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Out of all the component categories, none causes more passionate debate than the graphics card sector. The release of the GTX590 was always going to cause emotions to run high, after all this could have been a monumental release for nVidia – reclaiming the top performance spot from under the feet of AMD.
Unfortunately for nVidia as our indepth testing today shows, the GTX590 struggles to keep up with the HD6990, even when AMD's card is switched to the lower of the two bios profiles. Before we factor in our final verdict, lets have a recap over all the results today.
When we started the review we wanted to try and get as broad a series of results as possible. This meant a combination of older classic titles such as Resident Evil 5 and Far Cry 2, mixed in with newer games such as Dead Space 2 and Total War Shogun 2. No matter how anyone will try and spin it, the HD6990 is simply the faster card. Every publication will have a different system for rating and ranking cards, and if we concentrated on three or four ‘TWIMTBP' titles such as Crysis 2 and HAWX 2 then the HD6990 would get a thrashing, but we feel that the final verdict needs to called from a much wider source of engines and routines.
Unigine Heaven Benchmark is a very ‘even handed' benchmark, and one that KitGuru really does value. Until the latest generation of cards, AMD were getting annihilated, but the HD 6xxx series of cards has been overhauled to improve on tessellation performance. Sure, you could argue it's not indicative of a real world game, but it has the potential to show how future titles will perform.
3Dmark Vantage shows that the GTX590 has the edge, however when we move to the more modern Direct X 11 intensive 3DMark 11, the AMD HD6990 delivers a clear performance lead. HQV Benchmark 2.0 shows that AMD still maintain their position as image quality leader, although Nvidia seem to be closing the gap, especially with recent driver releases.
The GTX590 has a hard time compensating for the very low reference clocks which are much worse than the GTX 580. A quick perusal of results indicates that the pair are running almost 20 percent slower than the individual card solutions.
I have always used Nvidia cards for folding@home, and while I haven't had time to extensively test the hardware over a period of weeks, my findings indicate that while a GTX580 can deliver around 17,000 to 18,000 points a day, the GTX590 struggles to deliver 13,000 points a day from each GPU.
The GTX590 certainly gets a win when it comes to noise levels, and Nvidia do deserve some credit for the very impressive dBa emissions which prove to be much better than the HD6990's reference cooling solution. We are positive that AMD partners will be releasing new cooling solutions in the coming months, with multiple fans and optimised cooling profiles.
Value for both of these cards is almost secondary, as the people who will buy them won't be worried about minor differences in pricing. Unfortunately the GTX590 pricing in the UK right now is extortionate. A HD6990 can be bought for £515 inc vat, whereas the GTX590 is being sold for £570 inc vat. This MSI card recently saw a drop from £600, and many others are being sold for a jaw dropping £650 inc vat. Never mind the free mouse, its time for a second mortgage.
So today we have the new Nvidia solution which is not only slower than the HD6990, but surprisingly costs quite a bit more. It is quieter, but it demands more power, and it also is significantly more expensive than pairing up two similar performing Nvidia cards into an SLI system build.
The Asus GTX590 is without question a very fast video card which delivers insane frame rates across three screens. We love that this card supports up to four monitors out of the box, without having to purchase another. KitGuru firmly believes that multiple screen gaming is the future.
The GTX590 also runs quietly, and generates noticeably less noise than AMD's HD6990 graphics card. Sadly it also demands more power, both when idle and at load.
As a gaming card, it has not usurped the HD6990 from the top spot, but Nvidia have clearly been concerned with long term power demands as the reference clocks are very modest. There is actually a reasonable level of overclocking headroom from the design which means that we should start seeing overclocked partner cards hitting retail over the coming months. We can expect to see modified cards soon from Nvidia partners such as Asus, MSI and Zotac.
Nvidia might still claim that this is the world's fastest video card, but we simply see no way they can justify this. In fairness, there is no single software package or game which is used to judge the ‘overall' performance of a video card, but we would assume that many would be using 3dMark 11 as a yardstick, after all it is the latest DX11 suite from the Industry leaders, Futuremark.
In this case then the HD6990 is a clear leader, scoring over 9,600 points, when compared with just under 9,000. Driver optimisations may improve this score slightly over time, but the gap is just too big to negate. Measuring performance across a wide suite of modern gaming titles indicate that the HD6990 is also the best card for enthusiast gamers.
Pros:
- smaller than HD6990
- quieter than HD6990
- 3D Vision Surround from one card (finally)
- Overclocks pretty well
Cons:
- Slower than HD6990.
- Takes more power
- more expensive than HD6990.
Kitguru says: nVidia's GTX590 is not as good as the Radeon HD 6990. We do however like that it supports more than one screen.
The Asus HD6990 is a stunning card, built on the reference AMD design which we have reviewed before. AMD have been the ultimate performance leader now for many years, since the launch of the Radeon HD 5970. Nvidia have not been able to answer the challenge set down by the Radeon HD 6990. This is our favourite high performance video card on the market and there are many reasons why.
It is the fastest video card on the market, by a significant margin. New games such as Total War Shogun 2 and Dragon Age 2 run much better on the HD6990, especially across multiple panels. While the GTX590 can now support multiple screens, the AMD solution has better support, for up to 6 screens, per card.
The HD6990 is not a quiet card, but the power optimisations are fantastic, especially when factoring in the insane performance levels. At peak, it draws at least 27 watts less than the GTX590. Even at idle it demands around 13 watts less than the GTX590, which is not to be overlooked, especially if your system is left on for many hours a day.
Pros:
- the fastest graphics card on the planet
- power demands are very good, considering the performance
- cheaper than the GTX590
- good scaling in QuadFireX
Cons:
- very long card, much larger than GTX590
- can get fairly loud under extended load
Kitguru says: The ultimate video card.
