Well here I am back after a long long time with a review 
....the last proper video card review was when ATI had a killer strike with the HD 4000 Series. That also was a Palit HD 4850 Review pitted against a 8800Ultra
Today its the turn of the Palit GTX 570 Sonic Platinum Edition
1. Packaging
Lets get started with the packaging of the Palit card. Its the usual Palit no frills packaging
Here is a box shot of the same :
2. Box Contents:
Contents
* Graphics card
* Driver CD + Documentation
* DVI adapter
* PCI-Express power cable
Although the contents is w/o a game bundle but the Graphics card with a very good build and factory overclocked is what is the main thing we all look for
3. Inspecting the Card:
Here we see the front of the card with its dual fans . This is not a Nvidia reference design card and Palit created its own design on the PCB as well as cooling and by the looks of it , looks quite good and sturdy.
As with any high range card this will occupy 2 slots in the system and is as long as 10.75 inches , so a case with better ventilation and area will be good to hold this hottie
Coming to the bum of the hottie....though not quite elegant it looks to be a clean layout.
Here we can see the display outputs : 2 X DVI + 1 X DP + 1 X HDMI ! No EyeIninity fest on Nvidia though...its quite useless though for people other than the Tata, Birlas and Ambanis
Here we can see a peek into the fins of the heatsink and the solid caps used in the power regulation section of the card.
4. The Voltage Controller
The Palit card comes with an Analogue Devices ADP4100 voltage controller as we can see in the pic. This chip supports basic voltage control via NVIDIA's NVAPI but the voltage range is quite limited ! The referenve GTX 570 cards come with ChiL voltage controllers.
5. The Competitors
1. Palit GTX 570 Sonic Platinum
2. Sapphire HD 6950 2GB (Unlocked to 1536 shaders, clock speeds same as 6950 stock)
3. MSI GTX 580
Well to be fair, the Sapphire HD 6950 2GB card is the most well built and is almost 1.5 times heavier than the GTX 570/GTX 580 cards. The Palit GTX 570 on the other hand uses a vapor chamber cooling solution and as we will see in later parts, it fares quite well in cooling as well as the temps.
Here is another view of the cards. The HD 6950 2GB and Palit GTX 570 are almost of equal length whereas the GTX 580 the costliest card of the lot is bit shorter !
Here we can see the strapless back of the cards ! The HD 6950 is fully covered though from end to end ! May be Ruby is a bit shy to show off her back
Another view to compare the lengths
The final view is of the display connectors of the three cards. Also if you have noticed in the above pictures the MSI cards come with plastic caps for the display connectors, PCI-Express slot connector and the Crossfire connections.
This is a really good idea and should be taken up by other video card manufacturers as well.
Next on we will move on to the most important part ie on who takes the cake
6. Benchmarks
System Setup
CPU : Intel Q6600 overclocked to 3.6Ghz
Motherboard : Gigabyte EP45-UD3P
Memory : - 2 X 2GB DDR2 800Mhz CL4 Gskill PI Black
Primary HDD : WD 6400 AAKS
OS : Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
Game Setups:
Dirt 2 : 1080p, 8x MSAA, Ultra, DX11
Metro 2033 : 1080p, DX 11, 4x AA, 16x AF, Tessellation
Crysis : 1080p,Very High, DX 10, 4x AA
a. 3DMark 06
Well I know that this is really a pretty old 3D Synthetic Benchamark but this still gives a good idea on performance of the cards in 1-2 years old DX 9 based titles.
As we can see in the results, HD 6950 2GB really shines here as there is no Physx support in 3D Mark 06 to bog the scores down.
b. 3DMark vantage
Physx really kicks a lot of ass here and the GTX 570 starts to dominate here considering the VFM angle and how cheap its compared to a GTX 580 for almost 90% performance.
c. 3DMark 11
Again the Nvidia cards show particularly lot of teeth and the GTX 570 is quite close in the scores to the GTX 580. The pre-overclocked sample of Palit GTX 570 really helps it to almost comes within a stone's throw to the MSI GTX 580.
d. Crysis
Well even after 2.5 years this is a still big daddy and manages to really screw the cards in this contest. The HD 6950 again shines here because of its higher shader power. The GTX 580 comes out in tops but the difference to other cards is quite negligible.
