NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590 Is World’s Fastest Graphics Card
NVIDIA today introduced the GeForce® GTX® 590, the fastest dual graphics card available today which also happens to be the world’s quietest too. Powered by dual NVIDIA Fermi™-class GPUs on a single card, the GTX 590 is designed for über enthusiasts and those looking to build the ultimate PC gaming rig.
With a combined 1024 NVIDIA CUDA® architecture cores, 3GB of GDDR5 memory, 6 billion transistors and over 2200 individual components all packed into an 11 inch dual slot card, the GTX 590 delivers a staggering 32 tessellation engines that can power today’s cutting edge DX11 games at resolutions of 2560×1600 and higher. With four separate video outputs on each card, consumers can configure their PC with four independent displays, or they can span their gaming across 3 3D displays, at a resolution up to 5760×1080 for an intense, immersive, stereoscopic gaming experience utilizing NVIDIA 3D Vision™ Surround technology.
Like all NVIDIA «DX11 Done Right» GPUs, the GTX 590 delivers the world’s fastest performance for DX11 games(i). And with NVIDIA SLI® technology, the industry’s most scalable multi-GPU platform, gamers can increase their PC’s gaming performance by adding a second GeForce GTX 590, for an incredible Quad SLI gaming mode.
NVIDIA engineered the GTX 590 to be the world’s quietest dual GPU product. It features a special cooling system and dual vapor chambers which deliver both astounding performance and acoustics. Measured with a standard decibel meter, the GTX 590 clocks in at 48dB, more than two times quieter than the closest competitive product under full graphics load. To the human ear, this difference means the GTX 590 delivers a 3D gaming experience that is typical of a quiet library. In comparison, the competition’s product is more on par with a busy freeway.
«The GTX 590 is the best dual GPU product ever built,» said Drew Henry, general manager of GeForce GPU business at NVIDIA.
«With leading performance, support for multi-monitor 3D gaming, Quad SLI, and an acoustic envelope that begs to be heard for how quiet it is, the GTX 590 epitomizes what a perfect dual graphics card looks, performs, and sounds like.»
With an estimated selling e-tail price starting at $699 USD, the GeForce GTX 590 is available starting today from the world’s leading add-in card partners, including Asus, EVGA, Gainward, Gigabyte, Inno3D, MSI, POV, Palit, and Zotac.
For more information on the new GeForce GTX 590, please visit: http://www.geforce.com/Hardware/GPUs/geforce-gtx-590/overview.
For an interactive demo of the new GeForce GTX 590, please visit:
http://www.geforce.com/Hardware/GPUs/geforce-gtx-590/productdemo.
To download GeForce GTX 590 product photographs, please visit the NVIDIA Flickr page located here: http://bit.ly/hZ2rpo.
What System Builders Are Saying About GeForce GTX 590:
CyberPower — US
«The tremendous graphics performance and improved acoustics combined with the wealth of NVIDIA technologies make the GeForce GTX 590 the card to get for gamers and enthusiasts.
The latest flagship GTX 590 will be incorporated into CyberPower’s many award winning systems including the Fang EVO series, Black Pearl, and Gamer 3D series of gaming PCs.»
— Eric Cheung, CEO
Digital Storm — US
«The GeForce GTX 590 is the most impressive DirectX 11 graphics card NVIDIA has ever released. Amazingly quiet and incredibly powerful, it absolutely blew us away when we hooked it up to our 5760×1080 3D Vision Surround system.»
— Rajeev Kuruppu, Director of Product Development
Falcon Northwest — US
«The fact that the GTX 590 is the fastest card ever made doesn’t surprise me. We’ve come to expect that with each new release from NVIDIA. What floors me is the low noise level this card produces. At full speed it’s more than 10 decibels quieter than competing dual-GPU cards, which means it’s literally half as loud. The fastest card at half the noise — impressive!»
— Kelt Reeves, President and CEO
iBUYPOWER — US
«The GeForce GTX 590 is a surprisingly quiet for a card of its power.
