| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590 Gemini Video Card |  |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Video Cards | |
| Written by Olin Coles | |
| Thursday, 24 March 2011 | |
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Page 3 of 19
NVIDIA Gemini Internal DetailsOn the outside, NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 590 is merely a brick-shaped video card. On the inside, NVIDIA's codename "Gemini" design grabs your attention. The first thing you'll notice are two self-contained GPU coolers, each utilizing a copper vapor chamber and dual-slot heatsink, with a 80mm fan positioned equidistant between them. Beneath these heatsinks is a 12-layer printed circuit board (PCB) to ensure the highest signal integrity, and to help disperse heat more effectively across the PCB. NVIDIA uses two ounces of copper for each of the GTX 590's power and ground PCB layers, enhancing the circuit board's longevity.
Popular in the world of CPU coolers, NVIDIA has used hollow vapor chamber technology to provide a robust thermal management system on the GeForce GTX 590. This will bring into question the need for add-in card partners to design their own cooling solution, and challenge them to produce better results. Pictured below is one of two heatsink component, with the vapor chamber residing inside the copper portion. The polished copper contact surface mates together with the GF110 GPU, as the fan drives air past the aluminum fins and outside the each end of the fan shroud.
With the heatsinks removed, two GF110 processors are exposed. Packed with 512 CUDA cores each, two independent NVIDIA GF110 GPUs are combined by a NVIDIA NF200-P-SLI-A3 chip to deliver 1024 total cores of graphical processing power at 607 MHz. There are six 64-bit memory controllers that offer 384-bit combined bandwidth per GPU, and feed 3GB of combined GDDR5 video frame buffer. The reference design enabled 1GB of 1000 MHz GDDR5 memory clocked to 835.5 MHz, but could potentially include the use of higher-density DRAM modules in the future. Replacing the Samsung 128MB 1250MHz K4G10325FE-HC04 GDDR5 IC's with 256MB IC parts such as: Samsung 1250MHz K4G20325FC-HC04 GDDR5, or 1500MHz K4G20325FC-HC03 might be possible.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590 Exposed PCB (click for larger image)NVIDIA now dedicates hardware circuitry to the task of monitoring power consumption as well as temperature, adjusting performance to protect the graphics card from damage. Circled below are the electronic components responsible for power management on GeForce GTX 5xx series video cards (GTX 580 pictured). NVIDIA has indicated that this circuitry is optional, and that not all AIC partners will include it on their products. Benchmark Reviews uses 3DMark11 to stress both GPUs and produce maximum power usage measurements, although admittedly not many video games exist that might create comparable average power demands.
To help provide cooling for the PCB and its components, and aluminum baseplate is secured to the top of the board. In addition, two backplates are mounted on the bottom of the board to cool the graphics memory. Combined with a 10-phase digital power controller, the GeForce GTX 590 run exceptionally cool and quiet. NVIDIA adds one final touch the GTX 590: a glowing NVIDIA GeForce logo near the power connections.
In the next section, we detail the various Fermi products and lay out their features and specifications before putting them to test. If you're looking for specific transistor counts or texture unit detail, this is the section...
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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.