Asus GeForce Matrix GTX 580 Platinum 1536MB Graphics Card Review

It’s a funny story about this card, as it wasn’t sent to us, more so with the fact that we took it from i43 after hanging out with Asus for the weekend and realising that we were missing something here at eTeknix and the Matrix GTX 580 is it. When we first set our eyes upon it, we knew that we had to get it benched and looked at under the microscope and now feel satisfied that we’ve had a chance to do so.

This card offers so much more than what others do on the market currently and the main reason for that is that it’s made by Asus. They are always keen to break the boundaries, where others play it safe and that’s what gets people and enthusiasts talking and being honest with you, it’s an enthusiasts graphics card, so they can honestly say that the marketing team have done a good job in that department. We’ve seen other brands do exactly this, such as MSI and it worked for them to whilst other brands haven’t really delved that far into this particular segment but as they say; leave it up to the big boys. With the ROG team on board, they really have done a number by making a card aimed at the extreme enthusiast which first and foremost is a select amount of people who want to get the very most out of their components and that includes the likes of overclocking.

With overclocking, the first key ingredient is the cooler of which Asus plumped for the fantastic and world acclaimed DirectCU II and in the process of bolting it on, gave it some steroids so that it takes up a whopping three slots, but who are we to judge if it keeps temperatures down and from our thermal tests, you can see it did exactly that whilst also maintaing low acoustics. It’s little things like this which add up to give you the most extreme cooling and with more users purchasing cards like this opposed to multiple, lesser cards, having a triple slot card shouldn’t bother the majority of users. The joy of this card and the cooler that’s been implemented is that it allows for the user to get the very best cooling with a low noise level if running at stock speeds but also gives a good scope for extra cooling performance if needed when overclocking.

Other unique features that we touched on including voltage regulation directly on the board is what will really make this a hit with the enthusiast market and that’s exactly who it’s aimed at, hence the price not putting us off at £389.98 from Scan which is fairly reasonable when comparing against the Win FrozR from MSI and other similar cards in the GTX 580 range. Being made by Asus we feel is just an added extra bonus.

The bottom line is that we have a great card on our hands, which we know is only going to be welcomed by a select crowd but Asus are aware of that, and is exactly who they are marketing it towards so why would that change that? It simply is an epic card for an epic type of user which we can’t fault at all.