We found the Asus Matrix GTX 580 Platinum that we reviewed in the November 2011 issue to be pretty badass: It’s a solid, factory-overclocked card that’s impressively easy to push even harder. But it’s also three slots wide and requires two 8-pin PCIe power connectors. Gigabyte’s GTX 580 Super Overclock (model GV-N580SO-15L) takes Nvidia’s GPU even further, pumping the core from a stock 772MHz all the way to 855MHz, and the card’s 1.5GB of GDDR5 memory from a stock 1,002MHz to 1,025MHz (the Matrix GTX 580 comes out of the box with its GPU running at 816MHz and its memory at 1,002MHz). And the Gigabyte takes up only two slots and uses just a single 8-pin power connector.Gigabyte, like Asus, provides software to help you overclock the card even more, but Gigabyte’s card lacks the other engineering amenities that Asus provides, including voltage control, insta-max fan speed, and reset-to-factory-settings buttons. This renders Gigabyte’s offering less forgiving when it comes to pushing the envelope. The Super OC ships with three cooling fans, which must be better than the two on the Matrix, right? Well, the card remained cool enough during our benchmarks, but we also found it to be noisier under load than the Matrix card.