Gainward, a supplier of premium graphics cards that belongs to Palit Microsystems, as well as Palit Microsystems iself on Friday unveiled the world's first graphics cards based on Nvidia Corp.'s GeForce GTX 580 (GF110) graphics processing unit (GPU) with 3GB of onboard memory. The novelties are expected to ensure decent performance in extreme resolutions with FSAA and also provide benefits in future games compared to typical 580s.

Gainward GeForce GTX 580 3GB Phantom graphics card and Palit GTX 580 product are equipped with GF110 chip clocked at 783MHz with 512 stream processors clocked at 1566MHz, only a bit higher compared to the reference design of the model 580 developed by Nvidia. The main advantage of the boards is their frame buffer, which is of 3GB capacity, two times larger than that of the original graphics card designed by the GPU developer. Another benefit the card has is its cooling system, which has three fans and is more efficient compared to Nvidia's, according to Gainward.

The graphics cards maker claims that 3072MB of GDDR5 memory (clocked at 4020MHz) give ultimate performance advantages for modern games in high resolutions with full-scene anti-aliasing (FSAA) enabled versus GeForce GTX 580 1536MB. According to the manufacturer, Gainward GeForce GTX 580 3072MB “Phantom” delivers 279% performance advantage in Metro 2033 (2560*1600, FSAA 4x, very high quality settings), 20% speed benefit in Crysis Warhead (2560*1600, FSAA 16xQ, enthusiast quality settings) and 152% higher performance in StarCraft 2 (2560*1600, FSAA 32x, 16x AF, etc).

"If you are an enthusiastic performance gamer and pursuing the most vivid effect and superlative gaming thrills in fluent, real-time gaming experience, Gainward GeForce GTX 580 3072MB 'Phantom' is definitely your best and one-of-a-kind choice," a statement by Gainward reads.

Gainward and Palit did not announce recommended price for the novelty, but it is very likely that it will be higher compared to $499 of the typical graphics card with 1.5GB of memory.

Tags: Gainward, Nvidia, gf110, Fermi, Geforce, Palit