ZOTAC GTX590 3GB Graphics Card Review

Nvidia are back to claim the graphics card performance crown. Can the GTX590 live up to its hype?

Product on Review: ZOTAC GeForce GTX 590
Manufacturer and Sponsor: ZOTAC
MSRP: $699
Street Price: £567.14

Dual GPU cards have been around for a very long time since the days of the 3DFX Voodoo and ATI’s Rage Fury Maxx but it was Nvidia that more recently popularised the design with their 7900GX2. Their inherent problems were of course heat, power consumption and reliably installing two GPUs on a limited real estate. Initially, Nvidia had to resort to using separate PCBs but the recent trend has been to package both GPUs on a single PCB. The problems of heat and power consumption still remain limiting factors and this is why Nvidia have taken the approach of reducing the specifications of the GPUs to accommodate the TDP and thermal output of the card.

Nvidia and AMD have taken different approaches to what their dual GPU cards represent. On the one hand, AMD rely on them for their most high end offering allowing them to focus on smaller, more efficient GPUs such that two can be placed onto one card without any significant tweaking. In essence, it works the same as crossfiring two cards without requiring the need of a compliant motherboard. Nvidia’s philosophy has always been to create the most powerful single GPU but often they have failed to compete with AMD’s dual GPU offerings (HD4870x2 vs. GTX285 or HD5970 vs. GTX480). Their recent achievement of being able to reduce power consumption and heat output of their tweaked Fermi based GF110 GPU has meant that Nvidia were once again able to pair two of them up for unmatched performance and to combat AMD’s HD6990. Afterall the GF110 GPU had already made the GTX580 the most powerful single GPU card on the market so having a graphics card with two of them on-board is recipe for success surely. And thus was born the GTX590.

Despite the use of the tweaked and more efficient GF110 derivative, it still remains a power hungry GPU by most standards so Nvidia had to make a few sacrifices when implementing them onto the GTX590. Thankfully the core architecture was untouched and all 512 CUDA cores are present on each to give the card a total of 1024 cores. Similarly, the number of texture units on each core has remained intact at 64. The graphics cards boasts two memory subsystems linked to each core featuring the same 1536MB framebuffer and 384-bit bus as found on the GTX580. The only sacrifice Nvidia had to make was on the core and memory clocks in a bit to fit below the 375W TDP envelope. As such, the GPUs come clocked at 607/3414MHz rather than 772/4004MHz. On initial impressions, it doesn’t seem a bad trade-off, after all users can simply overclock their cards to compensate for the lowered clocks. However this is where Nvidia have had severe shortcomings. To limit the TDP, they have had to lower the core voltage to a mere 0.925V from 1V on the GTX580. The result is hampered overclocking headroom. Soon after release, there were increasing number of claims that GTX590s were failing spectacularly in response to overvolting and thus Nvidia were forced to implement an overvoltage lock through new driver releases to ensure none of those problems. Our review today will look at whether this limitation will have significant repercussions on the card’s performance or whether it can still dominate the competition as Nvidia has promised.

A bit about ZOTAC

ZOTAC International is one of the largest producers of NVIDIA VGA and motherboard solutions worldwide.

ZOTAC International (MCO) Limited was established in 2006 with a mission to deliver superb, high quality NVIDIA graphic solutions to the industry. It has strong backing from its parent group, PC Partner Ltd. – with headquarters in Hong Kong, factories in mainland China and regional sales offices in North America, Europe, and the Asia Pacific region. The scale of support ZOTAC provides is currently unrivalled in the world. With 40 surface mount technology (SMT) manufacturing lines, 6,000 workers and a production facility with over 9,000,000 square feet, ZOTAC employs a full array of state-of-the-art technologies and skilled personnel in order to meet your hardware needs. In addition, ZOTAC has over 130 research & development professionals in Hong Kong and mainland China, working to bring you the best from the cutting edge of the industry. ZOTAC’s international bases of operation work together to enable effective and efficient global as well as localized sales and marketing support.

ZOTAC doesn’t just mean top tier quality, it is also synonymous with high performance, absolute reliability and unparalleled value. With a range of products featuring overclocked performance, excellent cooling properties, and unique packaging ZOTAC products routinely meet – and exceed – users’ expectations.

ZOTAC’s unwavering commitment to our users is to bring the latest products quickly to the market with the best value. Needless to say ZOTAC is the right choice for those who demand the highest quality graphics solutions.

For more about ZOTAC’s philosophy, click here…

Our card today is a reference design by Zotac so let’s see how it fares.

Specifications

Nvidia’s GTX590 boasts not one but two fully fledged GF110 GPUs. The GF110 chip shares a lot of its roots with the GF100 core. It still packs an impressive 3.2 billion transistors in a die seize 520mm squared. Its default internal configuration has been ported from GF100 in that the GPU features 512 CUDA cores or shader processors as we are more accustomed to. There are organised in a 4x16x32 block where 16 denotes the number of stream multi-processors (SM) and 32 being the number of cores on each SM. Each SM has its own L1 Cache and a common L2 Cache is shared by all 16. The GPU is still manufactured on the 40nm process.

In their attempt at claiming the performance crown, the GTX590 sacrifices none of its architectural features. Like the single GPU GTX580, the two GPUs aboard the GTX590 feature all 16 SMs enabled and consequently, all 64 texture units are present, the latter two being intrinsically linked. The number of ROPs on each GPU has remained the same at 48 and the L2 Cache is still 768 KB. In terms of shader and texturing power, having 512 CUDA cores boosts performance by 6.6% over 480 CUDA cores. As with the GTX580, the GF110 core employs the mainstream GF104’s superior texture filtering capabilities. Unlike Nvidia’s previous dual GPU card, the GTX295, the GTX590 does not compromise on the number of memory controllers and the memory interface width. Each GPU has its own set of 6 memory controllers each sporting a 256MB framebuffer to give 1536MB of available memory. Although claimed to be a total of 3GB, the two sets work in parallel rather as one set. Similarly, each has a 384-bit memory interface that has been teamed up with GDDR5 memory.

