So Classified 580GTX is finally here :). Hope u guys that have been anxiously waiting for it are diggin the card. This new high end 580 from EVGA is designed all the way for easiest overclocking and high levels of performance with all forms of cooling...air, water, and LN2.
When we started out planning this card, we wanted some key things. More powerful, efficient, and highly capable voltage regulation, better thermals on stock cooling, 4-way SLI out of the box compatibility with stock hsf, no limits overclocking (No mods or special bios required for extreme OC), modular heatsink design with seperate vrm plate and PCB stiffener(for extreme OC), multi bios simple functionality, and full EVbot support. These are all key elements of what 580GTX CLASSIFIED is all about.
So lets do some overclocking..on all forms of cooling not just LN2 as I realize most users at EVGA forums are not hardcore Extreme overclockers who live off of LN2, but still hardcore PC enthusiasts who always play EVGA :).
Feel free to post your own results and pictures as we go along here. To start off, how about some air cooling with stock cooler right out of the box. This card runs cooler than stock reference design when overclocked with voltage increase on core and mem, so it should have more headroom on air and water overclocks when pushed. Using EVbot for voltage adjustment, I was able to get this 3GB sample to almost 1020mhz core and 2450mhz thru 3Dmark 11!. I use 3D11 for testing and validating overclocking because its very demanding on the gpu's and will push the card and rest of system quite hard. Heaven is another dx11 bench that is about as demanding on the card, but it's weak on the rest of the system and pretty boring actually. 3dmark 11 is a lot more fun of a benchmark :).
Ok so in this first screenshot, its 3GB 580GTX CLASSIFIED using EVbot for voltage adjustment. With "stock" core voltage range (1.08-1.15v) 900-950 is prolly doable on most cards. Memory overclocking will vary from card to card, but I think most cards can do 2350 or so and the best ones will go 2450 with 1.69v or so on vmem. Again using evbot for all voltage adjustments here and stock SR-2 system.
1.29v actual core and about 1.7v actual vmem, fan speed 100%. PLL is stock and in most cases shouldnt be adjusted unless using Ln2 cooling. You can see in the graph for precision the temps before, during, and after the benchmark ran. Hottest point of 3D11 is always end of GT2 marked at 55C:
 
 
In my testing the cards can really handle the extra voltage over reference cards due to the good thermals on the stock cooler and better vrm design. It runs cooler, especially with fan speed on 100%
There will be a new version of eleet for those of you that don't have EVbots for adjusting voltage, but I highly recommend having an evbot as it is so versatile, easy to use, and can be used with so many different evga, past, current and future products ;). One thing u can almost always count on is EVbot support out of the box for EVGA future products. No need to wait for software at all.
Now I took 4 cards and put them in quad sli and managed to hit 970mhz core and 2400mhz memory in quad SLI on stock SR-2 system. Not bad at all! All cards at 100% fan speed and using about 1.28v actual core voltage and 1.69v actual mem voltage:
 
Some not too shabby air results from this new 580 design from EVGA. These are max 3d11 benchmark stable results, not necessarily 100% daily gaming rig stable. TBH, that kind of stability is not too far off from this tho. Now lets see how Hydro version clocks on "typical" water cooling this week, we are testing now.. results soon. Then finally some LN2 testing . In the meantime, you guys are welcome to post up your MAX 580 CLASSFIED overclocks on air and water if you like in 3D11 single or quad sli. Use EVGA precision for monitoring temps and GPU load and GPUZ/CPUZ for showing clocks like in my screen.
 

Kingpin, could you provide links to those pics as they were made smaller in your post to the point that I could not read the clocks?
 
*Edit:
Nevermind. I just needed to right click them and view the image itself. Looking forward to the water cooling results!

Thanks for the design work and the testing. These appear to be such a wonderful card.

Why is it showing the default clock at 816 in CPUZ?  How loud was 4 cards at 100%??  I have been testing and right now I am at 900mhz, no voltage cause there is no software and Unigine ran for an hour and crashed and 3smark11 ran 2 full runs on Xtreme and 2 runs on "P" setting then it died also.  However, gaming for the last 2-3 hours and it has been fine.  I know it needs a little more juice to stay stable in Unigine and 3dmark longer. 
 
What would you say is a good amount of test time using 3dmark11 or Unigine to ensure a good stable clock for normal gaming?  I notice hardly any games tax the gpu's at 99% like Uni and 3d...so just wondering what is considered a good time period to ensure stability.
 
Thanks for the thread..this should be fun as soon as eVGA gets Eleet up to snuff.  I would buy EvBot, but kind of just spent a ton of money on 2 classys and backplates..so I need to cool off on the spending.
 

Kingpin,
 
When you say 8-10 times using 11, do you mean using the "P" Benchmark or the "X" Xtreme one?
 
