Gainward GTX 580 Phantom 3 1536MB – The Phantom Menace

Physique and Features

The GTX 580 Addendum

NVIDIA has already handed down all of its aces under its sleeve for the GeForce 500 series. The next upgrade options that PC enthusiasts should be looking forward to are ready for next year’s release. They are the Kepler-based GeForce graphics cards that come with PCI-Express 3.0 interface standard. However, at the moment, if you are searching for top-end cards from NVIDIA that are locally available, those with the GTX 580 GPU onboard are rife by far. Although the GeForce GTX 590 is the king of the hill, cards that make use of it are not on hand in the Philippines, like what the folks at NVIDIA told us months ago.

One of the GTX 580 graphics cards that you should be seeing in local stores these days is Gainward’s GTX 580 Phantom 3 1536MB card. The most prominent selling point of the Gainward GTX 580 Phantom 3 1536MB is its daunting physique. Going against the reference design that NVIDIA has imposed for GTX 580 graphics cards, Gainward’s version comes with an ample heatsink design packed with a triplet of GPU fans. Obviously, this is far different from the single-fan cooler design that we saw on other GTX 580 cards such as those from ASUS and Inno3D.

Factory-overclocked, the GTX 580 Phantom 3 1536MB graphics card is faster than the reference GTX 580 card in all respects. Gainward’s card runs at 783MHz GPU clock, 4020MHz memory clock, and 1566MHz shader clock.

Gainward showed its generosity by throwing in a full version of HDMI and DisplayPort in the mix, in addition to the standard dual DVI connectors. In the case of ASUS’ and Inno3D’ cards, there is no DisplayPort, though the dual DVI connectors and the HDMI (mini) output are there. As GTX 580 cards are dual-slot solutions, do expect the GTX 580 Phantom 3 1536MB to occupy at least two slots of your board.

Similar to other iterations of the GTX 580 that we previously tested, Gainward’s rendition is a behemoth of a graphics card. Its full length goes beyond the width of our motherboard. Because of its long profile, the card might get in the way of some of your board’s SATA connectors, particularly those that face upward. Nevertheless, the card’s length should be a minor issue in boards that have side-facing SATA connectors.