GTX580: 16 SMs x 32 = 512 Cores, 16 SMs x 4 = 64 texture units
32-bit channel x 12 = 384-bit interface, 256MB x 6 memory controllers = 1536MB memory

GTX590: 16 SMs x 32 x 2 = 512 Cores x 2, 16 SMs x 4 = 64 texture units
32-bit channel x 12 x 2 = 384-bit interface x 2, 256MB x 6 memory controllers x 2 = 1536MB x 2 memory

The performance of the GTX590 is certainly impressive on paper and unmatched by other Nvidia graphics cards. However, despite featuring two fully unlocked GF110 GPUs, the texture and pixel fill rates are only 57% ahead of the GTX580. The same is the case regarding the shader performance. The reason is due to the GPUs on-board coming clocked at 79% of its capability on the GTX580. We have noted in previous reviews that Nvidia GPUs tend to scale very well with increased clock speed and often being very linear when translated to real world performance so a 165MHz reduction in core clock has gone a long way at reducing the GTX590’s potential. This contrasts slightly to AMD’s HD6990 where the reduction in clock speed on both of its GPUs is more restrained. Nvidia have no doubt done this to lower power consumption. The result of the reduced core clocks lowers the potential of each individual GPU to one slightly less powerful than a GTX570. The questions are whether SLI scaling on the GTX590 is enough to justify it over a proper dual card SLI setup and whether its price tag reflects its specifications. At a £570, it commends the same price as two GTX570s so we expect performance to mirror that.

Product Specifications

Graphics Engine: GeForce GTX590
Model: ZOTAC GTX590 3GB ZT-50501-10P
Bus Standard: PCI Express x16 2.0 (Compatible with 1.1)
Memory Size(MB): 3072 (1536 x2) GDDR5
Memory Interface: 2x 384-bit
Core Clock Speed (MHz): 607
Stream Processors: 512 x2
Shader Clock (MHz): 1214
Memory Clock Speed (MHz): 3414

3D API: Direct X 11 & OpenGL 4.1
DVI Output: 2
HDMI: 1
VGA: Supported using DVI-to-VGA adapter
Display Output (Max Resolution): 2560 x 1600
HDCP Support: Yes
Dual Link DV1: Yes
HDMI Support: Yes
SLI: Yes (2 cards only)
Card Dimension (mm): 279.4 x 111.15mm

Features

Completely transform your gaming experience with the ZOTAC GeForce® GTX 590, the fastest graphics card with Microsoft® DirectX® 11 technology ever produced. The ZOTAC GeForce® GTX 590 delivers out-of-this-world performance by combining a pair of Fermi graphics processors working together to enable an unprecedented gaming experience with phenomenal visuals, clarity and immersion.

NVIDIA® 3D Vision™ Surround technology enables the ZOTAC GeForce® GTX 590 to drive three simultaneous 3D-capable displays for the ultimate immersive gaming experience with stereoscopic 3D effects. When more performance is desired, two ZOTAC GeForce® GTX 590s can combine with NVIDIA® Quad SLI™ technology to create a monstrous gaming system with four graphics processors.

ZOTAC Exclusive Features
•ZOTAC Firestorm – ZOTAC Firestorm allows users to fine tune their graphics card to extract maximum performance from ZOTAC GeForce 8, 9 and GTX series graphics cards by enabling users to overclock GPU engine, memory and shader clock speeds and GPU fan-speed.

3D Graphics
•Full Microsoft® DirectX® 11 Shader Model 5.0 support: o NVIDIA PolyMorph Engine with distributed HW tessellation engines
•BC6H and BC7 texture compression formats
•Gather4 extensions
•OpenGL 4.1 support
•Advanced image quality features: o 32× coverage sample antialiasing
•Transparent multisampling and transparent supersampling
•16× angle independent anisotropic filtering
•128-bit floating point high dynamic-range (HDR) lighting with antialiasing; 32-bit per-component floating point texture filtering and blending
•Interactive ray tracing support
•Full-speed frame buffer blending
•Full-speed FP16 texture filtering
•Advanced lossless compression algorithms for color, texture, and zdata
•Support for normal map compression
•Adaptive z-cull
•Early-Z

GPU Computing
•NVIDIA CUDA™ technology—allows the GPU cores to provide performance improvements for applications such as video transcoding, gaming, ray tracing, and physics. API support includes: o CUDA C
•CUDA C++
•DirectCompute 5.0
•OpenCL
•Java, Python, and Fortran
•Third Generation Streaming Multiprocessor (SM) o 32 CUDA cores per SM
•Dual Warp Scheduler simultaneously schedules and dispatches instructions from two independent warps
•64 KB of RAM with a configurable partitioning of shared memory and L1 cache
•Second Generation Parallel Thread Execution ISA o Unified Address Space with Full C++ Support
•Optimized for OpenCL and DirectCompute
•Full IEEE 754-2008 32-bit and 64-bit precision
•Full 32-bit integer path with 64-bit extensions
•Memory access instructions to support transition to 64-bit addressing
•Improved Performance through Predication
•Improved Memory Subsystem o NVIDIA Parallel DataCacheTM hierarchy with Configurable L1 and Unified L2 Caches
•Greatly improved atomic memory operation performance
•NVIDIA GigaThreadTM Engine o 10x faster application context switching
•Concurrent kernel execution
•Out of order thread block execution

Nvidia Technology
•NVIDIA SLI® technology—patented hardware and software technology allows up to four NVIDIA GeForce GPUs to run in parallel to scale performance and enhance image quality on today’s top games.
•NVIDIA PhysX™ technology—allows advanced physics effects to be simulated and rendered on the GPU.
•NVIDIA 3D Vision™ Ready— GeForce GPU support for NVIDIA 3D Vision, bringing a fully immersive stereoscopic 3D experience to the PC.
•NVIDIA 3D Vision Surround™ Ready—scale games across 3 panels by leveraging the power of multiple GPUs in an NVIDIA SLI configuration. Combine with 3D Vision technology for the ultimate 3 panel stereoscopic 3D gaming experience.