And now that I have the bug to add more voltage, I think I might order the eVBOT.  I have a few questions though.  Since I am in a SLI setup (2 Cards) do I just plug in eVbot on the top card and it will adjust both cards for me?
 
Thanks for the feedback and the thread again.
 
Althought 1 hour of Unigine and it crashed as it passed the hour mark, for gaming my 900mhz has been fine.  Played 1 hour of Rift, about 30min of Witcher 2 and 30min of Crysis 2 (DX11/Hi Res Text Pack) and no issues. 
 
Anyways, please let me know more about this eVbot.  I think I might order one tomorrow morning so I have it by the weekend.
 
 

So what are you limited by as far as voltage increases are concerned, I'm looking to have 1GHz on cores(2 way sli) for daily use. Do you think that's feasible with water cooling or air?

I'm really impressed and excited that K|ngp|n and Tin are here to answer questions.  A big thank you guys and to EVGA as well.  I will be posting here when I get my Classys and put them under water.

Bah, 1.15vc 970mhz core 2200mem all day rock stable with my Galaxy GTX 580 with the arctic cooler preinstalled. I have enough room to hit 1ghz with less than 1.2vc pretty easily.

bhk1004

Like the guy above is saying this card very under performing on air vs the other top cards on air... I mean we only have 1 person so far with these. But the cards seem too voltage hungry for high clocks on air cooling. I may have to go back to the drawing boards with my card choice...

Really. On the 2 SLI MSI 3gb Lightning Extremes in my friends rig we had to go to 1.143 in order to get to 932mhz, could not break 940 even with more voltage.  It could be than one of the cards in SLI does not OC very well, but at 932mhz with 1.143 the max temp we hit on the top card was 83c. 
 
  I would not say that it is poor on air compared to other top cards.  Like I said, for me in SLI they are running cooler and quieter at 900mhz vs. the MSI cards.  And the MSI is one of the best.  However, right now it is hard to really gauge since we cannot alter voltage without evbot, so until then it is hard to make direct comparisons.  I can say though that at high fan speed percentage the classys are loud.  But it does a very good job at lower speed that depending on how you push the OC (when we can adjust voltages), you may be able to get easily to 950-980mhz and perhaps max the fan at 50%.  
 

I don't know if others noticed but the screen with the Quad SLI run shows the memory at 1536MB meaning that 965MHz was hit with the 1.5GB cards and NOT the 3GB cards.
 
Kingpin/Tin, what is the HIGHEST OC you guys were able to achieve with the 3GB GTX-580 Classified in Quad-SLI with AIR-COOLING? I would really like to see 1000MHz or more. And, these GPUs should be able to handle 90C easily so even if temps get to the 80s, it's not that big of a deal (even with 100% fan).

bhk1004

hawk269

bhk1004

Like the guy above is saying this card very under performing on air vs the other top cards on air... I mean we only have 1 person so far with these. But the cards seem too voltage hungry for high clocks on air cooling. I may have to go back to the drawing boards with my card choice...

Really. On the 2 SLI MSI 3gb Lightning Extremes in my friends rig we had to go to 1.143 in order to get to 932mhz, could not break 940 even with more voltage.  It could be than one of the cards in SLI does not OC very well, but at 932mhz with 1.143 the max temp we hit on the top card was 83c. 

I would not say that it is poor on air compared to other top cards.  Like I said, for me in SLI they are running cooler and quieter at 900mhz vs. the MSI cards.  And the MSI is one of the best.  However, right now it is hard to really gauge since we cannot alter voltage without evbot, so until then it is hard to make direct comparisons.  I can say though that at high fan speed percentage the classys are loud as ****.  But it does a very good job at lower speed that depending on how you push the OC (when we can adjust voltages), you may be able to get easily to 950-980mhz and perhaps max the fan at 50%. 

I meant to ask you about this before. you know the stock bios limit on those lightning cards are 1.2v.  are you going all the way up?  also on all reviews where the reviewers were actually taking the time to overclock these cards they would all hit upper 900's on their clocks.  they usually just turn it down a bit after because the fans have to be run at 100%.  This is also the case with the Asus ROG 580 matrix platinum, 1.85v is the max, and all reviewers actually pushing the cards get upper 900's or crack the 1000mhz.  but then again have to run the fans at 100% so they say for daily use people should probably turn it down a bit.  and then this cards comes along... and they are having to go all the way up to 1.29... which is impossible on air due to the heat that will be generated along with the fact that I dont want to mod the stock bios and risk losing the warranty. I mean to be completely fair, people are hitting 950 on reference cards(i do admit its luck of the draw on the GPU.... ALOT of luck on the GPU) at 1.15, if "lucky" reference cards can hit this then why cant the classified?  i mean if anything i would have thought upper 900's would have been possible with the imposed 1.18v limitations on the bios...

like i said we only have 1 person that has used the evbot so far to overclock, but still seems the data is not looking positive...