e. Dirt 2
Nvidia cards back in the hunt here with some serious firepower ! The GTX 580 clearly wings by a very good margin this time. This game has some really amazing effects and the raw power of the GTX 580 shows here. The GTX 570 still is able to win over the HD 6950 by a handsome margin
f. Metro 2033
This is one hell of a stressful came for the cards. The huge complexity, tessellation support make it a demon in this whole benchmarking suite. At our settings even the mightly GTX 580 crawls sometimes in a the benchmark. Still its the same GTX 580 which shreds the other cards to pieces here...followed by the GTX 570 and HD 6950.
g. Unigine Heaven
Well this is quite a new synthetic benchmark , using a lot of DX 11 features. The Nvidia cards again leads the race here with the Palit GTX 570 coming quite close to the power house MSI GTX 580. The HD 6950 trails the GTX 570 by quite a lot here which is expected due to its weaker tessellation engine.
7. Overclocking
MSI GTX 580(stock) vs 6950 (Unlocked shaders to 6970 speeds) Vs Palit GTX 570 Sonic OC
MSI GTX 580 Stock Speeds ( This is so that we can check how close we can get to the GTX 580 overclocking the other cards)
Sapphire HD 6950 2GB (Unlocked 1536 shaders, 900Mhz Core, 1375 Memory)
Palit GTX 570 Sonic Platinum OC ( 850 Mhz Core, 1175 Memory)
First up we can see in 3D Mark 11, the Palit GTX 570 Sonic almost comes with a striking distance of the MSI GTX 580. If we consider that the GTX 580 is almost 25% more expensive, this is some serious firepower from the GTX 570. The HD 6950 is still quite a bit far beacuse of its lack of Physx support.
Next up is Dirt 2 and the stock results seem to be followed here. The GTX 580 still is a hell lot faster than the rest of the guys and its raw power still holds it
Finally we have the Heaven Benchmark results in which the GTX 570 is almost right nest to the GTX 580. Even the HD 6950 at overclocked speeds makes quite a lot of stride and moves quite close to the GTX 570
So finally after the overclocking round, it seems the GTX 570 and HD 6950 2GB are quite a good value for money. The GTX 580 while still being faster is not much worth the extra 25-30% extra premium in cost.
8. Power Consumption, Load Temps
Now that we have the performance results, lets see how much a of a mini nuclear station these cards are. First up is the idle power consumption and as expected the most powerful card ie the MSI GTX 580 is having the highest power consumption followed by GTX 570 and HD 6950
The load power consumption follows more or less the same pattern, here the Nvidia cards are almost 10-15% more power hungry compared to the 6950
Now is the load temps which is very important in India's hot climate.....The Palit GTX 570 with its vapour chamber and dual fans is the best of the lot whereas the reference design MSI GTX 580 is the hottest of the lot.
9. Conclusion , Ratings , Verdict and Pricing
Well we come to end of the review of the Palit GTX 570 Sonic. To be fair this Palit card is really well built and scores the tick mark in almost all the boxes.
Its around 10% faster than even the unlocked shaders of the 6950 2GB. Even after overclocking the Palit GTX 570 is still ahead of the HD 6950. Also going for it is better
3D Support on Nvidia cards, plus we have better Tessellation implementation on the Nvidia cards than the ATI counterparts ! Only thing is the limited memory of 1280MB
which might be a problem 2 years down the line.
Anyways summing up :
Pros
--- Excellent performance
---Physx Support in few games
---Better native 3D support (compared to 3rd party supported in HD 6950)
--- Excellent build quality and cooler
Cons
--- Bundle is very mediocre. An HDMI cable should have been a part of the bundle at least
--- Limited Memory which might affect in future. Nothing is futureproof though.
So I will knock off half a star because of the bundle and slightly limited memory.
Pricing :
The card should be available with local dealers or through Palit distributors (Abacus Peripherals and Tirupati) at around a street pricing of around Rs 20000/- which is quite good considering US MSRP of around 349$.
Also for the information of everyone and as told by Palit Biz. , all Nvidia Palit cards shipping now carry a 3 years (parts + labour) warranty
A lot of thanks to Destiny of Palit Biz for sending the card to us and giving us a chance to review it. Thanks to Safin and Saiyan to make me do a review after more than 2 years. It got delayed quite a bit and all of you guys still supported me through out
The MSI GTX 580 was sourced from Mr. Dinesh of Aashirwaad Computers, SP Road Bangalore. Kudos to him to be kind enough to lend the card for few weeks.