Advanced Display Functionality
•Two pipelines for dual independent display
•Two dual-link DVI outputs for digital flat panel display resolutions up to 2560×1600
•Dual integrated 400 MHz RAMDACs for analog display resolutions up to and including 2048×1536 at 85 Hz
•HDMI 1.4a support including GPU accelerated Blu-ray 3D support, x.v.Color, HDMI Deep Color, and 7.1 digital surround sound. See www.nvidia.com/3dtv for more details.
•DisplayPort 1.1a support
•HDCP support up to 2560×1600 resolution on all digital outputs
•10-bit internal display processing, including support for 10-bit scan out
•Underscan/overscan compensation and hardware scaling

Video
• NVIDIA® Pure Video® HD technology with VP4 programmable video processor
•Decode acceleration for MPEG-2, MPEG-4 Part 2 Advanced Simple Profile, H.264, MVC, VC1, DivX (version 3.11 and later), and Flash (10.1 and later)
•Blu-ray dual-stream hardware acceleration (supporting HD picture-in-picture playback)
•Advanced spatial-temporal de-interlacing
•Noise reduction
•Edge enhancement
•Bad edit correction
•Inverse telecine (2:2 and 3:2 pull-down correction)
•High-quality scaling
•Motion Compensation
•Video color correction
•Dynamic contrast enhancement and color stretch

Digital Audio
•Support for the following audio modes: o Dolby Digital (AC3), DTS 5.1, Multi-channel (7.1) LPCM, Dolby Digital Plus (DD+), MPEG2/MPEG4 AAC
•Data rates of 44.1 KHz, 48 KHz, 88.2 KHz, 96 KHz, 176 KHz, and 192 KHz
•Word sizes of 16bit, 20bit, and 24bit

Power Management Technology
•Advanced power and thermal management for optimal acoustics, power, and performance based on usage:
•ASPM power management
•Adaptive Clocking
•Adaptive Power States
•Advanced fan control
•Power and temperature monitoring

Packaging and Content

The front of the box

ZOTAC have packaged their GTX590 in a very unique and stylish box that unlike most of its competitors remains simplistic but effective. The yellow and silver coloured finish reflects the company colours and makes for an attractive look. The box itself is wrapped by a cut out that simply slips onto it. This is also where all the card’s features and specifications have been printed. On the front, the model of the card is boldly displayed and small illustrations of the card’s supported features are also depicted at the top and bottom. The card comes with a standard two year warranty but as shown by the Extended Warranty badge, ZOTAC add a further three years on top to those who register the card.

The back of the box

At the back, the features and specifications are listed in 12 languages. ZOTAC have used the space to showcase how their graphics card can enhance gaming experience through stunning gaming effects thanks to 3D and DX11 support.

The specifications

Taking a closer look, the key features lists all the supported standards such as SLI, 3D Vision Surround, PhysX technology and CUDA technology.

Removing the sleeve

Removing the sleeve reveals the actual box with its cloth weave pattern. It retains a very clean look with only the ZOTAC emblem stuck on to finish it off. The front flap uses two small magnets to keep the lid closed. It’s a welcoming change from traditional cardboard side inserts that tend to become an annoyance when opening and closing the box. With the ZOTAC, little effort is required to do so and it makes for an impeccable finish.

Opening the box

Inside, a thin rectangular box holds the bundle and accessories with two punched holes to ease removal to gain access to the graphics card. Below is the GTX590 house in foam and an additional plastic cover for more than adequate protection. Although hardly the highlight of the review, ZOTAC have to be commended for providing one of the best packaging I’ve seen to date.

The bundle

The bundle by ZOTAC is very similar to their previous offerings. The whole package includes:

– 1 x Driver disc
– 1 x DVI to HDMI cable
– 2 x Dual 6-pin PCIe to 8-pin PCIe power cable
– User manual
– Zotac Boost Premium
– Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood game CD-key
– 1 x Nvidia GeForce GTX590

A nice addition is the DVI to HDMI cable which isn’t something I’ve seen bundled previously.

The GTX590

The ZOTAC GTX590 follows Nvidia’s reference design, using the same shroud and cooler as well as the PCB design. The graphics art carries on the black and yellow theme attributed to the brand and front box cover. The shroud is fairly uniquely designed such that the central area where the fan is located is slightly depressed and a raided curved lip is present at the IO side of the shroud which may help direct airflow. The card is just under 280mm in length making it only marginally longer than a reference AMD HD6970. The benefit is improved compatibility in cases without having to move hard drive bays and the likes.

The back of the card

At the back, there are two separate metal back plates covering the memory modules on the back of the PCB. Nvidia have opted for two pieces rather than a single one covering the entire length of the card. The reason is not clear but it may well be a cost cutting method. These are attached by torx screws. The back plates should provide additional cooling and structural support.

Part of the VRM circuitry

The middle of the PCB reveals part of the VRM circuitry

Closer Look

The back of the PCB

Removing the two metal back-plates reveals a total of twelve memory modules with 6 on each side behind each core. In total, the GTX590 boasts 24 modules so the other 12 are on the other side of the PCB. It is clear that the arrangement is asymmetrical based on the positioning of the modules at each ends of the PCB. It’s also good to see each module being passively cooled by the back plate and thermal pads.

A closer look at the circuitry and memory modules

Taking a closer look at one end of the PCB, we can see the 6 modules and 4 Hi-c capacitors just behind where the GPU is located.

The 80mm PWM fan

The centre positioned 80mm fan has the challenging task of cooling two GF110 core on the same PCB. Unlike AMD’s approach of going for a blower fan, Nvidia have settled for a mid-positioned down draft fan that can cool both cores as effectively as possible. The depressed central region means that the 8 fan blades protrude out slightly so cool air can be drawn in more easily and blown towards the PCB and heatsinks. The fan is PWM controlled and will vary its speed based on a temperature profile. The depressed region also means that if another card is installed right next to it, the former does not become starved of airflow.

Exhaust vents

At the end of the card, the shroud has been left open ended so that air being blown through from the centre can exhaust out through the vent. It means the hot air is recycled so good airflow is necessary to ensure optimum cooling. Through the vent, the densely finned heatsink can be seen and each GPU has its own.

A single SLI connector

The GTX590 already has two on-board GPUs and currently Nvidia is limited to Quad GPU SLI so it is not surprising to find a single SLI connector as opposed to two as found on the GTX580 and GTX570.

