Aug 4, 2011 06:40 GMT  ·  By

Initially used for CPUs, closed-loop water-cooling solutions are everywhere nowadays, so keeping with the trend Zotac has recently announced the release of a liquid-cooled GeForce GTX 580 graphics card that delivers both high performance and quiet operation.

Zotac's latest creation is called the GeForce GTX 580 Infinity Edition and is the result of pairing together a GF110-based graphics card with an Omni A.L.C. Closed loop cooling system built by CoolIT.

The improved cooling solution allowed the Chinese company to raise the clocks of the Infinity Edition above Nvidia's recommended frequencies, so the GPU now works at 815MHz, while the 1.5GB of GDDR5 memory are clocked at 1025MHz (4100MHz data rate).

Otherwise, Zotac has decided to go with Nvidia's reference printed circuit board and the card features a 6+2 phase design and Taiwanese solid-stage capacitors.

Power is provided by one 8-pin and one 6-pin PCI-E plugs and video output is handled by a pair of dual-link DVI ports and an HDMI port.

Gamers with existing GeForce GTX 580, GTX 570 and GTX 480 graphics card can also separately purchase the Zotac Omni water-cooling kit used in the Infinity Edition. This is compatible with all reference graphics cards based on the above-mentioned GPUs.

“As graphics processors become more powerful, greater cooling performance is a necessity which typically results in greater noise levels. To combat the heat and noise levels, water-cooling is an excellent solution,” said Carsten Berger, marketing director at Zotac.

“By equipping the Zotac GeForce GTX 580 Infinity Edition with a water-cooler, we were able to reduce temperatures by over 25-percent and produce lower noise levels,” concluded the company's rep.

Zotac hasn't provided us with a release date, or a recommended price tag, for the GeForce GTX 580 Infinity Edition graphics card and Omni water cooling kit.

The GTX 580 is Nvidia's fastest single GPU solution released to date and packs 512 CUDA cores, 64 texturing units, 48 ROP units and a 384-bit wide memory interface which connects to 1.5GB of GDDR5 video buffer memory.

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Zotac GeForce GTX 580 Infinity Edition water cooled graphics card
Zotac GeForce GTX 580 Infinity Edition water cooled graphics card - PCB back
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