 Graphics Processing Clusters (GPC)

• 797MHz Core clock / 1594MHz Shader Clock

• 1536MB GDDR5 RAM at 1013MHz / 4Gbps QDR

• 384-bit Memory Interface with 194.5GB/sec Bandwidth

• 2 Dual-Link DVI outputs + 1 mini-HDMI 1.4a output (max two active at a time)

• Dual-Height with PCI-Express 2.0 x16 interface, 10.5" Long

• Single PCI-E 6pin plus Single PCI-E 8pin power connectors required, 600W PSU recommended

• 244W Max Board Power

Today's article examines the performance of the EVGA GeForce GTX 580 SC against two aging nemesis, the ATI Radeon HD 5870 2GB and the ATI Radeon HD 5970. We're also going to take our first look at NVIDIA Surround, three display gaming made possible by having two GTX 580s in SLI in our updated test system sporting, courtesy of EVGA, the EVGA X58 Classified3 motherboard. Can dual or quad CrossFire Cypress take on the mighty Fermi++?