The combination performance and feature set make this video card hands down the best overall video card for gaming that we’ve ever seen.»
— Darren Su, Vice President
Inet — Sweden
«Our first impression of the card is how quiet and cool it is, but yet so extremely powerful. We couldn’t wait to try it in our monster PC, the Inet TaurusÜberkill. The test results are brilliant and we can’t wait to get yet another card so we can run it in SLI. The GTX 590 is a quiet beast with no competition on the market!»
— Erik Wickman, Purchasing Manager
Maingear — US
«The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590 graphics solution in our desktops offers THE ultimate gaming experience. The GTX 590 has it all: NVIDIA 3D Surround, dual GPUs, and dual custom vapor chambers to keep the card cool and quiet. Pair it up with the MAINGEAR SHIFT of F131 and you have a complete package to run any game at any setting no questions asked!»
— Wallace Santos, CEO and Founder
Origin PC — US
«ORIGIN is dedicated to providing the best NVIDIA GPUs to our customers and the GeForce GTX 590 certainly fits the bill.
It is the fastest graphics card we have ever tested and stays amazingly quiet, even under full game load! For gamers, the timing of the GTX 590 is perfect. They can get our ORIGIN GENESIS, the GTX 590, Crysis 2, and a HD monitor and know they will be ready to have the best PC gaming experience possible.»
— Kevin Wasielewski, CEO and Co-Founder
Paradigit — Holland
«The GTX 590 is the single fastest card we’ve ever seen — on top of that, its low noise, power consumption and cool operation easily make it the must-have card of 2011! Order yours now to be ready for the next generation of games.»
— Jasper Driuf, Purchasing Manager
Scan — UK
«The GeForce GTX 590 is the ultimate high end graphics card that Scan Computers love! Ultimate performance, whisper quiet acoustics, menacing looks; it clearly has it all, and when coupled with an EK water block and Scan knowhow, the 3XS Scorpion-X PC is unleashed!»
— Elan Raja III, Director
V3 Gaming — US
«The new NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590 is a very well-designed product, evidenced by the superior performance and decreased noise and heat outputs when compared to the competition.
«
— Thomas Gribble, Product Manager
Velocity Micro — US
«With the release of the GTX 590, NVIDIA has once again broken new ground in the ultra performance GPU space. Our initial testing has shown that a quieter, faster card than the GTX 590 simply doesn’t exist, which is sure to make it popular with our power-hungry customers. In short, the GTX 590is remarkably quiet for such a powerful card.»
— Randy Copeland, President and CEO
Verkkokauppa — Finland
«NVIDIA GTX 590is the most impressive piece of hardware I have seen in long time. Thanks to great cooling system design it has amazingly low noise level for the superior performance GTX 590provides. This card will give the ultimate experience for every gaming enthusiast!»
— Johannes Pajunen, Product Manager
About NVIDIA
NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) awakened the world to the power of computer graphics when it invented the GPU in 1999.
Since then, it has consistently set new standards in visual computing with breathtaking, interactive graphics available on devices ranging from tablets and portable media players to notebooks and workstations. NVIDIA’s expertise in programmable GPUs has led to breakthroughs in parallel processing which make supercomputing inexpensive and widely accessible. The Company holds more than 1,800 patents worldwide, including ones covering designs and insights that are essential to modern computing. For more information, see www.nvidia.com.
Certain statements in this press release including, but not limited to statements as to: the features, benefits, performance, price and impact of NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590, NVIDIA «DX11 Done Right» GPUs, NVIDIA 3D Vision technology and NVIDIA SLI technology; and the effects of the company’s patents on modern computing are forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause results to be materially different than expectations.
Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include: global economic conditions; our reliance on third parties to manufacture, assemble, package and test our products; the impact of technological development and competition; development of new products and technologies or enhancements to our existing product and technologies; market acceptance of our products or our partners products; design, manufacturing or software defects; changes in consumer preferences or demands; changes in industry standards and interfaces; unexpected loss of performance of our products or technologies when integrated into systems; as well as other factors detailed from time to time in the reports NVIDIA files with the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, including its Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended January 30, 2011. Copies of reports filed with the SEC are posted on the company’s website and are available from NVIDIA without charge. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and speak only as of the date hereof, and, except as required by law, NVIDIA disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements to reflect future events or circumstances.
