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In the graph below, we are running the GTX 590 at three difference settings. The blue line indicates running our GTX 590 at a slight upped yet stable .963v and 723MHz. This was our highest stable overclock we found, and shows what a stable consistent performance is all about. The yellow line represents the GTX 590 running at 1v and still the same 723MHz, so just a voltage bump, nothing else. The red line represents the video card running at a very high 1.05v and a higher 753MHz clock speed. Note that all of these settings ran without crashing or blowing up, and there is a reason why as you will see.
For the game setup we loaded up the map in Bad Company 2 and let the game sit at the first opening scene for an entire 20 minutes. Therefore, since nothing is happening, and we are just sitting still in one scene the framerates should remain steady and not fluctuate at all over time. If the framerates fluctuate, or degrade in performance, then power management is kicking in and keeping the video card from blowing up, while sacrificing performance to do it
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So, what we see is that the blue line, indicating a stable and fast performance averaging around 80 FPS is completely consistent. The framerate doesn't fluctuate, and the min and max FPS are close together, between 79-81 FPS. This is the ideal performance profile, you do not want your games performance fluctuating at all.
Now look what happened when we simply raised the voltage from .963v to 1v at the same frequency, no other changes. The performance starts off the same for a few minutes, but then it takes a massive nosedive. Not only does it nosedive in performance, but the performance is fluctuating tremendously. The framerate swings from 66 FPS up to 81 FPS.
Things get even worse when we raise the voltage higher and increase the clock speed up to 753MHz. The performance tanks down to around 60 FPS and just stays there.
You would think that higher voltages and higher frequencies would equate to higher performance. However, because of the power management features keeping the video card in check, performance will degrade when those features come into play. In this case, overclocking to higher levels will actually harm performance. Therefore, the goal is to find a tame voltage and frequency increase with the GeForce GTX 590 in order to achieve the best performance. You simply cannot go wild with this video card because it will stop you from doing so
