GTX 590 reviews

[SMTB1963]

That was a April Fools joke that they did

Heh, I thought my 4/1 prank might've gone a little too far, given how quiet this thread got after that post. There was certainly no disrespect intended to STEvil or anyone else. But hey, it's not often a grunt like me gets to post around here as Movieman - so I just couldn't resist!

@Sherman Tank: don't worry, you've come to the right place. The mods here do a superlative job.

Back OT, I'm glad to see the "EVGA GTX590 Classified?" rigamarole has been cleared up. Pretty sharp eyes on that DarthShader, eh?

[[XC] Oj101]

^^^
Hmm, doesn't sound like my sort of forum then, much prefer forums that show mutual respect.

You realise the poster above you is not XS staff, right?

[cegras]

Heh, I thought my 4/1 prank might've gone a little too far, given how quiet this thread got after that post. There was certainly no disrespect intended to STEvil or anyone else. But hey, it's not often a grunt like me gets to post around here as Movieman - so I just couldn't resist!

@Sherman Tank: don't worry, you've come to the right place. The mods here do a superlative job.

Back OT, I'm glad to see the "EVGA GTX590 Classified?" rigamarole has been cleared up. Pretty sharp eyes on that DarthShader, eh?

We're all scared now!

[STEvil]

Heh, I thought my 4/1 prank might've gone a little too far, given how quiet this thread got after that post. There was certainly no disrespect intended to STEvil or anyone else. But hey, it's not often a grunt like me gets to post around here as Movieman - so I just couldn't resist!

@Sherman Tank: don't worry, you've come to the right place. The mods here do a superlative job.

Back OT, I'm glad to see the "EVGA GTX590 Classified?" rigamarole has been cleared up. Pretty sharp eyes on that DarthShader, eh?

Sharp? Its an EVGA OEM card, not a Retail one.

[CedricFP]

I thought Evga was known to take care of its customers. Hence why there board is one of the more enthusiastic forums and more populated.

I don't think Evga is doing anything particularly out of the ordinary into helping out a customer. It simply normal for them and seems extraordinary compared to let say Sapphire or Zotac.

EVGA have great support in NA, but not around my part of the world. They have no presence here, and RMA dealings are just outsourced to some third party company who make no effort to provide good service.

It's just too bad that the PC hardware industry out here has little - if any - focus on good support. With RMA's, you're always guilty until you can prove yourself innocent, and RMA often costs money.

</Rant>

[SMTB1963]

Sharp? Its an EVGA OEM card, not a Retail one.

Doesn't matter whether the card was OEM or Retail. DarthShader spotted a detail which set in motion a chain of events that ultimately led to (among other things) the removal of several posts in this thread. So yeah, sharp eyes Darth!

BTW...if I were to buy a custom-built pc that included an EVGA GTX590 Classified from an OEM, I'd expect to see that pretty backplate on the card when I opened the case. If I didn't see it, I'd feel ripped off. But maybe I'm being unreasonable.

[Mungri]

i have a thermalright shaman on mine flashed to a 70 at 1050core/1525mem completely silent at 55c during gaming 61c during 3dmark11..
theres options out there

I've already bought lots of custom coolers, and after I take it off to sell the card, they remain sat around and no one wants them second hand.

I prefer to pay a lot less for the overkill MSI coolers now, they are amazing and better than third party ones I've bought before. Plus they are covered by warranty for any overvolting and clocking done within afterburner, which is a great extra piece of mind.

EVGA do seem really good as well, but I want the best cooling design I can get out of the box.

[STEvil]

Doesn't matter whether the card was OEM or Retail. DarthShader spotted a detail which set in motion a chain of events that ultimately led to (among other things) the removal of several posts in this thread. So yeah, sharp eyes Darth!

BTW...if I were to buy a custom-built pc that included an EVGA GTX590 Classified from an OEM, I'd expect to see that pretty backplate on the card when I opened the case. If I didn't see it, I'd feel ripped off. But maybe I'm being unreasonable.

They were removed on request, not because of something darthshader pointed out.

[SMTB1963]

They were removed on request, not because of something darthshader pointed out.

Uh huh. Must've just been a coincidence, then. Well, I guess I'll have to retract my compliment...sorry darth!

[cold2010]

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

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

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/...king_followup/

[spursindonesia]

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/...king_followup/

EPIC FAIL indeed , LOL on this "extreme"ly tamed card.

[insurgent]

It seems people quickly lost interest with this card

[SKYMTL]

Interesting results there since overclocking (sans voltage bump) significantly increased performance in our tests....

[Manicdan]

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/...king_followup/

that chart is missing a very important detail
the temps on the core and VRMs, to see if they are directly correlated with the drop, or if its just deciding for you based on something else. also it would be nice to show the clock speeds across time. just because they set it to 753mhz, does not mean thats what it was durring the run.

maybe the perf drop can be prevented with watercooling? interesting test, but needs alot more looking into.

[DarthShader]

Interesting results there since overclocking (sans voltage bump) significantly increased performance in our tests....

And [H] also got a steady 12% boost from OCing to those 723mhz...

