GeForce GTX 590 Review Thread

[Sean_W]

Yes but adding better fans adds a bit more ambient noise which is nowhere near as bad as some cards when they run full load. I'd rather have extra ambient fan noise than my GTX460 screaming at full load.

No one gives a crap about power consumption that true, if you do then you should probably stick to laptops.

[Roadhog]

Originally Posted by Sean_W

No one gives a crap about power consumption that true, if you do then you should probably stick to laptops.

Yeah, if you own a 6990, 590, or any other multi gpu configuration you have no room to whine about power consumption. Especially is you have a multi socket system that you use to run benchmarks on all day and then flop your e-peen around on forums.

[shadow001]

Originally Posted by Roadhog

Yeah, if you own a 6990, 590, or any other multi gpu configuration you have no room to whine about power consumption. Especially is you have a multi socket system that you use to run benchmarks on all day and then flop your e-peen around on forums.

True, but we're talking about the end of the multi GPU era using the highest end video cards regardless of brand you pick, unless rather drastic mesures are taken on the end users part, such as:


1: Water cooling the cards becomes mandatory, not optional for both thermals and overall noise levels....Forget about air cooling and silence as it isn't going to happen.

2: A double wide PC cube case is used, such as a mountain mods extended ascension, little dragon V8 or danger den models, wich have the room for more radiators, but the other advantage is that they can also be configured to handle 2 power supplies, and the user then plugs each power supply in a diferent outlet that's controled by a different breaker, so there's more power available for the PC.


I had a little surprise with my last PC setup, wich consisted of a single Intel 980x clocked at 4.5 Ghz, the 3 GTX580's i had now and 12 GB of ram in that i had left the system running and can't really remember what it was doing, and needed to vacuum the living room carpet...


Now i used a small portable vacuum cleaner and plugged into an outlet that without me knowing it then, was controled by the same breaker that controls the outlet the PC is plugged into....You can imagine my surprise when in the middle of vacuuming, both the PC and vacuum shut down at the same time wouldn't restart at all and it turns out that the breaker had popped open...


Now that my current setup uses even more power, i have to use an outlet controled by a seperate breaker when vacuuming, and if video cards keep using ever more power, even though they'll deliver a lot more performance in the process compared to the current high end, more people who use such high end setups will be in this situation in a couple of years....Doesn't matter if you pick ATI on Nvidia really.

[Roadhog]

Ever hear of die shrinks?

[shadow001]

Originally Posted by Roadhog

Ever hear of die shrinks?

Power still went up anyhow...Look no further than the GTX 285 wich was made at 55nm and then Nvidia moved to the GTX480 wich was made at 40nm, but the transistor budget doubled in the process, going 1.4 billion to 3 billion transistors and mainly to improve performance above all other considerations( it doubled performance if not more over the GTX285), but the cost of that transistor increase is power usage.....No such thing as a free lunch.


If the upcoming generation that will use 28nm holds back on the transistor budget increase, then a lot of power savings can be had, however the performance doesn't increase much, and performance enthusiats label it a failure.....It's a tricky balance.

[Roadhog]

Seems they are rather useless if you SLI them.

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

[Muppet]

Yes, both Quad Crossfired 6990's and Quad SLI'd 590's don't scale at all. Both are a complete waste at this time. Both ATI and Nvidia need to sort out there drivers if they are serious about people using them.

[Viral]

QuadSLI 590's seem to get the better max FPS most of the time but the min FPS is way lower and the experience all over the place. This HAS to be because of the lower frame buffer... no doubt about it.