Monday, May 16th 2011

NVIDIA Revising GeForce GTX 590 Design

No doubt the GeForce GTX 590 is a cracker of a graphics card (no pun intended). It shares a disputed lead with the AMD Radeon HD 6990, where the latter has the reputation of being the more electrically stable of the two. Voltage-assisted overclocking of the GTX 590 has proven to be many an overclocker's $700 misadventure, with the weak VRM circuitry burning up with even the slightest bump in voltages. NVIDIA plans to fix this once and for all with a hardware update of the GTX 590.

In June, NVIDIA plans to release a new revision of the GeForce GTX 590 with a stronger VRM circuitry, stronger inductors, FETs, capacitors, etc. The revision could possibly alter the reference PCB design, at least with the VRM areas, and that could mean water-block manufacturers could have to go back to the drawing boards. Who knows, the new revision of GTX 590 with heightened electrical stability could also create some room for new models from AICs with better overclocked speeds out of the box, to step up competitiveness against the HD 6990.
Source: VR-Zone
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29 Comments on NVIDIA Revising GeForce GTX 590 Design

#26
newtekie1
Semi-Retired Folder
buggalugswow you would think an expensive card like this would have bulletproof components....i guess not.
The components works just fine at stock clocks and voltages, in fact for the most part they worked just fine when overclocked as well as long as you didn't raise the voltage. People complained that the card shouldn't have died when you raised the voltage, but the HD6990 didn't have(and AFAIK still doesn't have) any overvolting capability due to no software existing to tweak the voltage. There have actually been a few cases of the HD6990 blowing up as well, I read at least one review that had an HD6990 die during testing at stock clocks and voltages, you just don't hear about that around here that much, the general additude around here it to harp on ever nVidia problem and ignore every ATi issue. When you have the extreme high end like this, when you really really push them like a lot of people and reviewers do, things pop, it is just the nature of the beast.
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#27
devguy
OneCoolor the "GTX What the 590 should have been in the first damn place"

burns my ass too.You know people at nV knew something was wrong and shipped them anyway.
Lol, that's the way I felt about the GTX 580/570; ie the "GTX what the 480/470 should have been in the first damn place." At least the GTX 460 was the first Fermi with a good price/performance/power ratio.
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#28
newtekie1
Semi-Retired Folder
devguyLol, that's the way I felt about the GTX 580/570; ie the "GTX what the 480/470 should have been in the first damn place." At least the GTX 460 was the first Fermi with a good price/performance/power ratio.
That is the interesting think I always find in discussions about this card. The issue isn't poor components, the components are some of the best on the market, the problem is that there are not enough VRM phases per GPU to handle the voltages people are trying to put through them. The GTX580 has 6 Phase design, the GTX570 has a 4 phase design. The GTX570 pops pretty quickly when you start pumping large amounts of voltage through it, anything over 1.00v because 4 Phases just can't handle that kind of current. The GTX590 uses a 5 Phase design, so it can't quite handle the current the GTX580 could, but is handles more than the GTX570, which is why nVidia actually limits the voltage to 1.06v in the BIOS(the ASUS card W1z reviewed didn't have that BIOS limit, which is an ASUS issue with their shotty BIOS).

Adding this extra phase will make this card be able to handle current like the GTX580 can, but will also mean the PCB has to be lengthened.
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#29
AsRock
TPU addict
SihastruOMG... so there are no cards from AMD that ever failed? Warranty doesn't cover overvolting and/or overclocking. But I'm sure if your GTX590 fails, they will send you a new shiny one.

There are plenty of people overclocking/overvolting their GTX590 without any issue.
Well the last 2 i had had bad design which helped to heat up the southbridge. Most cards fail due to user but it's still cheep of them to release cards how they did anyways.

So there is plenty of people overclocking\volting without issue but has nvidia upping the quality which i think they should if the below quote is true
weak VRM circuitry burning up with even the slightest bump in voltages.
In the end i'll buy either if the performance and quality is there.
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