Final words and conclusion

Final words and conclusion

Conclusion time then. We certainly had a good time with the Gigabyte card as tested today. It is 100% reference and as such the performance amongst these board will all be 100% the very same until some customized versions hit the market. What was absolutely lovely to see is that Gigabyte is trying to do it a little differently, the inclusion of the 8000 series gaming mouse (worth 50 EUR alone) and then that dandy packaging. To most it might not matter as it is all about the graphics card, but let me guarantee you, it simply adds to the wow factor as the feel you get from your purchase is even a little better.

Wrapping up again, you know I'm still a little flabbergasted as to why NVIDIA clocked the card as low as they did. Likely they are ying-yang with the fact that this card's performance roughly equals slash is close to R6990 performance and simply opted for lower noise and a fashionable power consumption. But in this cutthroat business, yeah, I expected NVIDIA to give the R6990 a run for its money, and that certainly is not the case, especially when you would enable the unlocked mode on the R6990 that card wins pretty much anything. In all fairness, we think that ATI still applies a trislope optimization giving them a small perf advantage over NVIDIA's image quality.

Regardless of that yeah, this conclusion is hard. We'll tell you this though, the GTX 590 is downright silent for a multi-GPU product, and believe it or not -- something that simply could very well be the decisive factor for many of you.

Products like the one shown today are always trivial to recommend and most of all, explain. They are expensive and they perform at a level that hardly anyone requires let alone needs. Still, that doesn't change the fact that within its segment and audience, the most high-end cards are desired by a lot of you. Whether it's just to gain a humongous e-peen, an x-factor product or you simple have a desire for the best gaming performance, it's these people that will purchase these dual-GPU monsters, but regardless of what some people think of it this is a superbly performing card.

Performance wise the GTX 590 is a beast, the performance level that it operates in is truly amazing stuff to witness. We'll get into that in a minute. Temperatures remains at roughly 80 Degrees C on this card, and that is when it is completely maxed out and stressed. That is exemplary. TDP wise we measure roughly 350W, considering the performance level thrown at you, that isn't bad either.

Performance then, you will receive a product that exhausts nearly silly numbers in terms of frame rate. You can flick on 8xAA and the card really isn't bothered.

As always you do need to keep in mind that a card needs an appropriate PC. Even our Core i7 Nehalem based quad core processor clocked at 3750 MHz will still run into some CPU limitation with the somewhat aging DX9 titles we used. Here also we need to state that CPU limitations / bottlenecks are not necessarily a bad thing. As long as you pass 60 FPS or your maximum monitor refresh rate -- honestly who cares? So do feel free to enable all image quality settings a game offers you. I mean, if I take Battlefield 2 Bad Company, which is massively GPU dependant, and enable all and only the very best image quality settings and apply 8xAA, we still get 106 FPS on average at a monitor resolution of 1920x1200, which is just staggering.
Driver compatibility wise in terms of multi-GPU support, we did not have problems at all. All tested titles worked perfectly fine and overall scaling was pretty snazzy as well, except Crysis WARHEAD which was producing lower numbers opposed to another beta driver we initially tested. NVIDIA has been very strong on multi-GPU support and once big titles launch, they often release a new driver alongside with it. It would not hurt NVIDIA to release drivers on a more regular basis. It is a complaint as of late that we are seeing often in our forums, especially when it comes toward multi-GPU driver support this is very important.

Cards like shown today are for the true elite gamers out there. You need that muscular PC, a monitor resolution that starts at 1920x1080/1200 or heck, even three monitors as remember, one GTX 590 supports surround vision with up-to three monitors as well.

Pricing wise you can expect roughly 540 EUR ex VAT, and that's certainly a lot of money for a graphics card. High-end should never cost more than 499 EUR in our opinion, after that it is just very hard to justify. Regardless of pricing, NVIDIA has a very potent graphics card with the GTX 590. It remains inaudible, temps and power consumption are under control, you get uncompromised image quality and a bucket load of performance.

MSRPs for GeForce GTX 590 in Northern Europe:

• Euro Countries EUR 540 EX VAT
• UK GBP 569 INC VAT
• NORWAY NOK 5,249 INC VAT
• SWEDEN SEK 5,990 INC VAT
• DENMARK DKK 4,999 INC VAT

Again, the x-factor is there and the performance is phenomenal, remember what we said about high-resolution monitors and respect the fact that you'll need a very intoxicating overall PC build as well to feed this card the power it deserves after which it will quid pro quo for you. And if you like to go really wild with multiple-monitors then this product starts to make a whole lot of sense.

The card used in this review originates from Gigabyte graphics and honestly the initial batches are all the same regardless of manufacturer. What makes this a little more special though is the exceptional packaging and the inclusion of that quality gaming mouse, very nice. Be sure to give them a visit right here. The GTX 590, well it's a top pick, of course.

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