Nvidia GeForce GTX 590: The Dual-GF110 Beast

Nvidia GeForce GTX 590 - The Dual GF110 video card

Nvidia's long awaited Dual-GPU video card is finally here. The GeForce GTX 590 is designed for enthusiast gamers that need the highest graphics performance and image quality from a single video card. The GTX 590 is a DX11 based video card designed to allow users to turn up their graphics settings--including resolution, anti-aliasing, and image quality--without causing excessive performance decreases which would otherwise render games impossible to play. With full control over Nvidia's driver game presets and other graphics features, users can also enjoy image quality customization which would allow them to use up to 64x anti-aliasing with a single GTX 590 and up to 128xAA with two GTX 590s combined for Quad SLI. The user needs to over-ride the application AA through the Nvidia drivers. Once that is done a Multi-GPU 64x AA is possible with a single GTX 590.

The new Nvidia GeForce GTX 590 uses two GF110 GPUs on a single board, providing up to 1024 CUDA cores (512 per GPU) and 1.5GB of GDDR5 memory per GPU (3GB total). The memory subsystem is very similar to the older single GPU card, the GTX 580, which uses six 64-bit memory controllers (384-bit). This also means that while using one GTX 590, games can use up to 1.5GB of memory (similar to a two-GTX 580 configuration), and with two GTX 590s, games can take advantage of all 3GBs during gameplay. Clock speeds have also changed on the GTX 590. Unfortunately, we do not see two standard clocked GF110 GPUs on the GTX 590 running at the specs that the GTX 580s ran at, so those who have waited to see a card that can perform exactly like two GTX 580s in SLI might be slightly disappointed. Instead, Nvidia downclocked the GPU Clock from 772 MHz to 607 MHz, the Shader from 1544 MHz to 1215 MHz, and the Memory from 4008MHz to 3414MHz. We believe this was the option Nvidia had to take in order to optimize their GTX 590 to stay quiet during full load while also maintaining reasonable temperatures. We will have additional dB(A) readings later in the review comparing the Nvidia GTX 590 to the AMD HD6990. The raw performance we can conclude from these numbers is somewhat like the GTX 570 video card, so it should perform somewhat close to two GTX 570s in SLI.

As far as GPU architecture goes, since the GTX 590 is using the same GF110 chips as the GTX 580, there are no changes in die size, and it still uses a 40nm technology with 3000M transistors. We have a more detailed explanation of the GF110 architecture in our GTX 580 review from November 2010. Note that the Graphics Processing Clusters, Streaming multiprocessors, CUDA Cores, Texture Units, and ROP Units have doubled over the GTX 580 because the GTX 590 is using two GF110 GPUs; however, the card will only be utilizing 1536MB GDDR5 memory and 768KB L2 Cache Size unless there are two GTX 590s which would enable full 3072MB GDDR5 total video memory and 1536kb L2 Cache Size support.

(Expected performance tests between the GTX 580 and GTX 590 set forth by the Nvidia Team)

When the AMD HD6990 was launched, we were severely disappointed by its acoustics. The AMD HD6990 would run at higher RPM which caused a lot of noise during gameplay. Thankfully, Nvidia paid close attention to acoustic noise coming from cooling, and optimized the GTX 590 in order to maintain good temperatures as well. The GTX 580 had fantastic acoustic levels and while the GTX 590 is rated at slightly higher dB levels, it should not be too big of a difference for gamers, especially for those playing with headsets or loud speakers. As mentioned earlier, it seems that in order to maintain good temperatures along with low acoustics, Nvidia had to downclock their cards a bit. This also has to do with its power design, however: with two PCI-E 8-pin power connectors and certain motherboards like the ASUS Rampage Series or the GIGABYTE G1.Killer series, users can provide additional power to the PCI-E lanes with Molex power connectors from the PSU. With this said, overclocking for the card should not be a problem once overclocking tools like MSI Afterburner will support voltage tweaking for the GTX 590. We will take a look at overclocking throughout the review, but we are expecting yields somewhere around 700-750 MHz for the GPU Clock speed.

There are several features that the GTX 590 has which makes the card unique from previous Nvidia video cards.

1. Users no longer need two video cards in order to support NVIDIA Surround/3D Vision Surround. Users can enjoy 3 displays with NVIDIA Surround/3D Vision Surround from a single card, as the GTX 590 works as two video cards in SLI.
2. The GTX 590 can also dedicate one of its GPUs solely to PhysX processing, but this will require the user to exit SLI mode. It is possible to use both GPUs in SLI mode but then PhysX calculations will be limited as the GPU rendering and PhysX will have to cooperate together. It's the same idea as a single GPU video card both rendering the 3D graphics and calculating PhysX. If needed, users can also dedicate a PhysX card and keep both GPUs on the GTX 590 solely for graphics rendering.
3. Quad-SLI is much easier with two GTX 590s. Users no longer need to buy 4 video cards in order to achieve Quad-SLI performance. By having two GTX 590s, users can enjoy the performance of Quad-SLI for ultimate gaming systems. This setup would be idea for 3D Vision Surround gamers that want to push the gaming envelope as far as they can. We'll talk more about Nvidia certified Quad-SLI components on the next page.

The price for the GTX 590 is $699 MSRP, though we can expect more expensive models coming out, especially as Nvidia partners could come out with their own custom design cooler, and perhaps higher clocked cards. We do have word about waterblock-cooled GTX 590s for the water cooling enthusiasts.