Two 8 pin PCIe connectors

The GTX590 has a 375W TDP, achieving that by drawing 150W from each 8 Pin PCIe connectors and an extra 75W from the PCIe slot. Overclocking will draw more power but thankfully the more than 150W can be drawn from the PCIe connectors, although both Nvidia and AMD won’t advertise that as such. The connectors are ideally situated on the side of the card to avoid conflicts with HDD cages or other components.

The I/O panel

Although the card can only support two displays, a plethora of connectors are located on the back I/O panel for good measure. In total are three Dual-Link DVI-I connectors and one mini-DisplayPort connector. The ports also support Nvidia Surround technology, without requiring DisplayPort, as long as another GTX590 is used in SLI. A DVI to HDMI cable is provided for those that need the latter connection. Unfortunately a mini-DP to DisplayPort adapter is not bundled. The back I/O plate features narrow vents that allow hot air to be exhausted at the rear of the case.

Nvidia GTX590 VS GTX570

The GTX590 is slightly longer than the GTX580 and GTX570, the latter two being 26.8cm in length and the former being 27.94cm long. This is short enough to ensure compatibility in the majority of mid-tower cases.

Nvidia GTX590 VS AMD HD6990

The GTX590 is dwarfed by the near foot long AMD HD6990 which comes at 30.5cm. It is also clear that the fan on the Nvidia card is larger in diameter and a down-draft rather than blower type.

Closer Look (Continued)

The cooler, fan and shroud

On top of the PCB is a metal bracket that supports the heatsinks and fan, and provides further cooling to the memory modules and VRM circuitry. It also serves to provide structural rigidity to ensure that the PCB does not flex given its length and the weight of the heatsink at the end. Attached to it is a plastic shroud that can also be removed separately. The bladed fan is different to the blower type ones found on the GTX580/GTX570.

The vapour chamber and heatsink

One of the ways Nvidia have attempted to tackle the heat generated by the core is a vapour chamber cooler. The copper heat plate contains liquid in the base (the raised middle part of the plate that is in contact with the GPU). The liquid evaporates and absorbs further latent heat through its phase transition to vapour. This rises and condenses on the outside upper part of the heat plate releasing heat which is then transmitted to the overlying fin array whilst the condenser fluid circulates around the outside of the heat plate. This was first introduced on Nvidia GTX570 & GTX580 where they worked very efficiently. In total, the heatsink on top of the vapour chamber is constructed using 33 aluminium fins oriented vertically to allow air through. Each GPU has its own heatsink and both are shaped slightly differently. The actual size of the individual heatsink is smaller than those on Nvidia’s single GPU high end cards due to space limitations.

The cooler bracket

At the base of the metal bracket are raised areas covered with thermal pads to cool the memory modules and MOSFETs. The base of the vapour chamber is made of copper and has a large enough surface area for heat dissipation.

The GeForce LED strip

A small LED strip on the inner side of the shroud lights up the GeForce branding on the side of the graphics card. This small touch goes a long way at raising the appeal of the card, especially when on display in windowed cases.

The bare PCB

The PCB is jammed packed with components but the dominating features are the two GF110 GPUs with their 520mm squared die size packing over 3 billion transistors on each. Both are surrounded by a further 6 memory modules to add to the 6 on the back of the PCB. The graphics card follows an asymmetrical design but the VRM circuitry is situated in the middle to minimise trace length. Hardly any PCB real estate goes unused.

The first of the GPUs

The first GPU is clearly labelled GF110 so we can expect it to support the same features and specifications as the GTX580 albeit with lower clocks. The memory modules are also covered by thermal pads for additional cooling.

The second of the GPUs

At the other end, we find the second GPU surrounded by its own bank of memory modules. A 4 pin fan header is present on the side for fan PWM functionality and a 2 pin header at the edge of the PCB is for the LED strip.

More memory modules

There are a total of 24 128MB memory modules for 3GB of on-board GDDR5 memory although 1.5GB are assigned to each GPU. The modules have been sourced from Samsung and carry the model name K4G10325FE-HC04, the same as those found on the GTX580. These are rated at 0.4ns for a rated speed of 5Gbps. The memory on the GTX590 only come clocked at 3414MHz, suggesting high overclocking headroom.

The rest of the 5 phase VRM circuitry

The VRM circuitry on the GTX590 uses a 5 phase PWM design for each GPU and a further 2 for each bank of 1.5GB memory as denoted by the number of chokes and associated MOSFETs. This is not as robust as the GTX580’s 6 phase design but it is one better than the GTX570. Although voltage tweaking is disabled, there is still slight but limited headroom for overclocking without risk of the components blowing up.

The SLI bridge chip

The GTX590 relies on the Nvidia bridge chip for on-board SLI so users don’t need an SLI compliant motherboard for the functionality. This is ideal for current high end AMD motherboard based around AMD’s own chipset that lacks the capability without a Lucid Hydra chip. Since the board already relies on SLI, a multi GPU setup is limited to another single GTX590 for Quad SLI.

Voltage Controller 1

The graphics card features two CHiL CHL 8266 voltage controllers for voltage monitoring, the same used on the GTX580s. The first controller is found amongst the VRM circuitry.

Voltage Controller 2

The second voltage controller is closer to the edge of the PCB just below SLI bridge chip.

