| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590 Gemini Video Card |  |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Video Cards | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Written by Olin Coles | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Thursday, 24 March 2011 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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GeForce GTX 590 TemperaturesBenchmark tests are always nice, so long as you care about comparing one product to another. But when you're an overclocker, gamer, or merely a PC hardware enthusiast who likes to tweak things on occasion, there's no substitute for good information. Benchmark Reviews has a very popular guide written on Overclocking Video Cards, which gives detailed instruction on how to tweak a graphics cards for better performance. Of course, not every video card has overclocking head room. Some products run so hot that they can't suffer any higher temperatures than they already do. This is why we measure the operating temperature of the video card products we test. To begin my testing, I use GPU-Z to measure the temperature at idle as reported by the GPU. Next, I then used a modified version of FurMark's "Torture Test" to generate the maximum thermal load. This allows us to record absolute maximum GPU temperatures at high-power 3D mode. The ambient room temperature remained at a stable 20°C throughout testing. FurMark does two things extremely well: drives the thermal output of any graphics processor much higher than any video games realistically could, and it does so with consistency every time. Furmark works great for testing the stability of a GPU as the temperature rises to the highest possible output. The temperatures discussed below are absolute maximum values, and may not represent real-world temperatures created by the average video game:
Furmark Temperature Chart (click for larger image)NVIDIA surprised us with how cool and quite their GeForce GTX 580 operated under full load, especially considering that this is their flagship model. AMD's Radeon HD 6970 ran a bit warmer, but still kept fan noise to a moderate level. When Benchmark Reviews tested the Radeon HD 6990 last week, it was disappointing to have their premium-level graphics product produce the loudest noise levels we've experienced in quite a while. So then, it's refreshing to see how well Gemini handles temperatures on the GeForce GTX 590. Obviously the speed reduction from 772 MHz down to 608 MHz on each GPU made a significant difference to the thermal output, thus reducing dependency on a high-RPM fan. Since each GF110 GPU received the same vapor chamber heatsink as it gets on the GeForce GTX 580, it makes perfect sense to see manageable temperatures. There is an aluminum baseplate secured to the top of the printed circuit board that helps cool the PCB and its components, and two backplates are mounted at the bottom of the board to passively cool the graphics memory. As an added result of NVIDIA's optional hardware power monitoring circuitry, temperatures on this dual-GPU video card are actually closer to those we've seen from single-GPU units. Measured with a constant 20°C ambient room temperature, idle temperatures were a cool 33°C. After ten minutes of torture testing with a modified version of Furmark, loaded temperatures were a modestly warm 77°C with only slightly audible cooling fan noise - certainly a level the competition should take notice of.
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Comments
but i will wait until aftermarket coolers for 6990 appears
anyway i appreciate great competitions like this one
If the results show low power use in Furmark for the 590, you know the card is activating its limiter, therefor the temp/noise reading are not realistic.
Simply put the power/temp/fan noise should be done on the games as you benched them, its all to easy to program a driver to fool one application to make it look and sound good.
Thanks
Actually, the hardware sits in a big box for retests and other projects. After a year or so, they become gifts or sold for what little they're still worth.
Hey- I never did see any of your work from PAX! Hope it was fun, and worth the visit.
They really need to put some 2g or even 3g of mem on those 580 cards.
I'm pretty sure that's not right.
So what's up next week?
When you look at the things that are not bias towards either product IE Heaven benchmark. Thats where you see the real difference in the cards. All this end talk about features is complete garbage. You can say the same for ATI there card and 3d bluray is far superior then the Nvidia solution. Eyefinity maybe a novel feature but it does work. Something Nvidia has yet to even come close to matching. Heck this is first card with 3 monitors support. Also the displayport is a mute point because ATI is now including a displayport adaptor that illiminates the super high cost of this solution among other reasons could state that this is not a fd it will eventually be the standard. If your going to skew your review because you like nvidia just do it at the begining. Its getting extremely old seeing the bait and switch from both sides.
Some of your remarks are a relief to me, because they show how uninformed you truly are. According to you, features like PhysX, 3D Vision, and CUDA support don't matter. I suggest you start asking around, because like it or not those 'garbage' features help sell these products.
By the way, those 'biased' NVIDIA games that always score the highest... games like BattleForge and Battlefield Bad Company 2... those are AMD co-developed games, not NVIDIA.
Then Toro's jumped on this forum and blogged his ATI Fanboy Mumbo Jumbo. But you know what, that's ok, Handicap need a place to lay their heads at night. If he had read the whole review he would have seen that facts. 1. The 6990 has its pro's and con's. Fact 2, The Nvidia and ATI cards are pretty neck and neck. Fact 3, the 590 won 5, tied 5 and (barley) lost 5. I don't know how anyone could have taken this review as "BIAS" towards Nvidia. I am an Nvidia fan, but I own a 6990 and 2 580 GTX's, they are both powerful................nevermind, I know if Toros is reading this it wont make sense so i will save my time.
Interesting read though. I am anxious to see how the cards compare at their overclocked overvolted limits on reference cooler.
For all I know next year could have big stuff for processors.
The rest of you fanboys should really stop honestly. In the case of the 6990 and 590, what is there really to say one card is superior to the other? I don't find 50w less, 5c degrees less or a card that runs EVER SO quieter to the other good ways of saying my card beats yours. There is no real pure power difference. So I must agree with Colin above and say they are both virtually the same exact cards.
I just have to stick with purchasing Nvidia however for my 3D setup, no biggie.
I was wondering if the 6990 still had the aggressive AF optimizations which results in texture shimmering. I am referring to the AF optimization discovered earlier and brought up in an nViDIA blog.
I really hate texture shimmering, that is a deciding factor for me. If I have to switch setting around in Catalyst in order to get rid of shimmering the benchmark results would not indicate the actual performance I'll get from 6990.
Thanks in advance.
#benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12845&Itemid=47
Usually shimmering (if it's present) can easily be seen in Half-Life 2 in road or railroad parts of the map which extend long into the horizon.
I remember having horrible shimmering in HL2 back when I had 7800GTX.
In the Unigine night scene you mention, can you get rid of shimmering by setting Catalyst AI to high or turning it off altogether?
I suppose in the same Unigine scene , GTX 590 is not showing any shimmering?
Thanks for the reply btw.
##tweakpc.de/hardware/tests/grafikkarten/amd_radeon_hd_6870_h d_6850/s09.php
Can you get rid of shimmering by fiddling with Cat AI ? Does the GTX 590 show the same amount of shimmering as well? In HL2 particularly, since it can easily be detected when moving the camera.
Neither AMD nor NVidia are charities. You want a bleeding edge product, prepare to bleed the cash.
Yes NVIDIA does include HDMI with their cards, I can only assume it is up to AIB partners whether it will be mini-HDMI or a full size port.