Asus GTX580 P/2DIS/1536MD5

Asus makes three different graphics cards powered by Nvidia's GeForce GTX 580 GPU and the Matrix GTX580 P/2DIS/1536MD5 on test here is the biggest and maddest of the lot.

Like its less expensive cousin GTX 570 cousin, the Matrix is a massive card, meaning you'll have to sacrifice three rear expansion slots. You'll also have to make sure that you can physically fit the card into your case, as it's the largest graphics card here.

While the Matrix looks similar to its GTX 570 counterpart, studying the card closer will reveal some seriously cool overclocking tools. The card has dedicated overclocking controls on the edge of its PCB, close to the two PCI-E power ports. There's also a fan control button that, when pressed, instantly spools the two cooling fans to maximum speed. This is useful for when you're pushing seriously high GPU and memory frequencies.

There are even dedicated measurement points that let you see exactly how much voltage your card's various bits are drawing. Last but not least, Asus has also included a ‘Safe mode' button on the rear of the card, so you can instantly reset the card to its standard frequency. A useful inclusion.

Running the Matrix through our test gauntlet, it slaughtered every other card in this round up - it was simply the fastest graphics card in all of our gaming benchmarks.