NVIDIA Launches its Dual-GPU GeForce GTX 590

It seems that the rumor we posted about last week came true… kind of. While the rumor stated that NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 590 would launch on Tuesday, the company instead released it today. While seemingly minor, the choice of Thursday is actually rather interesting, as both AMD and NVIDIA tend to choose Tuesdays for most of their respective embargoes… for reasons I’m not quite sure of.

That said, it’s been a mere two weeks since AMD launched its dual-GPU Radeon HD 6990, and who expected NVIDIA to come out with a competitor so quick? Not me, I admit, but it’s here, features a couple neat design features, and becomes some nice competition for AMD’s latest and greatest.

During a press briefing last week, NVIDIA told us that the GTX 590 could be upwards of 20% faster than the HD 6990, but in the reviews posted around the Web so far, that doesn’t quite seem to be the case. In AnandTech’s look, NVIDIA’s card about evens out with the HD 6990 across a good spread of games. As usual, AMD excels in some, and NVIDIA excels in the others.

In [H]ard|OCP’s look, the card didn’t live up to the GTX 580 SLI performance that most were hoping for, but instead came in closer to GTX 570 SLI performance. Why that’s notable is that if you are to purchase that actual setup, you can likely achieve the same (or slightly better) performance for about $100 less. Of course, one card becomes two, and power consumption is sure to be heartier, so there’s still some sort of a trade-off.

In most regards, though, the GTX 590 is still an unbelievable card. It packs in a great deal of performance, and when compared to the HD 6990, it’s the far quieter of the two. It does happen to use a bit more power, however. Given that most people were expecting the GTX 590 to obliterate the HD 6990… what happened?

It’s simple. As we mentioned in our post last week, NVIDIA down-clocked each GPU in the GTX 590 quite significantly from the GTX 580. So despite each GPU in this card sharing the same architecture as the GTX 580, the clocks weren’t just dropped a bit, they were dropped a lot.

The reason for that is obvious: noise and power. It’s reported that the card can easily exceed 80°C at full load, and power-wise, I’m sure the metrics there are also rather high. So to retain sensibility, NVIDIA did what it had to do to deliver a card that at least matches the HD 6990’s performance.

Can it be overclocked? At first glance, it doesn’t seem too likely. EVGA is offering a “Classified” version of the card that features a water-cooling block, and despite that, the card sees just a mere 23MHz clock increase. 23MHz! Hopefully once water is flowing through its veins though, the card will become far more overclockable.

Where’s our look at the GTX 590? As is becoming the norm, we’ve yet to receive our sample, though it is en route. Blame NVIDIA, blame the Canadian border, blame third-party vendors, or just blame me. Either way, our review will be posted as soon as we’re able.

SANTA CLARA, CA — (Marketwire) — 03/24/2011 — NVIDIA today introduced the GeForce® GTX® 590, the fastest dual graphics card available today which also happens to be the world’s quietest too. Powered by dual NVIDIA Fermi™-class GPUs on a single card, the GTX 590 is designed for über enthusiasts and those looking to build the ultimate PC gaming rig.