ASUS GeForce GTX 590 Video Card Review @ [H]

by the way...........bravo [H] its a very good and very accurate review!!!

i checked with 2-3 other reviews and results are consistent throughout.

HohnyF said:

Threshold is already there.
It's not like the card got overvolted from 0.91V to 1.2V by itself, or via fluctuations of current.

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No, but if I overvolt any other video card, it will simply give artifacts or overheat and become unstable. It doesn't instantly kill the card.

HohnyF said:

And if they do it what should Nvidia do against hardware moding? Seal the card in steel container?

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Of course they can't do anything about people performing hardware mods. No manufacturer can.

HohnyF said:

I prefer having an overvolt option few clicks away. Besides, no manufacturers warranty covers ANY overvolting.

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And I'm not saying they should take away overvolting options either. What Nvidia should do is ensure that a driver cannot enable settings that would cause it to destroy itself in seconds. That should be set in the hardware itself.

There are plenty of bricked 6950 which haven't been overvolted, just ran with higher speeds,
burned 570's etc. Going over manufacturers limit sometimes does that.

And what are you saying? "I want overvolting, but in a way that doesn't not void my warranty"?
Doesn't exist.

Creig said:

No, but if I overvolt any other video card, it will simply give artifacts or overheat and become unstable. It doesn't instantly kill the card.

Click to expand...

As W1zzard in TPU mentions, he got a Powercolor HD 6970 to reach 1.45v. And that didn't kill the card.

HohnyF said:

There are plenty of bricked 6950 which haven't been overvolted, just ran with higher speeds,
burned 570's etc. Going over manufacturers limit sometimes does that.

And what are you saying? "I want overvolting, but in a way that doesn't not void my warranty"?
Doesn't exist.

Click to expand...

I said they shouldn't be able to burn themselves up within minutes of overclocking. Or do you think that's normal?

Great review [H]! Thanks for confirming some of the rumors floating around that the GTX 590 was going to be comprised of underclocked GTX 580 GPUs.

HohnyF said:

There are plenty of bricked 6950 which haven't been overvolted, just ran with higher speeds,
burned 570's etc. Going over manufacturers limit sometimes does that.

And what are you saying? "I want overvolting, but in a way that doesn't not void my warranty"?
Doesn't exist.

Click to expand...

I rarely seen 6950 get brick by unlock or overclock...

but 570 overclocking, there are plenty of post about it for some reason..

Not quite sure how does this happen, but under my testing AMD's throttling is a lot more aggressive.

about the warranty, I have seen a lot of people send back the "overvolt" card and get back with full functional one with free of charge..
I didn't do it myself but it brings me the curiosity that how manufacture knows about your overvolt that kills your card.

I dunno about the numbers... seen 6950 died a slow death (not a sparkly one) and heard of some 570

And there's no way to know for them to know. But Creig is asking Nvidia to provide safe and idiot proof overclocking/overvolting, where one doesn't have to follow guidelines and STILL expect not to fry his card.

Lord_Exodia said:

Again a driver issue is supposedly causing the instant meltdown. If you overclock/overvolt with the right driver, it will take time to damage the card. Asus review kit said if you are overclocking and overvolting you need to adjust the fan profile for higher cooling. If overvolting beyond their recommended range you may need a better cooler otherwise it will degrade the reliability of the product... not instant meltdown.

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Have you seen the video?!?! A better cooler isn't going to do jack for a card that sizzles when it's turned on during POST.

Lord_Exodia said:

If that is the case then it's a PEBKAC issue. Your not going to compare a single gpu card and it's voltage tollerances and apply that automatically to a dual gpu videocard. They may be using lower voltage chips etc.. They may have more/less pwm to gpu ratio etc.. That is why you should be looking at reviews or overclocking carefully and scaling things up little by little while monitoring. If someone ignores all reviews, gets a card that they know nothing about the design, and card is a dual gpu card and they crank the voltage to the max then... PEBKAC

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How is it a PEBKAC issue when reviewers who review cards for a living are the ones who are burning them up?!?! You're thinking that most of the people who this has happened to are newbies.

Second it's not the Athlon/P4 era whereby thermal/power protection just surfaced. It's 2011. If other cards can fail to post or show corruption and not catch fire there's no reason why this card can't either.

Lord_Exodia said:

Sadly nvidia has released drivers to the retail market or available for download that have cause issues, fan stopping etc... this is a little different from what I gather.

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Those weren't Beta either.

Lord_Exodia said:

This was a early driver to test engineering samples for sake of simple functionality and application testing. Nvidia is making it seem like this driver should never have been burned and added to a CD for retail use. Not sure how much of that is a B.S. damage control excuse or if it holds any water but that is the part that makes me refuse to join any fanboy bandwagon and jump to conclusions without information to go by.

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Oh this is far past a fanboy issue. I wouldn't be worried if just one card burned up in the hands of a reviewer... it happens. I believe we are at number 3 or 4 at this point..... that's a problem.

Lord_Exodia said:

IF and that's a big IF they sent a reviewer kit with specific instructions along with a retail box product as a end user would get then there are 2 factors to consider here. 1. Reviewers fault to read the review kit and see that they should download a specific driver instead of using the retail disk. If they go ahead and use the driver specifically told by the manufacturer to avoid then PEBKAC.. Yes even a reputable reviewer like W1zard can have a PEBKAC issue. 2. Asus or Nvidias fault for allowing the driver to make it on a retail box that a end user can get that will melt the card down. See my reply to point 1, the jury is still out on this one.

