Manufacturer: Gigabyte Price: $ 699 US Author: Steve Date: 03/22/2011

[ Introduction ]

The arrival of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 590 has been largely anticipated and today the wait is finally over. Not since the mighty GeForce GTX 295 has Nvidia released a dual-GPU graphics card, making the new GTX 590 all the more exciting. For testing we have a Gigabyte production version that comes bundled in a very impressive package... Earlier this week DHL delivered a package containing a toolbox from Gigabyte which was a little unusual. After a closer look I realized that the toolbox was labeled “Nvidia GeForce GTX 590” and my heart stopped for a moment. Still I was not totally convinced Nvidia’s new flagship graphics card would be inside. Was Gigabyte playing a cruel trick, would I just find a few screw drivers and a hammer? As it turns out there was a sledgehammer of a graphics card inside, as I unclipped the toolbox to discover the mighty Gigabyte GeForce GTX 590. For those of you who do not keep up with the $700 US graphics card scene, a fortnight ago AMD unleashed the Radeon HD 6990, which won them the undisputed title for the world’s fastest single graphics card. This multi-GPU graphics card took a pair of Radeon HD 6970 GPU’s and stuck them on a single PCB, it sounds like madness and if we are honest this is exactly what the finished product was. However despite being wildly impractical in the sense that it is grossly priced, obnoxiously loud, extremely long and more power hungry than Kim Jong-il, the Radeon HD 6990 was if anything brutally fast. So fast in fact that it blew the GeForce GTX 580 away by a 48% performance margin, and that kind of beating cannot go unanswered. Therefore Nvidia has fired back with what they call the GeForce GTX 590 and this is essentially a pair of GTX 580 graphics cards squeezed together on a single 28cm long PCB. Not only does this sound crazy, but somewhat impossible as well given the power requirements for a single GTX 580. In an effort to make this product a little less crazy and a lot more possible, Nvidia has sucked quite a bit of life out of each GPU by down clocking them. Even so, despite being a little watered down, the specification list is still enough to drop the jaws of even the most hardcore gamers. Although the GeForce GTX 590 is not going to be as fast as a pair of GeForce GTX 580 SLI graphics cards, it is still going to be extremely fast, particularly for a single card solution. It is also worth keeping in mind that a GeForce GTX 580 SLI setup currently costs at least $1000 and given that the GeForce GTX 590 needs to be relatively competitive with the Radeon HD 6990 in terms of pricing, it is likely that Nvidia does not want to provide GTX 580 SLI performance with the GeForce GTX 590 anyway, as they would be cutting their own lunch.

Table of Contents >>> Introduction <<< Gigabyte GeForce GTX 590 In Detail Test System Specs & 3Dmark 11 Benchmarks: Dirt 2, F1 2010 Benchmarks: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Black Ops Benchmarks: Far Cry 2, Aliens vs. Predator Benchmarks: Crysis Warhead, World in Conflict Benchmarks: Just Cause 2, Mass Effect 2 Benchmarks: Metro 2033, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat Benchmarks: Battlefield Bad Company 2, Splinter Cell Conviction Overclocking Performance Power Consumption & Temperatures Conclusion Next Page ->

Mizza

Posted on: 03/24/2011 09:17 PM What a beast I love it!!!!

djocin

Posted on: 03/24/2011 11:49 PM yeah not as fast as I was expecting. wonder why they clocked it so low great review though thanks.

Horribleron Posts: 13 Joined: 2010-03-26

Posted on: 03/25/2011 03:04 AM The GF110 GPU's suck too much power to run two of them at full speed (772 MHz) on the same PCB. Honestly, I think NVidia would do better with a dual GF114 card. You would have 25% fewer CUDA cores but easily 50% higher clock speeds since most GTX560Ti's will run at 900 to 950 MHz without breaking a sweat. I think a dual GPU version of the GTX560Ti running at 900 MHz would actually beat the GTX590. Maybe Steve can do a little GTX590 versus GTX560Ti SLI test for us.

Razor

Posted on: 03/25/2011 04:28 AM OMG that graphics card is total awesome sauce!

celio

Posted on: 03/25/2011 02:12 PM What a cool package. Gigabyte has done a real nice job with this.

shaun

Posted on: 03/29/2011 12:50 PM thanks for the review, that is one mighty impressive graphics card. would like to see how it handles a few 30" screens

Rob	Posted on: 12/12/2011 02:09 PM Great review, looks to be a really nice card, you compare it to a 580 in sli and say that would beat it, so what would a pair of 590's go like in sli??? Surely then it would be the ultimate gammers wetdream .