ASUS GeForce GTX 590 3GB Video Card Review

We all knew that NVIDIA had been working on putting two Fermi GPUs on a single graphics card for some time and, to be honest, it has to be tough to put that much GPU on a single card. NVIDIA found a way to take over 2200 components and get them assembled together on a single PCB to create their new flagship GPU called the GeForce GTX 590. The GTX 590 combines the power of two GF110 GPUs, the same GPUs used on the GeForce GTX 580, on a single graphics card. With a total of two GF110 GPUs packing 1024 CUDA cores and 3GB of GDDR5 memory you know this card isn't going to be cheap. The suggested retail price of the GeForce GTX 590 is $699.99, but for that you will get the ultimate GeForce GTX gaming experience and the ability to run Quad-SLI on just two cards.

NVIDIA's marketing department sent over a nice looking 5.56mm military ammo crate to celebrate the launch of the GeForce GTX 590. We also got a custom made dog tag that said '1st Division GTX590 Squadron' on it along with a marketing kit on a dog tag USB drive. It looks like we are going to war sans the bullets and the video card!

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590 reference design comes with 1024 CUDA Cores (512 per GPU) and 3074MB or 3GB of GDDR5 memory. The memory subsystem of the GTX 590 is similar to the GTX 580, with six 64-bit memory controllers (384-bit) with 1.5GB of GDDR5 memory per GPU (3GB total). Clock speeds for the GeForce GTX 590 are 607MHz graphics clock/1215MHz CUDA Cores. Memory speed is 3414MHz data rate. These speeds are slower than what you would find on a GF110 GPU on a GeForce GTX580, but they had to be lowered to keep the card's thermal profile from getting too unruly. Notice that the board's TDP is designed for 365W and that is what the GPU cooler is designed to handle. Extreme overclocking will need to use better cooling, so if you want to push the envelope with one of these cards then you better get ready for water cooling!