MSI N580GTX M2D15D5 Review– A Reference Card with Some Interesting Extras
NVIDIA’s latest GF110 flagship (that is the GTX 580), has a total of 512 stream processors (or CUDA cores, as NVIDIA likes to call them these days). That’s a bunch more than the GF100 (GTX480), which had to settle with “only” 480 stream processors by the time of its initial launch. Put simply, GeForce GTX 580 is a refinement product that performs better in most -if not all- aspects compared to the GTX 480, NVIDIA’s previous highest-end GPU. You can see the comparison between the two in our first review on the GTX 580.
Graphics card manufacturers have been releasing their GTX 580 products into the market, including MSI with their N580GTX M2D15D5 here. It’s still based on NVIDIA’s reference design, which means that it should be quite identical to other reference-based GTX 580s in terms of performance. Fortunately, MSI added a little something to make the card stand out a bit amongst the crowd. Let’s take a look at the technical specs first.
Specification
NVIDIA GTX 580 | MSI N580GTX M2D15D5 | |
Codename | GF110 | GF110 |
Fabrication Process | 40 nm | 40 nm |
Transistors | 3 Billion | 3 Billion |
Die Size | 320 mm² | 320 mm² |
Core Clock | 772 MHz | 772 MHz |
Stream Processors (CUDA Core) | 512 | 512 |
Shader Clock | 1544 MHz | 1544 MHz |
Texture Units | 64 | 64 |
ROPs | 48 | 48 |
Memory Type | GDDR5 | GDDR5 |
Memory Size | 1536 MB | 1536 MB |
Memory Clock (effective) | 4008 MHz | 4008 MHz |
Memory Interface | 384-bit | 384-bit |
DirectX Version | 11 | 11 |
Shader Model | 5 | 5 |
Power Connectors | 8-pin + 6-pin | 8-pin + 6-pin |
Min Recommended Power Supply | 600 Watt | 600 Watt |
Bus Support | PCIe 2.1 x16 | PCIe 2.1 x16 |
TDP | 244 Watt | 244 Watt |
GPU Thermal Threshold | 97 C | 97 C |
As seen in the above table, MSI uses NVIDIA’s standard reference specification for the GTX 580. Everything is similar, including the core, shader, and memory frequencies.
Sales Package and Contents
This is the package box of MSI N580GTX M2D15D5. This time, MSI resorts to a refreshing combination of blue and white colors. The Afterburner logo stickers are attached on the front side and the back of the box.
These are the items we found inside the box. MSI provides a mini-HDMI to HDMI converter that could come in handy when you want to hook up an HDMI display. There is also a 6-pin to 8-pin PCI Express power converter.