Test Setup

CPU – Intel Core i7 920
RAM – 6GB (3x2GB) OCZ Platinum DDR3 1333MHz
Motherboard – ASUS Rampage III Extreme
Power Supply – Enermax Revolution 85+ 850W
Hard Drive – OCZ Vertex 2E 120GB
Samsung F3 1TB
Samsung F1 320GB
Cooler – Noctua NH-C14

Graphics Cards:

ZOTAC GTX590 3072MB @ 607/3414MHz & 670/3804MHz Overclocked – Forceware 270.61

HIS HD6990 4096MB @ 830/5000MHz, 880/5000 AUSUM & 950/6000 Overclocked – ATI Catalyst 11.4 (8.840.3.0)

Inno3D GTX560Ti 1024MB @ 820/4008MHz & 950/4300MHz Pre-overclocked – Forceware 266.66
Inno3D GTX570 1280MB @ 732/3800MHz, 800/4000MHz Pre-overclocked & 901/4220MHz Overclocked – Forceware 263.09
ASUS GTX580 1536MB @ 782/4000MHz & 903/4220MHz Overclocked – Forceware 262.99
ASUS HD6970 2048MB @ 890/5500MHz & 949/5896MHz Overclocked – ATI Catalyst 11.4 (8.840.3.0)
HIS HD6950 2048MB @ 800/5000MHz & 865/5500MHz Overclocked – ATI Catalyst 10.11 (8.790.6.0, 8.790.6.2 & 8.800)
Nvidia GTX480 1536MB @ 700/3696MHz & 799/3906MHz Overclocked – Forceware 260.99
MSI R6870 2PM2D1GD5 1024MB @ 900/4200MHz – ATI Catalyst 10.10
XFX HD5870 1024MB @ 850/4800MHz & 942/5200MHz Overclocked – ATI Catalyst 10.10

Benchmark Suite
MSI Afterburner & Kombustor
ASUS SmartDoctor
GPU-z
Crysis Warhead using the FRAMEBUFFER Crysis benchmark tool
Far Cry 2
Metro 2033
Resident Evil 5
Street Fighter IV
Unreal Tournament 3 using the HOC Bench tool
Colin McRae DIRT 2
Batman: Arkham Asylum
Battlefield Bad Company 2
Mafia II Demo
Colin McRae DIRT 2
Alien VS Predator
H.A.W.X 2
3DMark 11
3DMark Vantage
Unigine V2.1 DX 11 Benchmark

Software Bundle

The ZOTAC driver and utilities disc comes with a number of free software and trials. A few of them are GeForce-accelerated, taking full advantage of Nvidia’s CUDA. Here’s a description of the applications included.

Enhance

vReveal
Easily stabilise, brighten, and sharpen your high-definition videos using powerful enhancement technology with vReveal. Harnessing the power of NVIDIA CUDA technology and ZOTAC GeForce series graphics cards, vReveal processes videos up to 5x faster than with a CPU.

Edit

Nero Vision Xtra
Edit your home videos with extreme precision and stunning effects with Nero Vision Xtra. Advanced features such as picture-in-picture effects, multi-track timeline, full key frame control and master effect track lets anyone transform home videos into cinematic masterpieces easily with Nero Vision Xtra.

Note that this is the trial version only.

Experience

Cooliris
Experience online photos and videos like never before with Cooliris, a revolutionary browser plug-in. Cooliris transforms your web browser (Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome) into the ultimate media browser that scrolls through infinite amounts of photos and videos in a matter of seconds with the option to view the content instantly.

Entertain

XBMC
Transform your PC into a digital entertainment hub with the open-source and award winning XBMC media centre. Enjoying digital audio, video and image content with XBMC media centre is a breeze, whether the content is on physical media such as CDs, flash drives, memory cards, or stored on another system over the network, XBMC media centre can access and play it with ease.

Enjoy

Kylo
Enjoy web browsing on your high-definition television set with the big-screen optimised Kylo web browser. Kylo is the ultimate TV web browser with big fonts and big buttons for easy usability while relaxing on the sofa.

ZOTAC FireStorm is the brand’s take on the already populated world of overclocking utilities. Nonetheless, it is still a good touch for those unfamiliar with other applications such as MSI Afterburner.

The utility is fairly simplistic in design and functionality providing three sliders for basic clock speed adjustments and fan control. Nonetheless, it works as promised but those wanting a higher degree of customisation should look at MSI’s Afterburner application instead.

Power Monitoring

Overclocking is nothing without stability and for most enthusiasts; applications such as Furmark, OCCT or MSI Kombustor have been the stress test of choice to truly load graphics cards. However, both AMD and Nvidia have voiced their concerns against the use of such applications due to the number of cards killed as a result of high temperatures and unforgiving load. They believe that stress tests are not representative of gaming loads and should therefore not be used as an indicator for stability.

We have seen both AMD and Nvidia implement power saving feature to prevent their cards from drawing too much power under intense loads to prevent damage. Nvidia have to be given credit for being the first of the two manufacturers to actually deploy these power saving features on their GTX580. They have taken the hard line approach of making sure that the GTX580 doesn’t draw more than 300W of power by throttling the clock speeds under high load. On the GTX590, Nvidia have taken one step further and introduced an over-current protection that will throttle the card for excessive loads regardless of the application being run. Previously, only “power virus” applications such as Furmark et al caused OCP to kick in. OCP limits the power draw to 25% above the specified 375W TDP so the card can draw up to 450W in extreme cases. Although it provides headroom for mild overclocking, overvolting and extreme overclocking will not be possible and users have no method of removing the OCP. Unlike AMD’s PowerTune implementation, Nvidia does not allow users to control the level of OCP.

Temperature & Overclocking

As a result of the high number of GTX590s being reported to blow up or fail due to overvolting and overclocking, Nvidia have taken the bold step of completing removing the cards capability of tweaking the voltages. My own personal take is that some users were clearly overvolting beyond the recommended specification due to no limit being set on release, so it’s a shame that the issue was blown out of proportion via the medium of the internet. Nonetheless, the extra safeguard thanks to the latest drivers ensures that card will run reliably and last longer. At stock, the card comes with the GPUs clocked at 607/3414MHz operating at 0.925V both at idle and stock. At idle, the first GPU clocks down to 51MHz on the core and 270MHz on the memory whereas the second GPU stays at the default speed.

Stock

Overclocking is a fairly easy task and simply requires a few sliders to be moved using MSI Afterburner. Unfortunately, the voltage limitation means that the overclocking headroom isn’t as high as that of the GTX580 and the fact that we have to deal with two GPUs means that we become limited by the least overclockable one. In the end, a final speed of 670/3804 was achieved after thoroughly testing stability by playing Bad Company 2 for prolonged sessions. This was achieved at the stock voltage of 0.925V. The overclock represents a 10% boost on the core and 11% boost on the memory, which is still fairly substantial compared to our attempts on reference AMD cards. Even when overclocked, the core and memory clocks would clock down at idle the same way as before.

