Noise - using a professional sound meter
NVIDIA makes explicit mention to the fact that the GTX 580's cooler is plain better than the '480's. Honestly, that wouldn't take much, seeing how relatively poor the original's was.We want to shed some analytical light on the system noise levels generated when high-end cards are installed. To this end, we're using a PCE-318 noise meter placed at card height and 20cm away from the chassis-attached side panel on a Corsair Obsidian 700D. Only the test system is running in a quiet - albeit not soundproofed - room and decibel readings are noted for idle, load (COD: MW2) and super-load (FurMark) after 10 minutes have elapsed.
Would you believe it? The GTX 580 is the quietest when idling. Any figure below 40dB represents a quiet system.
Play COD:MW2 for 10 minutes and the GTX 580 is fundamentally quieter than the GTX 480. Decibel ratings rise in a logarithmic scale, meaning that a rating differential of even 3dB is noticeable. A figure below 45dB would, we believe, be acceptable for a gaming machine playing real-world titles.
Pile on some FurMark love (older version for GTX 580) and the gap widens. Radeon HD 5970's rating spiked to 61.5dB for a 15-second period, by the way.
NVIDIA claims the GTX 580 is quieter than the previous champ. Our measurements hold this to be true, although AMD's fastest single-GPU card, Radeon HD 5870, is quieter still.