GeForce GTX 590 Review Thread

[Madpistol]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4239/n...e-card-king/16

The GTX 590 definitely uses more power under load (discounting the furmark results as nvidia throttles their cards on that)

[Rollo]

Originally Posted by Madpistol

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4239/n...e-card-king/16

The GTX 590 definitely uses more power under load (discounting the furmark results as nvidia throttles their cards on that)

The 11W and 15W differences you linked are pretty irrelevant given the power consumption of these cards. No one will be saying,"I'm environmentally conscious, so I use a 350W 6990 instead of a 365W 590!". (at least no one who doesn't want to look foolish)

The only factor that matters in the power/heat/noise category is noise, because it's the only metric with a significant difference. (most reviews I saw had the 6990 50-100% louder)

[Slytat]

Originally Posted by slaWter

Only a matter of time before this moron is banned again.

Amen

[shadow001]

Originally Posted by Rollo

The 11W and 15W differences you linked are pretty irrelevant given the power consumption of these cards. No one will be saying,"I'm environmentally conscious, so I use a 350W 6990 instead of a 365W 590!". (at least no one who doesn't want to look foolish)

The only factor that matters in the power/heat/noise category is noise, because it's the only metric with a significant difference. (most reviews I saw had the 6990 50-100% louder)

That's not so much the point i was making though....It's mostly that it wasn't that long ago where if a card used more than 200 watts and was a power hog and didn't perform well and was noisy and ran hot,it was considered a failure basically for not taking the speed crown.....One that comes to mind is ATI's X2900XT wich didn't live up to the hype.


Here we have cards using 350 watts +, do run hot and can be very noisy, but their performance is great in either case, yet that 50% + power consumption is now somehow acceptable?...It's that moving goalpost attitude that having great performance justifies all the other drawbacks that come with it, be it increased power consumption, or heat or noise.


Where you do draw the line though?.....The current cards already exceed the 300 watt limit of the PCI-e express specification quite easily afterall, so will users accept even higher power use from next years cards if it doubles performance over what we have now?

[Madpistol]

Originally Posted by Rollo

The 11W and 15W differences you linked are pretty irrelevant given the power consumption of these cards. No one will be saying,"I'm environmentally conscious, so I use a 350W 6990 instead of a 365W 590!". (at least no one who doesn't want to look foolish)

The only factor that matters in the power/heat/noise category is noise, because it's the only metric with a significant difference. (most reviews I saw had the 6990 50-100% louder)

The fact of the matter is the GTX 590 uses more power than the HD 6990. The reason I posted this is because someone said the HD 6990 uses more power, which is clearly not true.

[Roadhog]

Originally Posted by Madpistol

The fact of the matter is the GTX 590 uses more power than the HD 6990. The reason I posted this is because someone said the HD 6990 uses more power, which is clearly not true.

[Rollo]

Originally Posted by Madpistol

The fact of the matter is the GTX 590 uses more power than the HD 6990. The reason I posted this is because someone said the HD 6990 uses more power, which is clearly not true.

I'll buy that.

[shadow001]

I see nobody answered that question i posted earlier:

Where you do draw the line though?.....The current cards already exceed the 300 watt limit of the PCI-e express specification quite easily afterall, so will users accept even higher power use from next years cards if it doubles performance over what we have now?

[Roadhog]

Originally Posted by shadow001

I see nobody answered that question i posted earlier:

Who cares? If you buy the card you don't care about power. If you do care about power buy a lower powered card.

[Bah!]

Originally Posted by shadow001

Where you do draw the line though?.....The current cards already exceed the 300 watt limit of the PCI-e express specification quite easily afterall, so will users accept even higher power use from next years cards if it doubles performance over what we have now?

Of course they will. Why wouldn't they?

If you look at the performance compared to the wattage they actually aren't all that bad. If these cards didn't exist and you tried to get the same performance, you'd have to use two cards and your power usage would be even higher.

Where do you draw the line? You don't, because the line will move every time the performance of these cards go up. What's acceptable power usage on say a 580 isn't acceptable on much older card.

[shadow001]

Originally Posted by Roadhog

Who cares? If you buy the card you don't care about power. If you do care about power buy a lower powered card.

It's mostly about reaching thermal limits while keeping it quiet really, and Air coolers can only go so far, then it's the issue of the amount of heat that gets released into the case, and while i know people can add more fans to improve the air circulation inside the case, it can also make it sound very noisy each time you turn it on....


For ****s and giggles, let's assume that next years high end single GPU card is twice as fast as a GTX580, but it also uses close to 300 watts(it's still PCI-e compliant), so put 3~4 of those in SLI and you got 900~1200 watts of power being pulled out of your power supply just for graphics, and that's before the user even overclocks the cards....



Keep in mind that i'm not even considering the requirements for the CPU's or how much they use when they're overclocked too, and that the majority of homes use 15 amp circuit breakers wich at 120 volts, means the outlet where the PC is plugged into delivers up to 1800 watts before the breaker pops open, or that power supplies are at most 85~90% efficient in converting that into DC power...


Taking a longer term view at this, i can imagine that if power consumption on video cards keeps going up like this, 3 and 4 way SLI or crossfire setups become impossible in practical terms within a couple of years....The total power requirements and heat/noise issues and strong enough power supplies and even the wiring in your house itself, might very well kill those kinds of extreme setups, with users being limited to 2 card setups at most for practical real world reasons ....

[Roadhog]

Originally Posted by shadow001

It's mostly about reaching thermal limits while keeping it quiet really, and Air coolers can only go so far, then it's the issue of the amount of heat that gets released into the case, and while i know people can add more fans to improve the air circulation inside the case, it can also make it sound very noisy each time you turn it on....


For ****s and giggles, let's assume that next years high end single GPU card is twice as fast as a GTX580, but it also uses close to 300 watts(it's still PCI-e compliant), so put 3~4 of those in SLI and you got 900~1200 watts of power being pulled out of your power supply just for graphics, and that's before the user even overclocks the cards....



Keep in mind that i'm not even considering the requirements for the CPU's or how much they use when they're overclocked too, and that the majority of homes use 15 amp circuit breakers wich at 120 volts, means the outlet where the PC is plugged into delivers up to 1800 watts before the breaker pops open, or that power supplies are at most 85~90% efficient in converting that into DC power...


Taking a longer term view at this, i can imagine that if power consumption on video cards keeps going up like this, 3 and 4 way SLI or crossfire setups become impossible in practical terms within a couple of years....The total power requirements and heat/noise issues and strong enough power supplies and even the wiring in your house itself, might very well kill those kinds of extreme setups, with users being limited to 2 card setups at most for practical real world reasons ....

If you're really that worried about performance/watt you should own ATI cards as they have had the best performance/watt for a while.