GeForce GTX 590 Review Introduction

GeForce

GTX 480 Radeon

HD 6970 GeForce

GTX 580 Radeon

HD 5970 Radeon HD 6990 GeForce

GTX 590 Shader units 480 1536 512 2x 1600 2x 1536 2x 512 ROPs 48 32 48 2x 32 2x 32 2x 48 GPU GF100 Cayman GF110 2x Cypress 2x Cayman 2x GF110 Transistors 3200M 2640M 3000M 2x 2154M 2x 2640M 2x 3000M Memory Size 1536 MB 2048 MB 1536 MB 2x 1024 MB 2x 2048 MB 2x 1536 MB Memory Bus Width 384 bit 256 bit 384 bit 2x 256 bit 2x 256 bit 2x 384 bit Core Clock 700 MHz 880 MHz 772 MHz 725 MHz 830 MHz 607 MHz Memory Clock 924 MHz 1375 MHz 1002 MHz 1000 MHz 1250 MHz 855 MHz Price $400 $370 $500 $580 $699 $699

Being the vendor behind the fastest graphics card money can buy means a lot for both NVIDIA and AMD, in equal measures, as neither is willing to accept the "second best" spot while trying to spin off their mediocrity with "performance/features to price" (unlike the desktop CPU industry). NVIDIA has been a company traditionally seen as being behind the fastest GPUs for longer periods of time, and with higher standards in product quality. Its GeForce GTX 580 single-GPU was very fast, but its competition was inconclusive with the Radeon HD 5970, the red team's lead extended with the launch of Radeon HD 6990, a couple of weeks earlier, but now NVIDIA got the GeForce GTX 590.We in the media had written off the possibility of a dual Fermi graphics card, like GeForce GTX 590, using two GF100 GPUs after seeing the GeForce GTX 480's obnoxious thermal/electrical figures. GF110 is worlds apart from GF100 in terms of thermal and electrical characteristics, but even that left a bit of a doubt if NVIDIA can actually pull of a dual-GPU graphics card design based on it, let alone a single-PCB dual-GPU design. Well, NVIDIA's engineers shut us up with their GeForce GTX 590. But that's only a part of the story. Whether this 6 Billion transistor, 1024 CUDA core, 3 GB over 384 GB/s monstrosity keeps its cool and checks its appetite while it performs well is the business-end of it and we will test this in our GTX 590 review.We have today with us a GeForce GTX 590 by ASUS, which sticks to NVIDIA's reference design, and combines it with ASUS' high quality packaging and bundle. ASUS' Voltage Tweak technology and SmartDoctor software that lets you up voltage is very much part of the package, ready to enhance your GTX 590 with overclocking. Boy oh boy.