Quote Originally Posted by Sherman Tank View Post
Because Nvidia took very bold steps to greatly reduce the overclockability of the 590 after reports of premature deaths. The only reason Nvidia would do this, is if there was actually a serious issue with the card.
Actually, they took said steps BEFORE since the default voltage on the cores is very low for a Fermi-based card. So the limitation was always there.


Can you not adjust powertune to +20 to avoid this? Also, if PT wasn't there, do you really think 6970's would be blowing up?
You hit the nail on the head. AMD allows adjustment of their software. NVIDIA doesn't and yes, that's their mistake. As for HD 6970s blowing up, I can't really comment since AMD's utility worked from day 1 while NVIDIA's didn't so the cases aren't really the same.


Wrong, it was first introduced for Fermi to simply keep cards in spec and avoid negative press reg. power consumption, especially in Furmark.
The implementation is fundamentally different this time around. Instead of being just app detection, it is now hardware based as well in order to limit current before the card exceeds a certain threshold.


IMO, the card is under designed if it blows up at stock or with mild overclocks, also note it's not actually the GPU's themselves that are blowing up.
I see no indication that the cards are blowing up a stock or with minor overclocks. One POSSIBLE report of a stock card going off means nothing since we have no idea the circumstances or if the individual concerned even left it at stock.


The fact the card has now been artificially made unclockable just adds to the disappointment and frustration that Nvidia didn't build this cards with high enough quality components to allow some headroom (which we have now all come to expect), I think we all know that if Nvidia hadn't done this, the 590 could have actually been the 'fastest card in the world'.
Overclocking is a value-added feature but is never guaranteed. I know people love to do it but supporting it past a certain extent isn't in NVIDIA's best interest. Then again, you forget that the card CAN be overclocked but is highly limited by its default voltage; a voltage which was put in place to limit power consumption.


IMO, Nvidia are already pushing their card much further than what the reference spec 'should be', it's like they'v left ZERO safety margin, which is never a good idea, and the only reason I can think of why they'd done this, was because the 6990 caught them off guard.
Assumptions. Not much more to say other than that.