[InCredible]

Sky is that with latest drivers?

[SKYMTL]

Sky is that with latest drivers?

Even with the latest drivers both cards I have can go to around 700Mhz. Above that, I start getting instability rather than throttling; likely due to the low core voltage used on the GTX 590.

[JohnZS]

Just thought I would mention that it goes without saying that even @ 650Mhz the GTX 590 is a blisteringly fast card.
I must be the only person on the internets who thinks nVidia have been unfairly criticised for this awesome card.
John

EDIT:
I will admit that I have some concerns over the VRM debate and also the driver debate, but I think in a couple of months these issues would be all but forgotten.

[InCredible]

Just thought I would mention that it goes without saying that even @ 650Mhz the GTX 590 is a blisteringly fast card.
I must be the only person on the internets who thinks nVidia have been unfairly criticised for this awesome card.
John

EDIT:
I will admit that I have some concerns over the VRM debate and also the driver debate, but I think in a couple of months these issues would be all but forgotten.

what i dont think you're taking into consideration is the reliability of this card.
So the big fuss is the cards are dying with adding voltage or overclocks, however this shouldn't be the case period.
When any one manufacturers a working part, they over engineer it for multiple reasons, one being reliability. This extra engineering allows for us to overclock things, maybe produce more horsepower on stock internals things of this nature. When you make something and its already at the limits, then reliability is obviously sacrificed to do so. This makes me question how long will this card honestly last, even at stock frequencies. Will it make it a year? 2 or 3?. Most people keep their high end cards for at least a year more likely 2 or 3. If this card can't last a few days with an overclock or voltage increase wouldn't you think that MAYBE it might not make it as long as you would like. Thats my biggest issue with the card and is a reason they need a revision imo or to STOP making dual gpu cards with such power hungry gpu's. Wait til 28nm or whatever is next where the possibility is more likely.

[[XC] hipno650]

what i dont think you're taking into consideration is the reliability of this card.
So the big fuss is the cards are dying with adding voltage or overclocks, however this shouldn't be the case period.
When any one manufacturers a working part, they over engineer it for multiple reasons, one being reliability. This extra engineering allows for us to overclock things, maybe produce more horsepower on stock internals things of this nature. When you make something and its already at the limits, then reliability is obviously sacrificed to do so. This makes me question how long will this card honestly last, even at stock frequencies. Will it make it a year? 2 or 3?. Most people keep their high end cards for at least a year more likely 2 or 3. If this card can't last a few days with an overclock or voltage increase wouldn't you think that MAYBE it might not make it as long as you would like. Thats my biggest issue with the card and is a reason they need a revision imo or to STOP making dual gpu cards with such power hungry gpu's. Wait til 28nm or whatever is next where the possibility is more likely.

I'm not to sure about the whole reliability argument anymore.... it was a big issue at launch because within a day there were a handful of cases where the cards had blown up..... but since then I have yet to see any other cases of the cards exploding or people having issues with them. I would love to see HWC do an in depth review of the card in Overclocking with the latest drivers with voltage increases as well as it would be interesting to see if [H] results could be duplicated..... [H] is a joke.....

[Lanek]

If we trust TechReport http://techreport.com/discussions.x/20711 there's not really any more reason to test for oc capabilities ...

[InCredible]

I'm not to sure about the whole reliability argument anymore.... it was a big issue at launch because within a day there were a handful of cases where the cards had blown up..... but since then I have yet to see any other cases of the cards exploding or people having issues with them. I would love to see HWC do an in depth review of the card in Overclocking with the latest drivers with voltage increases as well as it would be interesting to see if [H] results could be duplicated..... [H] is a joke.....

i dont think reliability can be determined in a week, but hey i already voted against buying this card so what others do is up to them. Surely in the long run we'll find out.

[spursindonesia]

If we trust TechReport http://techreport.com/discussions.x/20711 there's not really any more reason to test for oc capabilities ...

Hahaha, so much for US$ 700, enthusiast graphic card.

Bravo nVidia, bravo, more silent (while still relatively loud) and smaller PCB for the win, eh ??

[tajoh111]

The reliability of this card is so questionable it should be considered a fire hazard. Considering it doesn't even get the performance crown for such a hazard, it is really fail. Usually these cards are used as a hallow effect for fastest card and good publicity. It is a disaster that this card is getting so much bad buzz and it is a halo card.

NV needs to release a gtx 595 with better clocks, cooler, more reliable and power.

[spursindonesia]

The reliability of this card is so questionable it should be considered a fire hazard. Considering it doesn't even get the performance crown for such a hazard, it is really fail. Usually these cards are used as a hallow effect for fastest card and good publicity. It is a disaster that this card is getting so much bad buzz and it is a halo card.

NV needs to release a gtx 595 with better clocks, cooler, more reliable and power.

I think this is the time for the comeback of a dual PCB card, using bigger and/or longer PCB & heatsink, stronger fan, and much beefier VRM design. nVidia needs to swallow their ego, the chip has such potential, hampering it with such puny design as GTX 590 can be called PC enthusiast crime.