© 2011 NVIDIA Corporation. All rights reserved. NVIDIA, the NVIDIA logo, 3D Vision, CUDA, GeForce, Fermi and SLI are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated. Features, pricing, availability, and specifications are subject to change without notice.
(i) GTX 590 compared to HD Radeon 6990 across twelve DX11 games and benchmarks at a 2560×1600 resolution. Drivers used were NVIDIA 267.71 and Catalyst 11.4 Preview. Performance gain of GTX 590 over Radeon 6990 across all games and benchmarks was eleven percent on average.
Performance: Quad-SLI Versus Quad-CrossFire — Nvidia GeForce GTX 590 3 GB Review: Firing Back With 1024 CUDA Cores
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Just prior to the launch, Maingear sent over its gorgeous Shift, all decked out with an overclocked Core i7-2600K running at 4.
5 GHz. It included two GeForce GTX 590s and one Radeon HD 6990 (we already had one here in the lab to add to the system), allowing us to run benchmarks in an actual case and compare quad-GPU configurations from both AMD and Nvidia.
Maingear helped assuage one of my biggest concerns with its machine: mainly, the need for ventilation would force enthusiasts to adopt ugly, airy enclosures just to let the cards inside breathe. The Shift demonstrates that it’s still possible to get a classy, monolithic PC (vertically-oriented, even) and still support GeForce GTX 590s and Radeon HD 6990 cards in quad-GPU configurations. The system does radiate a lot of heat under load, particularly toward the bottom, where these cards push a lot of air, but it handles the challenging thermals without a hiccup.
Most impressive is the fact that both configurations work without generating a ton of noise. Do not compare the following numbers to the results on page 17. Instead of measuring from 28″ behind each card’s exhaust port, we buttoned up the Maingear machine, stuck it under a desk three feet away, and noted the acoustic levels two feet off of the ground.
Swipe to scroll horizontally
| Noise At Idle And Load (Extech 407768) | ||
|---|---|---|
| Row 0 — Cell 0 | GeForce GTX 590 3 GB (Quad-SLI) | Radeon HD 6990 4 GB (Quad-CrossFire) |
| Idle | 43.9 dB(A) | 43.5 dB(A) |
| Load | 48.2 dB(A) | 53.2 dB(A) |
The AMD cards are still louder than Nvidia’s in a closed system versus an open test bench. However, we’re pleased to see Maingear’s beefed-up cooling subsystem keeping air moving briskly enough to avoid the 3600 RPM fan setting.
Now we can start comparing the performance of two Radeon HD 6990s to a pair of GeForce GTX 590s. Just as we saw in the single-card results, Nvidia’s flagship part dominates, so long as you don’t exceed the capabilities of its onboard memory.
With 4x MSAA applied, AMD’s Radeon HD 6990 in one- and two-card configurations is the faster solution. And you really need two of those cards (four Cayman GPUs total) to make Metro 2033 playable at 2560×1600 using our demanding settings.
Although AMD gets the upper-hand in the most taxing environments, we get the sense that its drivers aren’t yet as ready for quad-GPU operation, despite the almost three-week head start its team has on Nvidia’s launch. Two 6990s in CrossFire aren’t even able to start the Lost Planet 2 benchmark before crashing to the Windows desktop.
AMD’s problems continue in Aliens vs. Predator, where even its newest Catalyst 11.4 preview driver doesn’t seem to serve up scaling between two cards. As a result, where we see one Radeon HD 6990 outperform the GeForce GTX 590, two 590s take a commanding lead.
In single-card mode, AMD’s Radeon HD 6990 is only slightly faster than the GeForce GTX 590. But adding a second card shows that four Cayman GPUs scale better than a quartet of GF110s in Battlefield: Bad Company 2.