Overclocked

The 10% overclock translates to the same increase in pixel fill rate and shader operation. Similarly, the 11% increase in memory clocks generates the same gains in memory bandwidth. Performance per core is still not quite enough to match the GTX580 but closely matches a GTX570.

In the real world, performance increased by 4.6% on average across the whole suite of games and benchmarks. Unfortunately, it doesn’t mirror the near linear scaling observed on Nvidia graphics cards and it may be due to the in-built over-current protection limiting performance. It could also be due to the lower resolution used not making the most of the GTX590’s sheer raw performance.

Temperature

Not surprisingly, the GTX590 is one hot running card. At stock, the two cores idle at different temperatures due to one clocking down. The cooler GPU is very cool generating a delta temperature of 21C while the other core idles much hotter at 44C. At idle, the card is inaudible with the fan operating at 46% to achieve the temperatures above. Under load, the fan increases to 77% keeping the first GPU at 64C delta temperature and the second GPU at 68C delta. These are not dissimilar to the reference HD6970, making the GTX590 appear quite cool for a dual GPU card with only a single fan to cool both. More importantly, the noise at 77% fan speed was loud but not intrusively so to distract gamers while playing. In fact, the noise was easily drowned out by games.

When overclocked, idle temperature deltas were unchanged, as was the fan speed. Under load, the temperature delta increased by 3/2C on each respective core making the card the second hottest behind the furnace that is the HD6990. The fan also ramped up to 95%, becoming loud and intrusive. Surprisingly however, the pitch of the noise was soft in contrast to the blow dryer noise we normally observe at such high rotation speed. It is definitely a noise most people could live with. The fan was relatively efficient at its arduous task of cooling two GPUs. It only became audible at 56% and intrusive above 70%.

Crysis Warhead

Following the success of Crysis, the stand alone expansion “Warhead” was hotly anticipated to bring more game play, more weapons, improved visuals whilst maintaining better performance, the latter being what gamers wanted most. After all how many people upgraded their rigs just to play this game… In the game, you play as the upbeat Brit Sergeant “Psycho” Sykes, chasing down a Korean nuclear warhead. Throw in some ice shooting aliens and we’re bound to have a great game. It sure delivered.

Testing was done using Framebuffer’s Crysis Warhead benchmarking tool. The tests were configured to DirectX 10 at Enthusiast levels. Each test on the Ambush map was looped three times from which the average FPS was recorded.

It’s no mystery that the GTX590 was developed to drive games on high resolution 27/30 inch displays or multi monitor setups so out measly 1920×1200 cannot unlock the full potential of the dual GPU card. To compensate for that, the highest AA settings were used to simulate higher loads on the card. It is immediately observed that even at 8xAA and 16xAA, there is no significant penalty on performance.
Performance Analysis

The overall performance analysis looks at the relative performance between all the cards on test across all the settings and resolutions used in-game.

Far Cry 2

One of the most hyped games of 2008, Far Cry 2 had some big shoes to fill. It was built to be the next best thing since well… Far Cry I suppose. Combining an open-world game play with highly detailed graphics, physics and AI, what more could we possibly want? The game puts us in the body of a malaria inflicted mercenary hunting down the “Jackal” in the heart of Africa, in a bid to stop an on-going conflict between two rival factions. The storyline can be hard to follow sometimes but I’m no game reviewer, so let’s concentrate on the graphics and performance. After all, we all need to know if our hardware will be able to handle the scorching savannah burning at the hands of our flamethrowers.

The bundled benchmarking tool was used on Far Cry 2, configuring the settings to Ultra and DX10. The small ranch level was chosen and each configuration was looped three times from which the average FPS was recorded.

Performance Analysis

The overall performance analysis looks at the relative performance between all the cards on test across all the settings and resolutions used in-game.

Metro 2033

Based on Novel by the same name, Metro 2033 is a first person shooter with elements of survival horror. As Artyom, you trawl through the mutant infested metro systems of post-apocalyptic Moscow. The game delivers presents a grim ambience that reflects on the overall atmosphere of the underground setting. Metro 2033 uses the setting as a back drop to showcase some of the best visuals of any games out now, making it the ideal benchmark for those looking for the best graphics card.

The bundled benchmarking tool was used on Metro 2033, configuring the settings to Very High and making use of DirectX 11. The frontline scene was looped 3 times for each configuration. The average FPS was recorded at the end.

Performance Analysis

The overall performance analysis looks at the relative performance between all the cards on test across all the settings and resolutions used in-game.

Resident Evil 5

Resident Evil 5 is the sequel to the Resident Evil series, exploring the life of main protagonist, Chris Redfield. You play as either Chris Redfield or Sheva Alomar in an African desert area in Kijuju. In true Resident Evil fashion, your main objective is to investigate a terrorist bio-organic weapon threat whilst killing infected “Majinis” on your way.

The Resident Evil 5 benchmark tool was used to test performance. All settings were set to the maximum possible and the average FPS was recorded at the end.

Performance Analysis

The overall performance analysis looks at the relative performance between all the cards on test across all the settings and resolutions used in-game.

Street Fighter IV

Street Fighter is back in its 4th iteration and it’s bigger and better than ever. Combining fluid, fast based sparring with stunning artistic visuals, the game delivers tremendous game play. Be reacquainted with some of the most popular characters in video game history while you battle your way to the top, be it with Ryu or the mighty Bison. The game might be frustratingly hard in some cases but there’s nothing like the satisfaction of K.O’ing your opponent with a well stringed death bringing combo.

The Street Fighter IV benchmark tool was used to test performance. All settings were set to the maximum possible and the average FPS was recorded at the end.

Performance Analysis

The overall performance analysis looks at the relative performance between all the cards on test across all the settings and resolutions used in-game.

Unreal Tournament 3 & Batman Arkham Asylum

Unreal Tournament 3

Built around the unreal 3 engine, Unreal Tournament is all about mindless fast paced shooting, decapitation with a plethora of game modes to so in. Not much else can be said really except that it promises hours of enjoyment on multiplier whether it be against bots, your friends at a LAN or online. It was one of the more popular games out there to adopt PhysX in the form of partially destructible maps, tornadoes and hail.

