NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 590: Duking It Out For The Single Card King
by Ryan Smith on March 24, 2011 9:00 AM ESTCivilization V
Civilization V is the latest incarnation in Firaxis Games’ series of turn-based strategy games. Civ5 gives us an interesting look at things that not even RTSes can match, with a much weaker focus on shading in the game world, and a much greater focus on creating the geometry needed to bring such a world to life. In doing so it uses a slew of DirectX 11 technologies, including tessellation for said geometry and compute shaders for on-the-fly texture decompression.
Civilization V is another title that normally works to NVIDIA’s benefit, and here we see the GTX 590’s biggest lead of the day. NVIDIA’s strong performance in this game with a single GPU directly translates into better performance for the dual-GPU GTX 590. Whether AMD will be able to find the rest of the magic that NVIDIA used to improve their Civ5 scores earlier this year remains to be seen.
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Ryan Smith - Thursday, March 24, 2011 - link
There are only 2 reasons this card isn't reference.1) Factory overclock, which we can and will nullify for testing
2) The EVGA backplate. Admittedly I don't have the reference backplate, but the NV backplates shouldn't cause any of our results to differ - the difference is mostly cosmetic.
For this reason, it's "more-or-less" reference. Technically it's not reference, but once we change the clocks it's quite identical in performance.
mariush - Friday, March 25, 2011 - link
Can you explain how can you nullify the modified / improved cooling system of the eVGA compared to reference cards?A reference card with stock voltages/frequencies may still run worse than this eVGA when downclocked, for example because on the reference card the voltage regulators may heat more and throttle the card more often.
Otherwise.... not an ATI fan but it's painfully obvious you're not focusing on this review on things that make this card look bad, like playing on 2 x 1920x1080 monitors or something like that.
Ryan Smith - Friday, March 25, 2011 - link
The cooling on the EVGA isn't any different. With such a mild overclock, they're basically just clocking it up a bit; the voltage and the cooling is no difference from reference.etamin - Thursday, March 24, 2011 - link
Where do you get the MSRPs for all the cards on the first page? I'm never able to find any of them at those prices.etamin - Thursday, March 24, 2011 - link
btw I'm looking at the 6850, 6870, and 6970. They start at $170, $210, and $340 on newegg.Ryan Smith - Thursday, March 24, 2011 - link
I factor in Mail In Rebates. if you don't, that's probably why you see prices differently.Ramon Zarat - Thursday, March 24, 2011 - link
Review title:''NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 590: Duking It Out For The Single Card King''
Comments in conclusion:
''...and as a result there is no one card that can be crowned king.''
LMAO... How to pretend to say someting and actually mean the complete oppsite!
Now, performance, cost and power ratio is STILL best with the 6990. And that's without even considering multi screen gaming setup. At 1.5Gb Vram, the 590 WILL come up short at 5760 X 1200.
Ramon
Silent_Scone - Thursday, March 24, 2011 - link
But none the less, I think I'll stick with my 580GTX SLi thanks ;)krumme - Thursday, March 24, 2011 - link
REALLY FAST AT 1080 ON HAWXNO NOISE
OVERCLOCK YOURS NOW !!!
freedomsbeat212 - Thursday, March 24, 2011 - link
I hate coming to anandtech sometimes because so many of the comments are from wannabe editors. It's annoying and takes away from the excellent content..Why not have an "email correction" button vs taking it out in the comment section? It's weird, I don't see this anywhere else - you guys must be a particularly anal group...
To go back O/T, I miss the days of powerful sub-$250 graphics cards. There's a market for it but all the action's on the high-end. Remember when the affordable TNT2 would play every recent game at playable framerates?