One Radeon HD 6990 is faster than one GeForce GTX 590 in Just Cause 2. Adding a second card allows AMD to maintain that lead without AA/AF. However, the GeForce GTX 590s in SLI manage to pass AMD’s solution once anti-aliasing is applied. The performance is close, just as we’d expect given identical price tags.
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Review and first test of ASUS GeForce GTX 590 GECID.com. Page 1
::>Video cards
>2011
> ASUS ENGTX590/3DIS/3GD5
02-04-2011
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The history of dual-chip graphics cards dates back to the release of the Rage Fury MAXX graphics accelerator by ATI on October 1999 years. In view of the not very good price-performance ratio, this model could not achieve popularity. New models of GeForce graphics accelerators from NVIDIA, released soon, have become much more attractive in terms of price and performance. At that time, the main problem for dual-chip solutions was their instability and the unpreparedness of applications to support such video cards. Multi-chip configurations were also produced by 3dfx, but after its bankruptcy, all technologies were transferred to NVIDIA, which bought it.
The latter applied the acquired developments in SLI technology and its monolithic version — dual-chip graphics accelerators.
But for a long time the most productive and successful dual-chip solutions have been produced by AMD. One of them was the Radeon HD 5970 graphics accelerator, and not so long ago, the even faster AMD Radeon HD 6990 graphics card appeared. NVIDIA did not release the dual-chip flagship of the 400 series due to the high thermal package of the «top» GF100 graphics processors. However, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 was still the most productive, albeit the hottest, single-chip solution for some time. The release of the new graphics accelerator NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 only consolidated the company’s leadership in the segment of single-chip video cards, but the absolute superiority in performance still remained with AMD. With the advent of the new GF110 chip, it became possible to create a two-chip solution based on the Fermi architecture. This gives NVIDIA a chance to become the absolute leader in the production of the fastest graphics accelerators by releasing NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590 .
In this article, we will finally be able to determine the market leader and compare the performance of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590 with its direct competitor AMD Radeon HD 6990. Our readers have already been able to familiarize themselves with the review and computing capabilities of the «reference» analog of the latter from ASUS in the material » Review and testing of Ultra High End video card ASUS Radeon HD 6990”.
As already mentioned, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590 graphics card is based on two GF110 graphics cores, which were used in the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 solution. For more details on their architecture, see the material dedicated to this single-chip flagship. Here, let’s compare the specification and theoretical capabilities of NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590 with similar performance competitors AMD Radeon HD 6990 and AMD Radeon HD 5970.
|
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590 |
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 |
AMD Radeon HD 6990 |
AMD Radeon HD 5970 |
|
|
Kernel codename |
2 x GF110 |
GF110 |
2 x Cayman XT |
2 x Cypress |
|
Process technology, nm |
40 |
40 |
40 |
40 |
|
Number of transistors |
2 x 3 billion |
3 billion |
2 x 2. |
2 x 2.15 billion |
|
Number of universal processors |
2 x 512 |
512 |
2 x 384 |
2 x 320 |
|
Number of texture processors |
2 x 64 |
64 |
2 x 96 |
2 x 80 |
|
Number of rasterization blocks |
2×48 |
48 |
2 x 32 |
2 x 32 |
|
Core frequency, MHz |
607 |
772 |
830/880 |
725 |
|
Memory frequency, MHz |
3414 |
4008 |
5000 |
4000 |
|
Memory size, MB |
3072 |
1536 |
4096 |
2048 |
|
Memory bus bit |
2 x 384 |
384 |
2 x 256 |
2 x 256 |
64 billion NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590 graphics cards have two full GF110 graphics chips with 512 CUDA cores.
However, the significant heat dissipation of this solution forced NVIDIA engineers to significantly lower the GPU operating frequencies from 772 MHz to 607 MHz and the memory frequencies from 4008 MHz to 3414 MHz, which made it possible to reduce the supply voltage and reduce the total thermal package. Of course, such changes significantly reduce the overall performance of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 59.0 compared to an SLI build of two solutions on the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580.