....the last proper video card review was when ATI had a killer strike with the HD 4000 Series. That also was a Palit HD 4850 Review pitted against a 8800UltraToday its the turn of the Palit GTX 570 Sonic Platinum Edition
1. Packaging
Lets get started with the packaging of the Palit card. Its the usual Palit no frills packaging
Here is a box shot of the same :
2. Box Contents:
Contents
* Graphics card
* Driver CD + Documentation
* DVI adapter
* PCI-Express power cable
Although the contents is w/o a game bundle but the Graphics card with a very good build and factory overclocked is what is the main thing we all look for
3. Inspecting the Card:
Here we see the front of the card with its dual fans . This is not a Nvidia reference design card and Palit created its own design on the PCB as well as cooling and by the looks of it , looks quite good and sturdy.
As with any high range card this will occupy 2 slots in the system and is as long as 10.75 inches , so a case with better ventilation and area will be good to hold this hottie
Coming to the bum of the hottie....though not quite elegant it looks to be a clean layout.
Here we can see the display outputs : 2 X DVI + 1 X DP + 1 X HDMI ! No EyeIninity fest on Nvidia though...its quite useless though for people other than the Tata, Birlas and Ambanis
Here we can see a peek into the fins of the heatsink and the solid caps used in the power regulation section of the card.
4. The Voltage Controller
The Palit card comes with an Analogue Devices ADP4100 voltage controller as we can see in the pic. This chip supports basic voltage control via NVIDIA's NVAPI but the voltage range is quite limited ! The referenve GTX 570 cards come with ChiL voltage controllers.
5. The Competitors
1. Palit GTX 570 Sonic Platinum
2. Sapphire HD 6950 2GB (Unlocked to 1536 shaders, clock speeds same as 6950 stock)
3. MSI GTX 580
Well to be fair, the Sapphire HD 6950 2GB card is the most well built and is almost 1.5 times heavier than the GTX 570/GTX 580 cards. The Palit GTX 570 on the other hand uses a vapor chamber cooling solution and as we will see in later parts, it fares quite well in cooling as well as the temps.
Here is another view of the cards. The HD 6950 2GB and Palit GTX 570 are almost of equal length whereas the GTX 580 the costliest card of the lot is bit shorter !
Here we can see the strapless back of the cards ! The HD 6950 is fully covered though from end to end ! May be Ruby is a bit shy to show off her back
Another view to compare the lengths
The final view is of the display connectors of the three cards. Also if you have noticed in the above pictures the MSI cards come with plastic caps for the display connectors, PCI-Express slot connector and the Crossfire connections.
This is a really good idea and should be taken up by other video card manufacturers as well.
Next on we will move on to the most important part ie on who takes the cake
6. Benchmarks
System Setup
CPU : Intel Q6600 overclocked to 3.6Ghz
Motherboard : Gigabyte EP45-UD3P
Memory : - 2 X 2GB DDR2 800Mhz CL4 Gskill PI Black
Primary HDD : WD 6400 AAKS
OS : Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
Game Setups:
Dirt 2 : 1080p, 8x MSAA, Ultra, DX11
Metro 2033 : 1080p, DX 11, 4x AA, 16x AF, Tessellation
Crysis : 1080p,Very High, DX 10, 4x AA
a. 3DMark 06
Well I know that this is really a pretty old 3D Synthetic Benchamark but this still gives a good idea on performance of the cards in 1-2 years old DX 9 based titles.
As we can see in the results, HD 6950 2GB really shines here as there is no Physx support in 3D Mark 06 to bog the scores down.
b. 3DMark vantage
Physx really kicks a lot of ass here and the GTX 570 starts to dominate here considering the VFM angle and how cheap its compared to a GTX 580 for almost 90% performance.
c. 3DMark 11
Again the Nvidia cards show particularly lot of teeth and the GTX 570 is quite close in the scores to the GTX 580. The pre-overclocked sample of Palit GTX 570 really helps it to almost comes within a stone's throw to the MSI GTX 580.
d. Crysis
Well even after 2.5 years this is a still big daddy and manages to really screw the cards in this contest. The HD 6950 again shines here because of its higher shader power. The GTX 580 comes out in tops but the difference to other cards is quite negligible.