Well, I can put it this way.  My stock 580 1.5gb, stock clock of 772mhz, I was able to get them to 900mhz with a 1.100 voltage tweak.  Temp on the top card maxed out at 88c with fans at 75-80%.  On my Classys, the stock speed is 855mhz and I am at the same 900mhz oc with the same 1.100 voltage.  The difference is in the heat.  My max temp after running unigine was around 72c (going by memory), with fans maxing out at 42%.   So, clock for clock I am at the same as my vanilla's, but running alot cooler, quieter and the fan speed at half the speed.  If I set the fans to 50% the temps would drop to around 65c or so.
 
My goal on air is to get these cards to around 950mhz which I was not able to do on my Vanilla's for everyday use due to heat and noise level.  Same for the MSI Lightnings, I did max out the voltage to 1.2 and could not be stable at 940mhz.  Now granted, they were in SLI and I beleive one of them was not one of the lucky cards. 
 
If I can get 950mhz, 50-55% fan speed and voltage tweek I will be happy.  Hell, I think I might get more that 950, bt it is going to come down the noise and heat of course.  But based on where I am at 900mhz, another 50mhz would not add that much more heat.  I am going to guess at 45% fan that it will hit 78c on the top card..but that is also running Unigine which taxes the gpu's at 99%..most games dont.  Same with 3dmark11, it maxes 99% for each test. 
 
 
 

Baasha

Why do you say that? I'm running Tri-SLI with my EVGA GTX-580 3GB right now and when I'm benchmarking or gaming, my fan profile is at 95% and my temps never go above 65C for the hottest card (top card). Adding another card for Quad-SLI shouldn't be that big of a deal in terms of safety.

Also, those temps are with OC of 850MHz @ 1.088V.

bhk1004

Baasha

I don't know if others noticed but the screen with the Quad SLI run shows the memory at 1536MB meaning that 965MHz was hit with the 1.5GB cards and NOT the 3GB cards.

Kingpin/Tin, what is the HIGHEST OC you guys were able to achieve with the 3GB GTX-580 Classified in Quad-SLI with AIR-COOLING? I would really like to see 1000MHz or more. And, these GPUs should be able to handle 90C easily so even if temps get to the 80s, it's not that big of a deal (even with 100% fan).

i may be wrong but it doesnt seem like it would be safe to run quad SLI on air xD

well i did delete my quote because i figured with having no experience in SLI i have no idea what im talking about.  also you have a very minor overclock so temps shouldnt be an issue anyways. im tlaking about trying to hit 950-1000mhz in quad on air.  i dont think it would be a good idea xD

Been directed to this thread.. 
 
Asus and Gigabyte both advertised that their (I can say) specially designed cards for overclocking (580 Matrix Platinum , Gtx580 SOC) are binned with a better core to carry the ability to overclock better, produce less heat and perform better than vanilla 580s.  
  
So, just a point of interest, seeing that the new Evga Gtx580 Classified has just been released, are they specially binned like how Asus and Gigabyte did to improve overclocking? I mean, since its made for extreme overclockers, surely more has been done apart from slapping on a much better VRM and other features?  
  
The reason I am asking this, is because me myself owe 3 Gtx580 FTW HC2 (1.5GB) from Evga. I am only able to bench at around 930-940mhz @ 1.15v(thats the max Afterburner can increase right?), 950mhz will make Vantage crash.  I understand that I shouldn't be expecting a big overclock (say 1Ghz), but I highly doubt that the chips on the HC2 were binned in the first place due to that fact that they were quite voltage hungry and in fact, sometimes, I get a better score with 920mhz.  
  
I hope Jacob or maybe Kingpin or TiN can give me an answer so that I actually have a proper reason to make an upgrade. I am a keen overclocker and am willing to get the Classys for a higher clock in a SLI rig.  
  
I'll post my rig if anyone is interested 
  
CHEERS!! 

I got 2 Zotac Amp edition cards, which came out to $860 after mir, both cards do 950Mhz @ 1.15v 3D Mark 11 stable. But I do believe in the fact that you get what you pay for. In this case your getting the opportunity to give much more power to a 580 then the reference ones with better cooling. And although I think I got lucky with my cards the cost performance ratio starts declining. 2 Classified would cost somewhere around $1100 vs $860, and the performance difference would be minimal. In the more usual case, in stock cards its a total luck of draw to reach to and over 950Mhz, I had an evga which would not budge over 940Mhz even @ 1.213v, if you get a card like that, you still have some more room with higher voltage on the classy's, the key in this case is binning, I'm hoping these cards were binned, even they wern't you still have a better chance with more voltage.

There is an evbot update for the classy