- Date:
- Wednesday, August 17, 2011
- Author:
- Brent Justice
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Share:

ASUS ROG MATRIX GTX580 Platinum Video Card Review
ASUS has launched the new ROG MATRIX GTX580 Platinum video card that can be described as the pinnacle enthusiast GeForce GTX 580 GPU. Will all of this customization and new features mean you get fast video card? If this overclock doesn't impress you we suggest trading in your computer and finding a new hobby.
Overclocked Performance - High Core vs. High Memory
On the previous page we discussed how the higher core GPU clock speed was preferred over a high memory clock speed. On this page we have made a few apples-to-apples graphs for you to show you the difference. We will compare the out-of-box performance of the ASUS ROG MATRIX GTX580 Platinum to the performance overclocked without voltage modification at 891MHz GPU and 4950MHz memory. Then we will compare that with the video card overclocked to 1005MHz/4114MHz memory, to see if the faster memory, or faster core really is better for performance.
All of our testing below is apples-to-apples settings, at a low resolution so there are no memory bottlenecks.
DiRT 3
In DiRT 3 the ASUS ROG MATRIX GTX580 Platinum at 891MHz/4.950GHz was 9% faster than the video card out-of-box. However, the highest stable overclock with max voltage, a 1005MHz core and 4.114GHz memory was faster still at 18% faster. This shows that the faster core, yet slower memory, provided a bigger boost in performance.
Metro 2033
In Metro 2033 the video card at 891MHz was 8% faster, and while it wasn't as big as the previous game, the higher core came in at 10% faster. This game is more sensitive to memory performance when 4X MSAA is enabled. Still, the higher core was the "fastest" overclock configuration.
F.E.A.R. 3
In F.E.A.R. 3 the video card at 891MHz was again 8% faster. However, the much faster core, but lower memory, was a larger 16% faster.
Memory Tuning
In GPU Tweak, with the ROG series, you can adjust the memory timings. ASUS includes three profiles, default, overclock and gaming. We can test these three profiles and see if memory timings affect performance at all.
In DiRT 3 there was no change in performance, with memory timings. The min/max/avg FPS of Overclock and Gaming ended up being exactly the same, and they are within the margin of error with the default setting. Basically, the memory timing won't affect performance, but could allow higher memory clocks, which again aren't that important on a GTX 580.