AMD also had to lower the frequencies in its dual-GPU AMD Radeon HD 6990 graphics accelerator from 880 to 830 MHz, but their reference models have the ability to overclock (using special switch), thanks to which the user can force the AMD Radeon HD 6990 to operate at a frequency of 880 MHz. Although the latter leads to a significant increase in power consumption and a significant increase in the noise level that the «reference» cooling system creates.
Another distinguishing feature of the AMD Radeon HD 6990 is that it has 2 GB of memory for each graphics core, while the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590 has 1.
5 GB of it. This amount of memory will be required only at very high resolutions, that is, when working on multiple monitors or in 3D mode. Such configurations are still quite expensive and not practical, and therefore a large frame buffer will most likely simply not be needed by the average user.
It is these facts that do not allow us now to unequivocally determine the leader among video cards based on NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590 and its direct competitors on the AMD Radeon HD 6990. We will find out who is the best in the «Testing» section.
The high performance of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590 models also provides them with additional features — support for 3D Vision Surround. This makes it possible to play on three 3D monitors simultaneously with sufficiently high quality settings in 3D Vision mode.
Such important technology for the quality of the gameplay as PhysX should also benefit from the presence of two GF110 graphics cores in the system at once. Of course, giving an entire graphics core to the calculation of «physics» is quite wasteful, but this can also significantly improve the quality of game physical effects.
In new drivers for NVIDIA GeForce GTX 59 solutions0, there was a rather dubious possibility of activating 128x AA anti-aliasing modes. For the average gamer, the differences between 16x and 32x anti-aliasing will be almost imperceptible, it will only load the graphics accelerator more with additional texture processing.
After getting acquainted with the general features of the new flagship of the 500th line from NVIDIA, I would like to proceed to the study of a real graphics accelerator, which was provided to our test laboratory by ASUS, the ASUS GeForce GTX 59 video card0 (ENGTX590/3DIS/3GD5)..
ASUS GeForce GTX 590 (ENGTX590/3DIS/3GD5) has a fully reference design, both PCB and cooling system. But the main feature of this model will be support for overclocking with the ability to increase the voltage on the core of the video card. ASUS Voltage Tweak technology has a Smart Doctor software interface that allows you to overclock your graphics card and get a noticeable performance boost.
Considering that this model is very similar to the «reference» solution, its specification table must also fully correspond to the specifications posted on the NVIDIA website.
Specification:
|
Model |
ASUS GeForce GTX 590 (ENGTX590/3DIS/3GD5) |
|
Graphics core |
2 x NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590 (GF110-A1) |
|
Conveyors |
2 x 512 unified flow |
|
Supported APIs |
DirectX 11, OpenGL 4.1 |
|
Core frequency, MHz |
612 |
|
Frequency of unified processors, MHz |
1224 |
|
Memory frequency (effective), MHz |
855 (3420) |
|
Size (type) of memory, MB |
2x 1536 (GDDR5) |
|
Memory bus bit |
2x 384 |
|
Tire standard |
PCI Express X16 2. |
|
Maximum resolution |
Up to 2560×1600 (Dual-link DVI) or 1920×1200 (Single-link DVI) |
|
Outputs |
3xDVI-I, mini-DisplayPort |
|
HDCP and HD video support |
Yes |
|
Dimensions, mm |
111×280 |
|
Power supply requirements, W |
~700 |
|
Maximum allowable core temperature, ° |
97 |
|
Drivers |
Latest drivers can be downloaded from the support page or GPU manufacturer’s website |
|
Manufacturer website |
http://www. |
0 
asus.ua/ As can be seen from the table, the ASUS GeForce GTX 590 (ENGTX590/3DIS/3GD5) model differs from the «reference» sample in the frequency of the graphics core of the video card, it is 5 MHz higher than the recommended one and is equal to 614 MHz, and the effective memory frequency has increased by insignificant 6 MHz. Perhaps this is the desire of ASUS to be at least a little, but still ahead of the rest, even among the «reference» solutions. Whatever that means, the actual performance gain from such an increase in frequency will not be noticeable even in tests. The remaining characteristics are fully consistent with the reference solution NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590.
