Hardware Nvidia GeForce GTX 590 3GB Review

Is the first dual-GPU GeForce card for two years worth the wait?

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2011/03/24/nvidia-geforce-gtx-590-3gb-review/1

 

Thats a HEINOUS power draw.

 

Straight up beastin'.

 

Going to order a 6990 me thinks..

 

£600?

Yeah, no. Would love one, but alas, that's 2/3 of the cost of my new SB build!

 

3 slot cooler? I would rather they spend the next generation of cards on bringing the heat and power requirements right down, ideally to the level where I would be able to power the card from the PCE express bus and not have to worry about additional power connectors.

 

No results for 1920x1200 on BC2?

Yeah, 600 sterling, so roughly €690.... I think I'd go SLI instead. :/

Awesome performance though.

 

ah...so you solely play bfbc2 at 2560x1600 then...good choice.

no doubt the 590 is the best card out...wonder how it compares against 560 sli or even 570 sli

 

anti-climax...... nvidia didn't work hard enough, should have made it beat 6990 outright. asking for £600 when the same performance can be had for just under £500 is outrageous.

 

It's a strange one this because all the other sites I have seen with a review of these card's show the AMD being faster in about 80% of tests.

Not saying Bit-Tech are wrong or anything and I actually trust this site more than other's.

I was wondering what to spend my money on graphic's wise, between the ATI 6990 or the Nvidia GTX 590 but instead I think I will go for 2 GTX 580's on SLI for the better performance yeah they would, use more power and be abit louder but I prefer the extra performance.

Was hoping that this card would be allot better than it is but I am glad it's not as it gives the reason to go for a proper setup.

 

Excellent review as usual chaps, you do spoil us... What a monster of a card! The choice to exhaust hot air back into the case is indeed an odd one, but I suppose it's necessary given the PCB arrangement.

That power draw, as with some of the other top end cards is astonishingly high. I'm not normally one to worry too much about that side of things as most PC components get more efficient with each new iteration, although clearly, graphics cards are in their own little world, happily guzzling wattage by the bucketload in search of those extra couple of fps!

 

Harry ...Anand is not so quite ebullient in his praise nor so quick to dish out the crowns!

"The crux of the matter is that NVIDIA and AMD have significantly different architectures, and once again this has resulted in cards that are quite equal on average but are all over the place in individual games and applications. If we just look at the mean performance lead/loss for all games at 2560, the GTX 590 is within 1% of the 6990, however within those games there’s a great deal of variance. The GTX 590 does extremely well in Civilization V as we’d expect, along with DIRT 2, Mass Effect 2, and HAWX. Meanwhile in Crysis, BattleForge, and especially STALKER the GTX 590 easily comes up short. Thus choosing the most appropriate card is heavily reliant what games are going to be played on it, and as a result there is no one card that can be crowned king.

Of the games NVIDIA does well in, only Civ V is a game we’d classify as highly demanding; the rest are games where the GTX 590 is winning, but it’s also getting 100+ frames per second. Meanwhile on the games AMD does well at the average framerate is much less, and all of the games are what we’d consider demanding. Past performance does not perfectly predict future performance, but there’s a good chance the 6990 is going to have a similar lead on future, similarly intensive games (at least as long as extreme tessellation isn’t a factor). So if you had to choose a card based on planning for future use as opposed to current games, the 6990 is probably the better choice from a performance perspective. Otherwise if you’re choosing based off of games you’d play today, you need to look at the individual games." (Anandtech)

And AIB partners (XFX for sure) ARE covering the 6990 in OC mode.

 

On the notes at the bottom of the graphs on the Power Consumption and Thermals page, you say 5990 instead of 5970.

 

Folding?

Overclocking?

Watercooling opportunities...? Single slot coolers? Quad SLI capabilities?

 

It's more a decision factoring in price. The two cards are pretty much on par, with the exception of cost. I can't see the benefit of an additional £100..

 

So Bit-Tech scoring...

590 - RECOMMENDED
Performance - 10/10
Features - 8/10
Value - 8/10
Overall - 8/10

6990
Performance - 10/10
Features - 7/10 (different but just as useful features as a 590, yet lower score)
Value - 7/10 (cheaper than 590, yet lower score)
Overall - 8/10 (same overall score but not recommended)

Also 4 games, really, just FOUR games. That all for a graphics card review. Reviewing something like this you should choose more games. These days there is no dead cert to say who wins with different games favoring different hardware, your review and games you use in your review should reflect this. Also why even bother to post benchmarks for anything below 1920 (your not the only review site on this).

 

Saying that, scan have the cards starting at £570..

 

Its been said before - Bit-Tech really need to increase and change the games they are using. Using Blops as a test bench for a card like this is just downright absurd.

 

@trig

Its just not that clear cut. Though honestly, anyone deciding between the two will end up with an insanely powerful card either way.

Anandtech has the cards trading big wins depending on the game, and actually they think that looking forward to the intensive games coming out the 6990 will be the higher performing card.

Either would be fantastic to own. If you didn't care about noise, case heat or mortgages

(I'm almost exactly 50/50 red card/green card owner historically)

 

Linky