The Hardware OC UT3 benchmarking tool was used to test the game. The maximum in game settings were used including motion blur. Anistropic filtering was set to 16x and no Anti-Aliasing was used. The Containment was benchmarked and the average FPS recorded at the end.

Performance Analysis

The overall performance analysis looks at the relative performance between all the cards on test across all the settings and resolutions used in-game.

Batman Arkham Asylum

The Dark Knight takes on his greatest challenge yet when he becomes trapped with all of his most dangerous villains inside the insane asylum of Gotham City – Arkham Asylum. The game exposes you to a unique, dark and atmospheric adventure that takes you to the depths of Arkham Asylum, Gotham’s psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane.

The in-game benchmarking tool was used to test performance. All the display settings were set to very high. No AA was used and PhsyX was only enabled if specified in the charts. The average FPS was recorded at the end.

Performance Analysis

The overall performance analysis looks at the relative performance between all the cards on test across all the settings and resolutions used in-game.

Colin McRae DIRT 2

DIRT is back and it’s bigger than ever. With an onslaught of famous X-Games competitors such as Ken Block and Dave Mirra, extreme is being brought back to rally. The game not only delivers outstanding gameplay in lush environments but also stunning visuals in the form of Direct X 11 implementation. If you want some fast paced, arcade style racing, then look no further than Colin McRae DIRT 2.

The in-game benchmarking tool was used to test performance. All the display settings were set to the maximum available and DirectX 11 was applied. The average FPS was recorded at the end.

Increasing the AA settings to the maximum possible in game again shows no significant drop in the GTX590’s performance. The 10FPs drop is not representative of a GTX590 being stressed to its limits.

Performance Analysis

The overall performance analysis looks at the relative performance between all the cards on test across all the settings and resolutions used in-game.

Battlefield Bad Company 2

Battlefield Bad Company 2 is the new rendition of the widely successful Battlefield series of game. Having more in common with the console release of Bad Company, the sequel hopes to inject the DNA of the timeless Battlefield 2 online experience with the witty action packed single player shooting adventure of the original. As Private Preston Marlowe, your goal as a member of Bad Company is to once again save the world by securing a scalar weapon device.

Fraps was used to test performance. Each test was conducted at the start of the ‘Upriver’ level ensuring that the same actions and paths were taken during the 2 minute sample. All settings were set to the highest available in game with AF set to 16x and HBAO turned on. The average FPS was recorded by FRAPS at the end of each walk through.

Although there is a drop in performance when turning on 8xCSAA from 4xAA, we actually see an improvement going to 16xAA. It confirms that the GTX590 is more ideally suited to high resolutions and high in-game settings in the majority of mainstream games. At no point did it break a sweat during long sessions of Battlefield.

Performance Analysis

The overall performance analysis looks at the relative performance between all the cards on test across all the settings and resolutions used in-game.

Mafia II Demo

Following the success of Mafia back in 2002, the third person action adventure game is back with a new grittier and darker world. As Vito Scaletta, an aspiring made man, your job is to work through the twist and turns of Mafia lifestyle. The more blood spilt, the more you get in return but the lifestyle was never meant to be an ideal one. Set in the visually stunning Empire City, the wartime references provide the ever present back drop to a rife period in America’s history, in which potential for exploitation becomes Vito’s key focus.

The in-game benchmarking tool was used to test performance. All the display settings were set to the maximum available in-game. PhsyX was only enabled if specified in the charts. The average FPS was recorded at the end.

Performance Analysis

The overall performance analysis looks at the relative performance between all the cards on test across all the settings and resolutions used in-game.

Alien VS Predator

Spawned from the popular Alien and Predator franchises, Rebellion have collaborated to bring the legendary war to us through the medium of a first-person shooter. The game forces you to hunt, prey and most importantly survive in the swamp colony of Freya’s prospect as a Predator, Alien or Marine. The stunning visuals add to the sense of dread and terror that we have become so accustomed to seeing with the series.

The stand-alone Alien VS Predator benchmark tool was used for testing here. All the settings were set to very high and Tessellation was applied. The average FPS was recorded at the end.

Performance Analysis

The overall performance analysis looks at the relative performance between all the cards on test across all the settings and resolutions used in-game.

H.A.W.X 2

Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. 2 is an arcade-style flight action game from Ubisoft. H.A.W.X.2 is DX11 ready and therefore like other simulators such as DIRT2 has stunning scenery and a truly breath-taking visual experience. Using hardware terrain tessellation, H.A.W.X.2 relies on raw GPU power because a series of detailed triangles are required to be rendered. This surely has to be one of the most taxing benchmarks all our featured games, H.A.W.X.2 presents some of the best tessellation execution in any title to date.

The in-game benchmark from the demo was used fort testing. All the maximum settings were used throughout testing. The average FPS was recorded at the end.

Performance Analysis

The overall performance analysis looks at the relative performance between all the cards on test across all the settings and resolutions used in-game.

3DMark 11 & Vantage

3DMark Vantage

This Vantage benchmark suite from Futuremark introduces DX 10 & PhysX support. Despite being on the verge of DX 11 games arriving, Vantage still proves a popular testing ground for enthusiasts.

Performance Analysis

The overall performance analysis looks at the relative performance between all the cards on test across all the settings and resolutions used in-game.

3DMark 11

Finally here is the latest Futuremark benchmark suite, bringing DX11 and tessellation to benchmarkers. Will it bring your computers to their knees?

Performance Analysis

The overall performance analysis looks at the relative performance between all the cards on test across all the settings and resolutions used in-game.

Unigine V2.1 Benchmark

Unigine’s benchmark is to showcase the benefits of DX 11 and the use of tessellation as opposed to normal rendering techniques. The demo has impressive visuals that give an insight into what we can expect from gaming in the future.

Performance Analysis

The overall performance analysis looks at the relative performance between all the cards on test across all the settings and resolutions used in-game.

Overall Performance Analysis

The overall performance analysis looks at the relative performance between all the cards on test across all the settings used in our benchmark suite. For an explanation of our benchmarking procedure, have a look at the descriptions on each test page.