The serial graphics card with «reference» design ASUS GeForce GTX 590 has a simple package. Its design is completely identical to the design of the boxes of the «top» video cards of the 500th series from ASUS.
The package focuses on the possibility of increasing the core voltage of the video card, which theoretically can improve its performance by 50%.
Below is the GTX 590 chip used in the graphics accelerator, the 3 GB GDDR5 memory present on the board, support for the DirectX 11 specification and NVIDIA 3D Vision and NVIDIA SLI technologies.
One of the sides lists the minimum system requirements for this dual-chip graphics card. Of the main ones, it is important to note the need for a minimum of 700 W power supply with the ability to supply + 12V from 50 A. Additional power for the ASUS Radeon HD 6990 graphics accelerator was a little more modest, 42 A was enough for the + 12V line. This means that solutions from NVIDIA remain the most «gluttonous».
On the reverse side, in addition to the NVIDIA SLI and NVIDIA 3D Vision Ready logos, there is a brief description of the features and supported technologies. There is a mention of support for ASUS Voltage Tweak, full-fledged work with DirectX 11 instructions is emphasized, and there is a mention of support for gaming on three monitors at once with this solution.
There is a small diagram for connecting displays to the rear panel interfaces. Summing up, we can note the informative content of printing, which will help the buyer to learn about all the advantages and characteristics of the product he is purchasing.
The video card itself and a small additional package are located inside. ASUS engineers put the following in the box with the graphics accelerator:
-
User’s manual;
-
CD with drivers and instructions in many languages;
-
Video card power adapter from two 6-pin connectors to one eight-pin PCI Express;
-
DVI to VGA adapter;
- DVI to HDMI adapter.
Quite a minimalistic kit, considering the price for a video card based on two «top» GeForce GTX 580 chips. The ASUS Radeon HD 6990 graphics accelerator had a much more diverse kit. There is no SLI bridge or mini DisplayPort to full-size DisplayPort adapter. It is the last two components that the ASUS GeForce GTX 590 (ENGTX590/3DIS/3GD5) model lacks for a universal set that would fully fill in all the nuances of using this video card.
The general appearance of the video card is quite impressive, although the use of a conventional fan instead of the usual turbine for «reference» solutions is somewhat surprising. Will such a design of the cooling system cope with the significant heat dissipation from two GF110 graphics cores? The dark textolite of the board and the shape of the black plastic casing, which covers the front side, fully correspond to the «reference» solution. The only difference between the ASUS GeForce GTX 590 (ENGTX590/3DIS/3GD5) is the «ASUS» inscription in silver letters on the left side of the shroud and on the fan itself.
The overall dimensions of the ASUS GeForce GTX 590 video card are surprisingly much smaller than those of the ASUS Radeon HD 6990 — its length is 280 mm, which is three centimeters shorter than the AMD solution. We have shown all the most dimensional modern video cards in the image above. ASUS GeForce GTX 590 can be compared in size with AMD Radeon HD 6970, although NVIDIA’s solution is still 0.
5 cm larger.
The manufacturer has prudently placed two additional power connectors on the top of the video card. ASUS GeForce GTX 59 Dimensions0 will allow you to place it in almost any modern case. And the installation procedure itself is not complicated by the inconvenience of connecting the video card’s additional power connectors.
In total, the graphics accelerator power system uses (in addition to the PCI Express bus) two eight-pin power connectors. This arrangement provides a total of 375 watts of power. NVIDIA claims that the GeForce GTX 590 reference GPU has a TDP of 365W. This is slightly more than Radeon HD 69 solutions90 at standard frequencies (TDP 350 W) and significantly less than the ASUS Radeon HD 6990 in overclocked mode (TDP 415 W). Recall that the Radeon HD 5970 had a TDP of 294 watts. Due to such «gluttony» for the ASUS GeForce GTX 590 solution, it is recommended to use a power supply unit with a capacity of 700 W or higher. We can also note that the ASUS ENGTX590/3DIS/3GD5 model has one SLI port, which will allow creating a Quad SLI graphics subsystem and doubling the performance by combining two such video cards.
