ComputerBase revisits GeForce GTX 590 after 15 years, shows near tie with Radeon HD 6990
ComputerBase has published a commemorative retro post for the GeForce GTX 590 , revisiting its original review 15 years after NVIDIA launched the card . Released in March 2011, the GTX 590 was NVIDIA’s answer to AMD’s Radeon HD 6990 , another dual-GPU flagship from the same era. Both cards targeted buyers who wanted the highest possible gaming performance, with little regard for power draw or noise.
Source: NVIDIA
The GTX 590 used two fully enabled GF110 GPUs on one PCB, effectively combining a pair of GeForce GTX 580-class chips with reduced clocks. Each GPU had 1,536 MB of GDDR5 memory, while total board power was rated at 365 W and required two 8-pin power connectors. ComputerBase notes that the design followed the standard multi-GPU formula of the time, pairing two top-tier chips on one card and lowering frequencies to stay within thermal and power limits.
According to ComputerBase’s testing, the GeForce GTX 590 and Radeon HD 6990 were closely matched overall. At 1680×1050, the GTX 590 led with an index score of 100.0 versus 94.8 for the HD 6990. At 2560×1600 with 4xAA and 16xAF, the result flipped, with the Radeon HD 6990 scoring 106.8 against 100.0 for the GTX 590. That mirrors the broader conclusion from the original review, where NVIDIA tended to do better at lower resolutions, while AMD pulled ahead at higher settings.
Source: ComputerBase
ComputerBase also highlighted one of the main issues with dual-GPU gaming in 2011, micro-stutter caused by AFR rendering. Both cards suffered from it, but the media says NVIDIA had better drivers and game profiles at launch, which made the GTX 590 less affected than the Radeon HD 6990. That gave NVIDIA an advantage beyond average frame rate, even when raw performance stayed close.
I pulled two cards from our database showing two relatively popular brands from that era, sadly both no longer releasing graphics cards:
Source: EVGA/POV
Did any of VideoCardz readers own GTX 590?
Source: ComputerBase