The GTX590 is easily the most powerful card to have gone through our benchmark suite, creeping just ahead of AMD’s HD6990 by less than 1%. Although overall performance is in favour of Nvidia’s dual GPU card in this case, it is still important to note that different games show contrasting results. In Crysis Warhead, Nvidia loses out to AMD and in Far Cry 2 which is generally dominated by Nvidia graphics card, the GTX590 ends up on par with the HD6990. Games that favoured the GTX590 include Resident Evil 5, Street Fighter IV, Unreal Tournament 3, DIRT 2, Batman, HAWX 2, Mafia II and Unigine with extreme tessellation. The surprising observation is whereas the GTX580 easily trumps the HD6970 in the single GPU war, the same cannot be said in the dual GPU race. The fact that AMD’s HD6990 matches the GTX590 may suggest two things; (i) AMD cards scale much better in CrossFire than Nvidia cards in SLI, (ii) the lowered clock speed of the GTX590 has ended up crippling the card. Let’s analyse the first option. Under AUSUM mode, the HD6990 scales by 59% over the single HD6970 and similarly when overclocked, the scaling is by 57.5%. The GTX590 is only 37.71% ahead of the GTX580. Based on the specified fill rates and shader operations which take into account the GTX590s reduced clock speeds, we expected it to be 57% ahead of the GTX590 but instead it is much lower, suggesting less than 100% scaling. Using the same theoretical values as listed in the specifications, two GTX570s in SLI is expected to be 77% ahead of the GTX580 and allowing for the same SLI scaling inefficiencies as the GTX590, the overall performance of the two card setup would still be better than the dual GPU GTX590 for a similar cost. Nonetheless, the GTX590 is still a significant engineering feat and its glory shouldn’t be taken away from it given the fact that it leads the overall performance charts.

Resolution Scaling

The GTX590 is targeted at users gaming on very high resolution displays so it was interesting to see how SLI scaling varied with resolution. As expected, scaling was much better at the higher 1920×1200 resolution where games tend to become more GPU limited rather than CPU limited. An interesting observation is that on games that were not stressful, such as Resident Evil 5, Unreal Tournament 3 and Street Fighter IV, GPU usage fluctuating between the two cores. In those games, GPU usage was around 60% across both GPUs at the lower settings and gradually increased with the added load of higher in-game settings. However, the resolutions we tested were not enough for GPU usage to reach 100%. This was restricted to only those few games. The lower GPU usage may be the reason why SLI scaling was not 100%. On the other hand, it can be argued that the sheer performance experienced in those games don’t warrant the need for the card to operate at its maximum potential in an attempt to reduce power consumption. Afterall, in GPU limited games such as Crysis and Metro2033, GPU usage was always at 100%.

Power Consumption

Those intending to buy a GTX590 should definitely be wary of the card’s power consumption. With its two GF110 GPUs, it is the card with the highest power draw at stock speed, albeit just under 500W. Overclocking increases power consumption by 20W and the lack of voltage tweaking goes a long way at limiting the maximum power draw. Compared to AMD’s HD6990, power consumption is lower at overclocked speeds due to no voltage modifications and an aggressive OCP.

Conclusion

The GTX590 is a remarkable feat by Nvidia. Back when the Fermi architecture was first unveiled and demonstrated through the GTX480, most were appalled by its power consumption, thermal output and noise. One year on, the progress achieved by Nvidia means that they are now able to package two derivatives of the original GF100 GPU onto one PCB whilst still maintaining the three factors that made the GTX480 so notorious. Indeed, GF110 has proved to very efficient on the GTX570 and GTX580, so much so that Nvidia saw no need to lock any of the 512 CUDA cores, 64 texture units and 48 ROPs when designing the GTX590.

Engineering aside, the GTX590 is a very good performer and easily blasted its way ahead of other single GPU graphics cards. Its only real competition comes from AMD’s similarly designed HD6990 and both tend to be on par in overall performance. As always, different games tend to prefer different cards such as HAWX 2 or Street Fighter IV, but in other Nvidia centric games such as Far Cry 2, it was disappointing to see AMD clawing back some performance. This brings us to our next point. Unfortunately, due to power constraints and the initial surge of faulty cards resulting from overvolting, Nvidia has had to limit the clock speed of the card and its ability to overvolt. While still a decent overclocker, the performance figures of each core are not enough to match a GTX570, yet alone the GTX580 they are based on. Consequently, the card’s disadvantage becomes prominent when pitted against the HD6990 whose GPUs demonstrate none of those restrictions. In the end, the GTX590 was only ahead of the single GPU GTX580 by 37.7% at reference clocks and by 33.6% when both were overclocked. For a graphics card that is being marketed at around £570, the 37.7% performance benefit is not representative of the 50% price tag different over the GTX580. Theoretically, the GTX590 should have performed 57% better than its single GPU brother and that would have justified its cost but what it reveals instead is the inevitable inefficiency of SLI scaling. However as we found, scaling was better at higher resolution and under greater load so perhaps gaming on larger displays would have truly unlocked the card’s potential. So our conclusion would be to only consider the GTX590 for 27inch or 30inch displays, otherwise a GTX580 will be more than enough for blazingly fast gaming. Ideally, the GTX590 should be priced at around £500.

Deciding between a dual card SLI setup and the dual GPU option is a tough choice. On the one hand, the GTX590 does not take up as much space and uses less power but on the other hand, two separate cards will run cooler and be more flexible when it comes to overclocking without the restrictions to limit power draw.

Zotac have done a very good job on their GTX590. They have stuck to the reference cooler, which is surprisingly efficient at keeping the GPUs cool despite the constraints, and bundling a number of extra accessories to differentiate itself from other brands. The card is also very practical in everyday use; it doesn’t sound like a jet fighter taking off every time you game and it is short enough to fit inside most cases without modifications.

Pros
+Class leading performance
+Size
+Excellent tessellation and superb AA performance
+Not as loud as one might expect
+CUDA and PhysX support
+Very well packaged
+Good bundle including free game voucher
+Innovative
+5 years warranty

Cons
-Restricted voltage tweaking and overclocking
-Cost
-SLI scaling at lower resolutions

The ZOTAC GTX590 deserves the Vortez Silver Award.