Feature Articles

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 - Built with GTX 580 DNA

By Kenny Yeo - 7 Dec 2010

Refreshing the GTX 480

Refreshing the GTX 480

Lately, NVIDIA’s fortunes have taken a turn for the better. Although AMD’s latest Northern Islands card - Radeon HD 6870 and HD 6850 - have received largely positive reviews, yield issues mean that there’s not enough cards to go around. Moreover, this has also caused AMD to delay the release of their eagerly anticipated high-end Cayman parts (Radeon HD 6900 series).

In the meantime, NVIDIA capitalized on AMD’s misfortune by releasing their uber-quick 512-core GeForce GTX 580, thereby cementing their grip on the title of world’s fastest GPU. To build on its momentum and to take full advantage of the holiday spending spree, NVIDIA has hastily followed up with the GeForce GTX 570, a card which they say was built with GTX 580 DNA.

But first things first, despite the name, the GeForce GTX 570 is actually more similar to the older GTX 480 than the GTX 470. Based on the GF110 chip that powers the GeForce GTX 580, the GeForce GTX 570 possesses less cores, 480 to be exact, which is exactly the same as the old GeForce GTX 480. Apart from that, the GeForce GTX 570 also has the same number of texture mapping units as the GTX 480, which totals 60.

Will it be faster than the old GeForce GTX 480? Or does NVIDIA intend for this to be its direct replacement? Read on to find out.

Where the GeForce GTX 570 is different, however, is that since it is based on the GF110 chip, it has been reworked slightly at the transistor level to make it more efficient. It also boasts the same performance enhancements such as full-speed FP16 texture filtering and support for new tile formats to improve Z-cull efficiency like the GeForce GTX 580. However, the GeForce GTX 570 has eight less raster operating units compared to the GTX 480 and also a narrower 320-bit memory bus width and smaller 1280MB GDDR5 framebuffer.

So to compensate, the GeForce GTX 570 gets higher clock speeds. Compared to the GeForce GTX 480’s 701MHz at the core, 1401MHz at the shaders and 3696MHz DDR at the memory; the new GeForce GTX 570 is running at 732MHz at the core, 1464MHz at the shaders and 3800MHz DDR at the memory.

And although the GeForce GTX 570 was just launched, Palit already have their own customized design for sale and we've got one for evaluation. Factory overclocked and boasting a dual-fan custom cooler, it will be interesting to see how their version improves on NVIDIA’s reference one.

Read on to find out how the two cards will perform, but first, a quick look at how the reference GeForce GTX 570 stacks up against competitive SKUs.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 and competitive SKUs compared
Model NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470 ATI Radeon HD 5970

AMD Radeon HD 6870

ATI Radeon HD 5870
Core Code GF110  GF110 GF100 GF100 Hemlock  Barts XT Cypress XT
Transistor Count 3000 million  3000 million 3200 million 3200 million 4300 million  1700 million 2150 million
Manufacturing Process 40nm  40nm 40nm 40nm 40nm 40nm 40nm
Core Clock 732MHz  772MHz 701MHz 607MHz 725MHz 900MHz 850MHz
Stream Processors 480 Stream Processors 512 Stream Processors 480 Stream Processors 448 Stream Processors 3200 Stream processing units  1120 Stream processing units 1600 Stream processing units
Stream Processor Clock 1464MHz  1544MHz 1401MHz 1215MHz 725MHz  900MHz 850MHz
Texture Mapping Units (TMU) or Texture Filtering (TF) units 60 64 60 56 160  56 80
Raster Operator units (ROP) 40 48 48 40 64  32 32
Memory Clock 3800MHz GDDR5  4008MHz GDDR5 3696MHz GDDR5 3348MHz GDDR5 4000MHz GDDR5  4200MHz GDDR5 4800MHz GDDR5
DDR Memory Bus 320-bit  384-bit 384-bit 320-bit 256-bit  256-bit 256-bit
Memory Bandwidth 152GB/s  192.4GB/s 177.4GB/s 133.9GB/s 256GB/s  134.4GB/s 153.6GB/s
PCI Express Interface PCIe ver 2.0 x16  PCIe ver 2.0 x16 PCIe ver 2.0 x16 PCIe ver 2.0 x16 PCIe ver 2.0 x16  PCIe ver 2.0 x16 PCIe ver 2.0 x16
Molex Power Connectors 2 x 6-pin  1 x 6-pin, 1 x 8-pin 1 x 6-pin, 1 x 8-pin 2 x 6-pin 1 x 6-pin, 1 x 8-pin  2 x 6-pin 2 x 6-pin
Multi GPU Technology SLI  SLI SLI SLI CrossFireX  CrossFireX CrossFireX
DVI Output Support 2 x Dual-Link  2 x Dual-Link 2 x Dual-Link 2 x Dual-Link 2 x Dual-Link  1 x Dual-Link, 1 x Single-Link 2 x Dual-Link
HDCP Output Support Yes  Yes Yes Yes Yes  Yes Yes
Street Price Launch price: US$349 ~US$529 ~US$429 ~US$259  ~US$500 US$239 ~US$360

 

Join HWZ's Telegram channel here and catch all the latest tech news!
Our articles may contain affiliate links. If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission.