Asus GTX590 and HD6990 review

1. Introduction2. Asus GTX5903. Asus HD69904. Testing Methodology5. Synthetic: Unigine Heaven Benchmark6. Synthetic: 3DMark Vantage7. Synthetic: 3DMark 118. Image quality: GTX5909. Image quality: HD699010. 1x gaming: FarCry 211. 1x gaming: Alien V Predator12. 1x gaming: Resident Evil 513. 1x gaming: Tom Clancy HAWX 214. 1x gaming: Lost Planet 215. 1x gaming: Dead Space 216. 1x gaming: Metro 203317. 1x gaming: Total War Shogun 218. 3x gaming: Dead Space 219. 3x gaming: Dragon Age 220. 3x gaming: F1 201021. 3x gaming: Left4Dead222. 3x gaming: Crysis 223. Technical: Thermal Dynamics24. Technical: Acoustics Performance25. Technical: Power Consumption26. Technical: Overclocking27. Closing Thoughts28. View All Pages

Asus are one of the biggest component manufacturers on the planet producing some of the finest video cards for both Nvidia and AMD markets. Today we are looking at their new ultra high end video cards, the GTX590 and the HD6990.

Well this is the heavyweight show down isn't it? AMD have been very vocal of the fact that they have held the ‘fastest video card' position for some time now. The HD5970 was their flagship model for a very long time, and when nVidia released the GTX580 it just didn't have enough frame rate power to reclaim the title, although to be fair it was only a single GPU solution. To make matters worse for Nvidia, AMD released the HD6990 which causes an even larger performance rift between the two market leaders.

Nvidia's answer is the GTX 590, a card which is comprised of 6 billion transistors and has 3GB of GDDR5 memory attached to a dual 384 bit memory interface. Today we are looking at the Asus GTX590 and the Asus HD6990, both of which are reference designs.

	ASUS HD6990	ASUS GTX590
GPU	2x Cayman	2x GF110
Shader Units	2×1536	2×512
ROPs	2×32	2×48
Transistors	2x2640M	2x3000M
Memory	2x 2048MB	2x 1536MB
Memory Bus Width	2×256 bit	2×384 bit
Core Clock	830 mhz/880mhz	607 mhz
Memory Clock	1250mhz	850mhz

The Asus GTX590 arrives in a fantasy style box complete with JR Tolkien style warrior on horse. They are claiming a 50% faster increase with the voltage tweak which we already know to be absolute nonsense.

The package contains a Driver CD and documentation, a PCI express power cable, DVI to HDMI adapter and DVI to Analog VGA adapter.

The GTX590 is a long video card measuring 28 cm.

It is a two slot design and the fan is centrally positioned to pass air over all the components.

It ships with three DVI ports and one mini displayport. Thanks to the dual GPU design you can actually use all outputs at the same time. This is still lacking compared to AMD's 6 output design, but it is a welcome improvement when compared to other cards in Nvidia's range. The card contains HDMI audio out functionality which 1.4a support. This allows for DTS-HD, AC-3, DTS and Dolby TrueHD with 7.1 channel audio and 192 khz/24 bit output.

Two GTX 590 cards can be combined for Quad SLI configurations. If you can afford it.

The card demands two 8 pin power connectors to operate properly, this is the same as the HD 6990.

An overview of the hardware in GPUz.

An almost identical box with the same fantasy style warrior on the front. The sky is now red though indicating you have crossed the fence into AMD land. Someone needs to tell Asus that the ‘50% faster Voltage Tweak' really doesn't relate to either of the high end boards on test today.

The bundle contains three cables to help the owner connect the card to various panel configurations. A miniDP to SL-DVI passive, a miniDP to SL-DVI active, and a miniDP to HDMI passive cable are included.

The Asus card is based on the reference design, with an Asus logo on the front. The cooler uses the same, small AMD style fan in the middle of the cooler.

As this is a retail sample, there is a yellow sticker covering the bios switch. . The AMD HD6990 will ship in the default position of ’2′. This is a factory supported clock setting (830mhz) with voltage set to 1.12. Position ’1′ is a ‘hardware’ overdrive option with increased clocks, 880mhz on the core and an increased voltage setting of 1.175. They are naming this the ‘AUSUM’ or ‘Antilles Unlocking Switch for Uber Mode’, which we don’t expect to become a widely used acronym.

The card is crossfire capable and requires two 8 pin power connectors to operate correctly.

AMD are using the latest generation digital programmable Volterra regulators on the card, to deliver increased efficiency with higher current capacity. The regulators are located at the centre of the board, in a symmetrical layout, to provide efficient power delivery to each GPU and its associated memory. Premium ASICs are screened for high speed and low leakage properties.

An overview of the Asus card, both bios modes shown above.

To test these high end cards today, we have built a system with suitable matching components – based around a liquid cooled 12 core Intel i7 970 processor, overclocked to 4.33GHz, with 6GB of GKILL memory running at 1800MHz with tight timings. We will be mixing the resolutions today from 1920×1080 (1080p) to 5780×1080.

Processor: Core i7 970 @ 4.33GHz
Cooling: Coolit Vantage (extreme setting).
Motherboard: MSI X58A-GD65 (MS-7522)
Chassis: Lian Li X2000F
Power Supply: Corsair Ax1200
Memory: 6GB GSkill Performance Gaming ram @ 902.9 MHz (2:10) @ 9-9-9-24
Storage: Kingston SSDNow V+ 512GB Gen 2 SSD (Storage) / Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB (OS boot)
Monitors: Lacie 730, Dell Ultrasharp U2410 Rev A00 x 2, Iiyama Prolite E2472HDD x2

Other graphics cards for comparisons:
Nvidia GTX580
Nvidia GTX570
XFX HD5970 Black Edition 4GB (QuadFireX)
AMD HD6970
AMD HD6950
AMD HD6870
AMD HD6850
AMD HD5870
AMD HD5850
MSI N560GTX Ti Twin Frozr II
nVidia GTX570
nVidia GTX460 OC (715/900)

Software:
Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit

Unigine Heaven Benchmark
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
Catalyst 11.4 Preview
Forceware 267.85 WHQL
Fraps Professional
Steam Client
FurMark
HQV 2.0 Software

Technical Monitoring and Test Equipment:
Nikon D300S with R1C1 kit
Keithley Integra unit
Thermal Diodes
Raytek Laser Temp Gun 3i LSRC/MT4 Mini Temp
Extech digital sound level meter & SkyTronic DSL 2 Digital Sound Level Meter

Games:
Far Cry 2
Resident Evil 5
Tom Clancy HAWX 2
Alien V Predator
Lost Planet 2
Metro 2033
Dead Space 2
Dragon Age 2
Total War: Shogun II
Crysis 2
Left4Dead 2

All the latest BIOS updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests all games across five closely matched runs and average out the results to get an accurate median figure.

Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.

Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:

• Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
• Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
• Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
• Multicore CPU support
• Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
• Powerful C++ API
• Comprehensive performance profiling system
• Flexible XML-based data structures

We test at 1080p so that all video cards can be compared throughout our reviews. Obviously driver updates might enhance performance slightly over time, but as a rule, its a useful way for us to present the findings.

The Asus GTX590 puts in a good showing, scoring 88.2 fps average, which falls around 4 frames behind the GTX580 in Sli. The HD6990 by comparison is out 10 frames ahead at the lower 830mhz bios setting and 13 frames ahead at the 880mhz bios setting.

Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7.  This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings.

The GTX590 comes out top in this test, behind the dual configured CrossfireX high end boards, with a score of 35903. This compares well against the HD6990, even at 880mhz core clock speed it can't break 35,000 points.

3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.

After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.

If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page.

The positions switch, with the Asus HD6990 outperforming the GTX590. This would indicate that the AMD card delivers superior Direct X 11 performance, although with driver updates this could narrow over time.

HQV Benchmark 2.0 is an updated version of the original tool and it consists of various video clips and test patterns which are designed to evalute motion correction, de-interlacing, decoding, noise reduction, detail enhancement and film cadence detection.

There are two versions of the program, standard definition on DVD and high definition on Bluray. As our audience will be concentrating on HD content so will we.

This has a total of 39 video tests which is increased from 23 in the original and the scoring is also up from a total of 130 to 210. As hardware and software gets more complicated, the software has been tuned to make sure we can thoroughly maximise our analysis.

Read our initial analysis over here.

	Asus GTX590
Dial	4
Dial with static pattern	5
Gray Bars	5
Violin	5
Stadium 2:2	5
Stadium 3:2	5
Horizontal Text Scroll	3
Vertical Text Scroll	5
Transition to 3:2 Lock	5
Transition to 2:2 Lock	0
2:2:2:4 24 FPS DVCAM Video	5
2:3:3:2 24 FPS DVCam Video	5
3:2:3:2:2 24 FOS Vari-Speed	5
5:5 FPS Animation	5
6:4 12 FPS Animation	5
8:7 8 FPS Animation	5
Interlace Chroma Problem (ICP)	5
Chroma Upsampling Error (CUE)	5
Random Noise: Sailboat	5
Random Noise: Flower	5
Random Noise: Sunrise	5
Random Noise: Harbour Night	5
Scrolling Text	5
Roller Coaster	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Bridge Traffic	5
Text Pattern/ Scrolling Text	5
Roller Coaster	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Bridge Traffic	5
Luminance Frequency Bands	5
Chrominance Frequency Bands	5
Vanishing Text	5
Resolution Enhancement	15
Theme Park	5
Driftwood	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Skin Tones	5
Total	192

The latest forceware drivers with this specific hardware generates a total score of 192 points, out of a possible 210. Very high levels of image quality indeed.

HQV Benchmark 2.0 is an updated version of the original tool and it consists of various video clips and test patterns which are designed to evalute motion correction, de-interlacing, decoding, noise reduction, detail enhancement and film cadence detection.

There are two versions of the program, standard definition on DVD and high definition on Bluray. As our audience will be concentrating on HD content so will we.

This has a total of 39 video tests which is increased from 23 in the original and the scoring is also up from a total of 130 to 210. As hardware and software gets more complicated, the software has been tuned to make sure we can thoroughly maximise our analysis.

Read our initial analysis over here.

	Asus HD6990
Dial	4
Dial with static pattern	5
Gray Bars	5
Violin	5
Stadium 2:2	5
Stadium 3:2	5
Horizontal Text Scroll	5
Vertical Text Scroll	5
Transition to 3:2 Lock	5
Transition to 2:2 Lock	0
2:2:2:4 24 FPS DVCAM Video	5
2:3:3:2 24 FPS DVCam Video	5
3:2:3:2:2 24 FOS Vari-Speed	5
5:5 FPS Animation	5
6:4 12 FPS Animation	5
8:7 8 FPS Animation	5
Interlace Chroma Problem (ICP)	5
Chroma Upsampling Error (CUE)	5
Random Noise: Sailboat	5
Random Noise: Flower	5
Random Noise: Sunrise	5
Random Noise: Harbour Night	5
Scrolling Text	5
Roller Coaster	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Bridge Traffic	5
Text Pattern/ Scrolling Text	5
Roller Coaster	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Bridge Traffic	5
Luminance Frequency Bands	5
Chrominance Frequency Bands	5
Vanishing Text	5
Resolution Enhancement	15
Theme Park	5
Driftwood	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Skin Tones	7
Total	196

The HD6990 outperforms the GTX590 in the IQ stakes, but only very slightly, scoring 4 more points, for a total score of 196 points.

Far Cry 2 (commonly abbreviated as “FC2 or “fc2″) is an open-ended first-person shooter developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. It was released on October 21, 2008 in North America and on October 23, 2008 in Europe and Australia. It was made available on Steam on October 22, 2008. Crytek, the developers of the original game, were not involved in the development of Far Cry 2.

Ubisoft has marketed Far Cry 2 as the true sequel to Far Cry, though the sequel has very few noticeable similarities to the original game. Instead, it features completely new characters and setting, as well as a new style of gameplay that allows the player greater freedom to explore different African landscapes such as deserts, jungles, and savannas. The game takes place in a modern-day East African nation in a state of anarchy and civil war. The player takes control of a mercenary on a lengthy journey to locate and assassinate “The Jackal,” a notorious arms dealer.

Far Cry 2 is still a popular game and the open world environment can be taxing on even the latest hardware available today.

Settings: 1920×1200, D3D10, Disable Artificial Intelligence(No), Full Screen, Anti-Aliasing(8x), VSync(No), Overall Quality(Ultra High), Vegetation(Very High), Shading(Ultra High), Terrain(Ultra High), Geometry(Ultra High), Post FX(High), Texture(Ultra High), Shadow(Ultra High), Ambient(High), Hdr(Yes), Bloom(Yes), Fire(Very High), Physics(Very High), RealTrees(Very High)

The GTX590 scores an average of 151 frames per second at our chosen settings, this is identical to the HD6990 when set to 880mhz core. The minimum frame rate however is significantly lower, scoring 94 fps when the AMD card is 20 fps higher.

Aliens V Predator has proved to be a big seller since the release and Sega have taken the franchise into new territory after taking it from Sierra. AVP is a Direct X 11 supported title and delivers not only advanced shadow rendering but high quality tessellation for the cards on test today.

To test the cards we used a 1080p resolution with DX11, Texture Quality Very High, MSAA Samples 1, 16 af, ambient occulsion on, shadow complexity high, motion blur on. We use this with most of our graphics card testing so cards are comparible throughout reviews.

This is a great Direct X 11 engine and highlights the insane frame rates possible from both HD6990 and GTX590. The HD6990 is the clear performance leader again with this particular title at 1080p resolution.

Resident Evil 5, known in Japan as Biohazard 5, is a survival horror third-person shooter video game developed and published by Capcom. The game is the seventh installment in the Resident Evil survival horror series, and was released on March 5, 2009 in Japan and on March 13, 2009 in North America and Europe for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. A Windows version of the game was released on September 15, 2009 in North America, September 17 in Japan and September 18 in Europe. Resident Evil 5 revolves around Chris Redfield and Sheva Alomar as they investigate a terrorist threat in Kijuju, a fictional town in Africa.

Within its first three weeks of release, the game sold over 2 million units worldwide and became the best-selling game of the franchise in the United Kingdom. As of December, 2009, Resident Evil 5 has sold 5.3 million copies worldwide since launch, becoming the best selling Resident Evil game ever made.

Some CPU limiting with the QuadfireX results, however the HD6990 manages to take the lead again, even if it is very close indeed. The GTX590 manages to maintain a higher minimum frame rate with this test.

Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. 2 is an arcade-style flight action game developed by Ubisoft Romania and published by Ubisoft. After the events of the first game, the H.A.W.X squadron is sent to Middle East, where a high level of violence is being registered, and the appearance of various insurgents leaders in various hotspots. The team also has to investigate the mysterious disappearance of Russian nuclear weapons. The player will be controlling three groups: one American (Hunter), one British (Munro) and one Russian (Sokov), each with its own pilots and supporting characters. There will also be references to other characters in the Tom Clancy universe.

We are testing in full DX11 mode with all settings to maximum.

This is a game which is very heavy skewed in favour of Nvidia as the results show, they aren't even close. A single GTX590 is outperforming two HD6990s in QuadFireX.

Lost Planet 2 is a third-person shooter video game developed and published by Capcom. The game is the sequel to Lost Planet: Extreme Condition which is also made by Capcom, taking place ten years after the events of the first game, on the same fictional planet. The story takes place back on E.D.N. III 10 years after the events of the first game. The snow has melted to reveal jungles and more tropical areas that have taken the place of more frozen regions. The plot begins with Mercenaries fighting against Jungle Pirates.

After destroying a mine, the Mercenaries continue on to evacuate the area, in which a Category-G Akrid appears and attacks them. After being rescued, they find out their evacuation point (Where the Category-G appeared) was a set-up and no pick up team awaited them. Lost Planet 2 runs on the MT-Framework 2.0, an updated version of the engine used in several Capcom-developed games.

We are testing in DX11 mode with all settings on the highest. Direct X 11 features are on high.

Lost Planet 2 is a painfully dull game to play, but the Direct X 11 engine is a good test for modern gaming hardware. The GTX590 scores very well in this particular game, outperforming the HD6990 by a clear margin. We believe AMD can optimise this title a little further over the coming months.

Dead Space 2 is a survival horror third-person shooter. The player controls Isaac Clarke from a third-person point of view, looking over the character’s right shoulder. The game features no HUD elements, relying on holograms projected from the player character and his weapons to show information such as messages and ammunition count, respectively. Player health and stasis is shown by a visual indicators located on Isaac’s back. Isaac must fight an alien organism that infects and takes control of human corpses, turning them into “Necromorphs”, mutating their bodies.

Necromorphs must be dismembered as the alien organism controls host bodies via tentacles extending into their limbs. Other, larger types of Necromorphs that cannot be dismembered will often have yellow, glowing pustules, indicating weak spots. Occasionally, when an enemy gets close enough to Isaac, they will grab a hold of him, and the player must repeatedly press a key to fend off the enemy, with failure to do so leading to death of the player character.

At this resolution and with these settings, there is clearly CPU limiting. We will look at this title later across three screens and see how the high end solutions perform. At this resolution the GTX590 is slightly ahead, but its barely noticeable.

Metro 2033 is an action-oriented video game with a combination of survival horror and first-person shooter elements. The game is based on the novel Metro 2033 by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky. It was developed by 4A Games in Ukraine and released in March 2010 for the Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows.

The game utilizes multi-platform 4A Engine, running on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Microsoft Windows. There is some contention regarding whether the engine is based on the pre-release X-Ray engine (as claimed by Sergiy Grygorovych, the founder of GSC Game World, as well as users who have seen the 4A Engine SDK screenshots, citing visual similarities, shared resources, and technical evaluation of the pre-release 4A Engine demo conducted at the request of GSC Game World), or whether the engine is an original development (as claimed by 4A Games and Oles’ Shiskovtsov in particular) who claims it would have been impractical to retrofit the X-ray engine with console support). The PC version includes exclusive features such as DirectX 11 support and has been described as “a love letter to PC gamers” because of the developers’ choice “to make the PC version [especially] phenomenal”.

At these settings the GTX590 is the winner, outperforming the HD6990 by a clear 9fps margin. It isn't really noticeable in real world terms, but it is recordable.

Shogun 2 is set in 16th-century feudal Japan, in the aftermath of the Ōnin War. The country is fractured into rival clans led by local warlords, each fighting for control. The player takes on the role of one of these warlords, with the goal of dominating other factions and claiming his rule over Japan. The standard edition of the game will feature a total of eight factions (plus a ninth faction for the tutorial), each with a unique starting position and different political and military strengths.

All settings are pushed to ultra with hardware shadows and SSAO enabled.

The HD6990 is the clear performance leader with Total War: Shogun 2, leading by almost 20 frames per second. All solutions are perfectly playable however at this resolution.

Dead Space 2 is a survival horror third-person shooter. The player controls Isaac Clarke from a third-person point of view, looking over the character’s right shoulder. The game features no HUD elements, relying on holograms projected from the player character and his weapons to show information such as messages and ammunition count, respectively. Player health and stasis is shown by a visual indicators located on Isaac’s back. Isaac must fight an alien organism that infects and takes control of human corpses, turning them into “Necromorphs”, mutating their bodies.

Necromorphs must be dismembered as the alien organism controls host bodies via tentacles extending into their limbs. Other, larger types of Necromorphs that cannot be dismembered will often have yellow, glowing pustules, indicating weak spots. Occasionally, when an enemy gets close enough to Isaac, they will grab a hold of him, and the player must repeatedly press a key to fend off the enemy, with failure to do so leading to death of the player character.

We experienced CPU limiting earlier at the lower resolution. This time we are looking at the game across 3 screens at 5760×1080 resolution.

At these enhanced settings, the GTX590 comes out on top by almost 20 frames per second, with significantly better minimum frame rates.

Set in the mythical world of Thedas, Dragon Age II tells the story of Hawke, who fled the nation of Ferelden during the events of Dragon Age: Origins and arrived in the neighboring state of Kirkwall as a refugee. Within the span of a decade, Hawke would rise in power and influence to become the legendary “Champion of Kirkwall”, and the center of events that change the course of Thedas forever. The game focuses on Hawke's rise to power and is framed through flashbacks by one of Hawke's old companions, Varric, who relates the Champion's ‘true story' to Cassandra Pentaghast, a Seeker of Thedas' religious Chantry.

We are testing at 5760×1080 resolution with 8x anti aliasing and maximum in game settings.

The GTX590 is really struggling with this new role playing game. While the HD6990 can deliver an average of 35 fps and over, the GTX590 struggles to maintain double digits. Clearly some driver work for nvidia with this game over the coming months.

F1 2010 is a video game based on the 2010 season of the Formula One world championship. It is the sequel to the 2009 video game based on the same series. It was released in September 2010 on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Windows platforms. The game was confirmed by Codemasters on 23 April 2009. The game engine is based on the new EGO 1.5 engine, an unofficially titled evolution of the EGO 1.0 engine that was created specially for the title.

We are testing across three screens with 4aa and 8af enabled and ultra quality settings in DX11 mode

A close battle, but the HD6990 just edges it, scoring between 3-4 fps more at full 880mhz core clock speed.

Left 4 Dead 2 is a cooperative first-person shooter game. It is the sequel to Valve Corporation’s award-winning Left 4 Dead.

Like the original, Left 4 Dead 2 is set during the aftermath of an apocalyptic pandemic, and focuses on four survivors fighting against hordes of the infected. The survivors must fight their way through levels, interspersed with safe houses that act as checkpoints, with the goal of reaching a rescue vehicle at the campaign’s finale. The gameplay is procedurally altered by an artificial intelligence engine dubbed the “Director” that monitors the players’ performance and adjust the scenario to provide a dynamic challenge. Several new features have been introduced: new types of infected, melee weapons, and a story-arc that connects the game’s five campaigns together.

Again very close, but the HD6990 just edges the frames, by a couple per second.

Crysis 2 is set in New York City in 2023 (three years after the events of the first game), which has since been evacuated due to alien infestation. Similar to its predecessor, Crysis 2 provides freedom to customize weaponry and abilities. Crytek wanted to avoid making another game set in a true jungle environment (as were Far Cry and Crysis); New York City has been dubbed an “urban jungle”. The urban atmosphere offers new options with relation to progressing and planning attacks. Players are able to navigate between floors and buildings, as well as a destroyed cityscape.

We are using the final retail version of the game, and setting everything to the limit.  AA is disabled.

The GTX590 comes out top in this test, maintaining a perfectly playable experience even at these insane settings. The HD6990 on the other hand struggles to maintain solid frame rates throughout, falling behind. We hope AMD can improve this experience over the coming months, especially with the DX11 patch due for release in the next couple of days.

The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 25c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this.

Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load measurements were acquired by playing Crysis Warhead for 30 minutes and measuring the peak temperature. We also have included Furmark results, recording maximum temperatures throughout a 30 minute stress test. All fan settings were left on automatic.

All of these cards get fairly hot under load, peaking around 88-89c under Furmark load.

Recently we have changed our method of measuring noise levels. We have built a system inside a Lian Li chassis with no case fans and have used a fanless cooler on our CPU. We are using a heatpipe based passive power supply and an Intel SSD to keep noise levels to a minimum. The motherboard is also passively cooled. This gives us a build with completely passive cooling and it means we can measure noise of just the graphics card inside the system when we run looped 3dMark tests. Ambient noise in the room is around 20-25dBa. We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation.

Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the video card. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.

We load the card with FurMark.

KitGuru noise guide

10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refridgerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

The GTX590 is considerably quieter than the HD6990 under load. It is actually a surprisingly inaudible card under general circumstances, especially in a chassis with good airflow.

To test power consumption today we are using a Keithley Integra unit and we measure power consumption from the VGA card inputs, not the system wide drain. We are measuring power consumption today in a slightly different way, by measuring the maximum drain taken when running 3dMark 11 at performance settings.

When idle, the GTX590 consumes around 13 watts more than the HD6990, under load we found that it could demand a maximum of 350 watts when compared against the HD6990's 323 watts.

To overclock today we used Rivatuner. All fan settings were left to automatic and stability was tested over a two hour period for each card.

The HD6990 overclocks to the same levels that we have experienced before, which is no surprise as this is the same reference solution. The GTX590 has a surprising level of headroom available, giving an 22% OC on the core and a 15.7% oc on the memory.

Just be sure to use the correct driver when trying to overclock the GTX590. Read more about it over here.

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.

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