In addition to the fact that the ASUS GeForce GTX 590 (ENGTX590/3DIS/3GD5) video card occupies two slots, its rear part has a “window” for hot air to escape. These two nuances will have to be taken into account by the user when choosing the configuration of his PC.
There are three DVI ports and one mini-Display Port on the interface panel. Part of the second slot is occupied by a small grille for ejecting hot air outside the case. Such a grille can reduce the overall cooling efficiency, but the manufacturer considered it sufficient. The set of output interfaces is large enough, but still needs additional adapters. There is a DVI-to-VGA adapter included, but there is no way to connect to this monitor model via a full-size Display Port connector. This may slightly limit the versatility of using the card, because there are not as many monitors with a Display Port interface as with DVI. To the DVI connector, due to the adapter included in the kit, you can easily connect a cable with a full-fledged HDMI connector.
Such a set of adapters, together with three DVI connectors and one mini-Display Port on the interface panel, will provide ample versatility for connecting monitors and other image output devices.
Most of the PCB surface is occupied by elements of a fairly complex video card power system. To provide stable current to the two GPU chips, 5 phases each are used here, and the memory chips have 2 phases for every 1.5 GB of memory. To do this, the ASUS GeForce GTX 590 uses two six-phase PWM controllers CHiL Semiconductor CHL8266. The memory is powered by APW7088 controllers. As transistors, TDA21211 assemblies from Infenion are used. Low profile chokes do not interfere with the cooling plate installed here. Most of the tantalum capacitors are located on the back side of the board, which should increase the stability of the video card, reduce its heat generation and, hopefully, provide it with good overclocking capabilities.
Two GF110 graphics chips are combined into a «local» SLI system using the NVIDIA NF200-P-SLI-A3 PCI-Express bridge.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590 has two GPUs with core code name GF110-375-A1.
The ASUS GeForce GTX 590 (ENGTX590/3DIS/3GD5) model is very similar in performance to the «reference» version of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590 accelerator. The graphics processor operates at a frequency of 612 MHz, which is 5 MHz more than the reference model, and shader domains respectively have a frequency of 1224 MHz. However, such factory overclocking, less than 1%, will be invisible even with biased testing, it will be hidden by measurement errors.
The video memory on the ASUS GeForce GTX 590 received 855 MHz of the real frequency (3420 MHz of the effective frequency), which is 6 MHz more than the recommended one. The GDDR5 memory chips used here with a total capacity of 2 x 1536 MB are marked SAMSUNG K4G10325FE-HC04, which corresponds to the actual operating frequency of 1250 MHz or 5000 MHz effective. This can provide us with a good frequency headroom during overclocking.
In idle mode, the frequency of the GF110 graphics chip can be reduced to 50 MHz, and the memory frequency to 135 MHz. This feature corresponds to the 12th level of performance settings. However, on our bench, the frequencies dropped only to the eighth level of performance.
As a result, without load, the frequency of the GF110 graphics chip dropped to 405 MHz, and the memory frequency to 162 MHz (648 MHz effective frequency). Simultaneously with lowering the frequencies, the voltage on the graphics processor decreases to 0.875 V. The fan speed has decreased to 1500 rpm, which is 40% of its maximum. At such speeds, the noise emitted by the video card becomes invisible against the general background of the system and does not create discomfort. In total, this should have a significant effect on the level of power consumption during downtime.
Cooling System
The GeForce GTX 590 graphics card cooling design uses two vapor chambers, one for each graphics core.
This design allows you to evenly distribute the heat removed from the GPU across all the aluminum heatsink plates that are soldered to the copper evaporation chamber. The fan installed in the cooling system does not have a turbine blade design, but its speed is even higher than that of the turbine installed on the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580. The fan creates a stream of air that passes through the aluminum plates located on both sides of it. This ensures that part of the heated air is removed outside the chapel.