e. Dirt 2
Nvidia cards back in the hunt here with some serious firepower ! The GTX 580 clearly wings by a very good margin this time. This game has some really amazing effects and the raw power of the GTX 580 shows here. The GTX 570 still is able to win over the HD 6950 by a handsome margin
f. Metro 2033
This is one hell of a stressful came for the cards. The huge complexity, tessellation support make it a demon in this whole benchmarking suite. At our settings even the mightly GTX 580 crawls sometimes in a the benchmark. Still its the same GTX 580 which shreds the other cards to pieces here...followed by the GTX 570 and HD 6950.
g. Unigine Heaven
Well this is quite a new synthetic benchmark , using a lot of DX 11 features. The Nvidia cards again leads the race here with the Palit GTX 570 coming quite close to the power house MSI GTX 580. The HD 6950 trails the GTX 570 by quite a lot here which is expected due to its weaker tessellation engine.
7. Overclocking
MSI GTX 580(stock) vs 6950 (Unlocked shaders to 6970 speeds) Vs Palit GTX 570 Sonic OC
MSI GTX 580 Stock Speeds ( This is so that we can check how close we can get to the GTX 580 overclocking the other cards)
Sapphire HD 6950 2GB (Unlocked 1536 shaders, 900Mhz Core, 1375 Memory)
Palit GTX 570 Sonic Platinum OC ( 850 Mhz Core, 1175 Memory)
First up we can see in 3D Mark 11, the Palit GTX 570 Sonic almost comes with a striking distance of the MSI GTX 580. If we consider that the GTX 580 is almost 25% more expensive, this is some serious firepower from the GTX 570. The HD 6950 is still quite a bit far beacuse of its lack of Physx support.
Next up is Dirt 2 and the stock results seem to be followed here. The GTX 580 still is a hell lot faster than the rest of the guys and its raw power still holds it
Finally we have the Heaven Benchmark results in which the GTX 570 is almost right nest to the GTX 580. Even the HD 6950 at overclocked speeds makes quite a lot of stride and moves quite close to the GTX 570
So finally after the overclocking round, it seems the GTX 570 and HD 6950 2GB are quite a good value for money. The GTX 580 while still being faster is not much worth the extra 25-30% extra premium in cost.
8. Power Consumption, Load Temps
Now that we have the performance results, lets see how much a of a mini nuclear station these cards are. First up is the idle power consumption and as expected the most powerful card ie the MSI GTX 580 is having the highest power consumption followed by GTX 570 and HD 6950
The load power consumption follows more or less the same pattern, here the Nvidia cards are almost 10-15% more power hungry compared to the 6950
Now is the load temps which is very important in India's hot climate
.....The Palit GTX 570 with its vapour chamber and dual fans is the best of the lot whereas the reference design MSI GTX 580 is the hottest of the lot.
9. Conclusion , Ratings , Verdict and Pricing
Well we come to end of the review of the Palit GTX 570 Sonic. To be fair this Palit card is really well built and scores the tick mark in almost all the boxes.
Its around 10% faster than even the unlocked shaders of the 6950 2GB. Even after overclocking the Palit GTX 570 is still ahead of the HD 6950. Also going for it is better
3D Support on Nvidia cards, plus we have better Tessellation implementation on the Nvidia cards than the ATI counterparts ! Only thing is the limited memory of 1280MB
which might be a problem 2 years down the line.
Anyways summing up :
Pros
--- Excellent performance
---Physx Support in few games
---Better native 3D support (compared to 3rd party supported in HD 6950)
--- Excellent build quality and cooler
Cons
--- Bundle is very mediocre. An HDMI cable should have been a part of the bundle at least
--- Limited Memory which might affect in future. Nothing is futureproof though.
So I will knock off half a star because of the bundle and slightly limited memory.
Pricing :
The card should be available with local dealers or through Palit distributors (Abacus Peripherals and Tirupati) at around a street pricing of around Rs 20000/- which is quite good considering US MSRP of around 349$.
Also for the information of everyone and as told by Palit Biz. , all Nvidia Palit cards shipping now carry a 3 years (parts + labour) warranty
A lot of thanks to Destiny of Palit Biz for sending the card to us and giving us a chance to review it. Thanks to Safin and Saiyan to make me do a review after more than 2 years. It got delayed quite a bit and all of you guys still supported me through out
The MSI GTX 580 was sourced from Mr. Dinesh of Aashirwaad Computers, SP Road Bangalore. Kudos to him to be kind enough to lend the card for few weeks.
