Nvidia GeForce GTX 590 Review - PAGE 1

The GTX 590 is a graphics card designed for extreme gamers looking for the optimal gaming experience, and is set to become the flagship product of the GeForce 500-series. To facilitate this high level of gaming, the GTX 590 utilizes dual GF110 GPUs that feature 1024 CUDA cores (512 per GPU), 32 Streaming Multiprocessors, 128 Texture units and 96 ROP Units. In addition, the GTX 590 includes a large 3GB frame buffer with a 384-bit interface to improve performance at the higher-end. All of this should allow the GTX 590 to compete aggressively against the HD 6990, as the two battle it out for the title of being the fastest graphics card currently on the market.

Unlike the HD 6990, however, the GTX 590 is designed to be a very efficient and quiet solution that doesn’t sacrifice overall acoustics to achieve a higher performance level. This is done via the use of dual vapor chamber thermal solutions and an extruded 90mm intake fan. Nvidia has even gone as far as optimizing the PCB by adding two ounces of copper in both the ground and power layers. The acoustics level of the HD 6990 proved very loud at the highest fan RPM, so it will be interesting to see if Nvidia succeeded in creating a solution that is powerful, yet still efficient and quiet.

The GTX 590 is going to enter the market with an MSRP of $699, so it’s clear that Nvidia is not holding any punches, as this is the exact pricing of the HD 6990. This means if Nvidia can match or exceed the performance of the HD 6990 but do so with lower acoustics, then they could have AMD in a tough spot.

In this review we will be pitting the GTX 590 against many single and dual GPU graphics cards currently on the market, including the HD 6990, but we have also recently updated our benchmarks to include a wider range of SLI and CrossFire configurations. This way we will have a comprehensive list of the different SLI and CrossFire options available, which gives us a better understanding of the performance comparison between the different configurations.