The cooling system has an additional heatsink plate that covers the top of the video card and provides heat removal through a special thermal interface from the memory chips and transistors of the power system. On the reverse side, there are also two plates that remove heat from the memory chips. The very design of the cooling system is very similar to that of the ASUS Radeon HD 6990, except that AMD preferred a turbine-type fan. For ASUS GeForce GTX 590, such a choice may provide a quieter operation of the cooling system, but will clearly reduce its efficiency.
To check the efficiency of the cooling system, we used the FurMark utility, which was able to fully load both GPUs. Detailed monitoring was carried out using MSI Afterburner 2.2.0 Beta 1.
Working at stock frequencies and controlling the turbine speed automatically, the GPUs warmed up to 84 and 85 °C. At the same time, the cooler rotation speed was 1830 rpm, which was 51% of the maximum, and the entire system worked with barely noticeable noise. Such indicators of the cooling system indicate its good capabilities and will have a positive effect on the results of manual overclocking.
After setting the turbine speed to maximum speed, the temperatures of the two GPUs dropped significantly. Under FurMark load, the temperature of the first graphics core dropped to 69°C, and the second to 68°C. The noise level emitted by the turbine has become significant.
If we draw an analogy with the «reference» sample on the Radeon HD 6990, then the cooling system used in the ASUS GeForce GTX 590 is much quieter at almost the same GPU operating temperatures of these graphics accelerators.
Despite the «hot temper» of the video card, the noise level of the ASUS GeForce GTX 590 even at maximum load is not very large, and is in the region of average values. Moreover, in video games that stress the graphics card less than the FurMark stress test, the noise level can be described as barely audible. Therefore, for most gamers, the fan noise of the new dual-chip video card from NVIDIA will definitely not cause inconvenience.
Nvidia GeForce GTX 590 (SLI Disabled) Specs, Price, Gaming Test, Competitors
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Nvidia GeForce GTX 590 (SLI Disabled) points out of 100.
Price in Russia
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Nvidia GeForce GTX 59 test0 (SLI Disabled)
Gaming speed
Nvidia GeForce GTX 590 (SLI Disabled) performance in games, benchmarks and similar applications, according to our tests.
Office computer
Office computer
Popular among users who choose a graphics adapter for the office.
Workstation
Popular with users looking for a workstation graphics adapter.
Data obtained from tests by users who tested their systems with and without overclocking. Thus, you see the average values corresponding to the video card.
Our benchmarks
3D DX9 |
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| Minimum | Average | Maximum |
| 22 | Illumination: 39 | 45 9003 |
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Lighting 7 |
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| 32 | Reflections: 35 | 39 |
| 23 | Parallax: 25 | 28 |
DirectX 9 3D graphics test suite.
DirectX 9 is an API that has been used to create many games. Although obsolete, it remains relevant to this day. It has been used to create popular games that have already become classics, such as Halo, Far Cry, Doom 3 and Half Life Two.
3D DX10 |
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| Minimum | Average | Maximum |
| 31 | MRender: 33 | 34 |
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MRender 6.1 |
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| 17 | N-body: 17 | 18 |
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N-body 3.1 |
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| 23 | Spray: 24 | 26 |
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Spray 7. |
4 DirectX 10 3D graphics test suite. DirectX 10 is a newer set of APIs that are used to create popular games. Gradually losing relevance, however, is used in such well-known games as Battlefield 4, Company of Heroes, Crysis and Dirt.
Features
Main
| Manufacturer | Nvidia |
Video processor specifications
Video memory specifications
Supported technologies
Detailed specifications
Theoretical performance
Remaining
Competitors
| Games | Office | Heavy duty | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Better than | AMD R9 280X | AMD R9 Nano | AMD R9 290 |
| Worse than | AMD Radeon RX Vega M GL | AMD RX 580 | AMD FirePro W7000 |
Please note that competitors are selected automatically based on performance in a particular task.