Click to expand...

How is it a PEBKAC if they received drivers IN THE RETAIL BOX?? What that would suggest is that everyone who buys the card will have bad drivers in the box. Is that what you are saying?

There's really only one option here. Nvidia sent two drivers one good and one bad. Either way that's bad because one DESTROYS the card and the second one isn't labeled well enough amongst the reviewers to know the difference in performance between the 1st and 2nd driver revision.

Is this [H]ard enough?

I had a GTX 295 in this PC previously and doubled my FPS in Crisis 2 from 50 - 100 with the GTX 590. (Primarily use is for my multi monitor racing cockpit setup for Shift2 and F1 2010)

Shuttle 500W PSU + 250W Drive bay PSU installed

H-street said:

Thats a good point.

I think the take home message and its even a message Nvidia has kindof brought up is that the GTX590 doesn't seem to be geared towards the enthusiast market.


I am hoping that someone will eventually do a Postmortem interview with Nvidia, maybe one of Nvidia's engineers on the Fermi lineup

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That's the issue right there. At $700 it better damn well be for the enthusiast. Otherwise it's just an expensive card (limited to 570SLI speeds) for those who don't want to run SLI over two PCIE ports.

dworley said:

Is this [H]ard enough?

I had a GTX 295 in this PC previously and doubled my FPS in Crisis 2 from 50 - 100 with the GTX 590. (Primarily use is for my multi monitor racing cockpit setup for Shift2 and F1 2010)

Shuttle 500W PSU + 250W Drive bay PSU installed

Click to expand...

NICE! That's one way not to have to worry about heat at least.

kac77 said:

Have you seen the video?!?! A better cooler isn't going to do jack for a card that sizzles when it's turned on during POST.

Click to expand...

Yes I have seen the video. This wasn't during post as that would be a hardware issue. The card shuts the system off and fries due to using the wrong driver, and ridiculous overclocking levels on a product no one understood fully. You clearly don't understand the issue and probably have been reading too many fanboy posts at another forum.

1. Asus review kit specified not to use the driver on disk and so did nvidia
2. Asus review kit stated overclocking and overvolting is safe for current cooler as long as you adjust the fan profile and keep it within x and y voltage range
3. You CAN exceed y voltage but IF you do you will need to disable the power limiter and get a new cooler for the card as it will damage the card over time with the current cooler

The only time the card fries is when it's overvolted to ridiculous levels and only with the unrecommended driver. If that isn't PEBKAC from a long time reviewer who should know the drill then I don't know what is.

kac77 said:

How is it a PEBKAC issue when reviewers who review cards for a living are the ones who are burning them up?!?! You're thinking that most of the people who this has happened to are newbies.

Click to expand...

Well I'm not sure if the reviewers got the same review kit that Hardocp and everyone else that received an asus card got, but it said which driver to use, it said what range of voltages, fan profile settings need adjusting for overvolting info it also said that if you were going to exceed the x and y voltage range that you need to disable the power limiter feature and the reviewers still went ahead and overvolted the card with the wrong driver recommended and didn't disable the power limiter feature and adjust the fan profile then... PEBKAC I'm sure there were review kits with each retail product submitted for review worldwide I just have no knowledge about what any of those kits said besides asus All reviewers receive the same review kit by nvidia and guess which driver that said to use... ? At the end of the day and AFAIK 0 people reported the card frying with the correct driver recommended for use in the first place and 0 people who have burnt the cards believe it's a hardware issue as they confirm without the bad driver it's all good as far as frying instantly is concerned.

Originally posted by ASUS

Utilizing Voltage Tweak internally we have seen clock speeds in the range of 740 to 780 ( this is using a vcore setting of 1.035 to 1.065 ) varying on the GPU.

IT IS IMPORANT TO NOTE any overclocking with voltage exceeding 1.000 is strongly advised that the fan be manually set to ensure sufficient cooling performance.

It is not advised to generally exceed the 1.050 to 1.065 vcore range as this begins to meet the limits for the OCP/OVP mechanism on the card. Exceeding these values without disabling OCP/OVP or having superior cooling could affect the lifespan and functionality of the card/gpu.

Click to expand...

kac77 said:

Second it's not the Athlon/P4 era whereby thermal/power protection just surfaced. It's 2011. If other cards can fail to post or show corruption and not catch fire there's no reason why this card can't either.

Click to expand...

Understanding the issue at hand is key, This card boots fine, it wasn't dying during boot as that would be a hardware issue. The video never stated AFAIK but it was probably being benchmarked or stress tested when it died. Overclocked and overvolt setting that are set by software reset when the card is booting to stock frequencies and volts.

kac77 said:

Those weren't Beta either.

Click to expand...

Never said those drivers were beta.

kac77 said:

Oh this is far past a fanboy issue. I wouldn't be worried if just one card burned up in the hands of a reviewer... it happens. I believe we are at number 3 or 4 at this point..... that's a problem.

Click to expand...

Again all 4 instances were with the driver nvidia and asus and probably every manufacturer suggested not be used to review the product. PEBCAK from the reviewers standpoint. As far as that driver being in the box, that is either Nvidia or the manufacturers fault. So far nvidia is making it seem that they never intended for the driver to release with the card or be packaged with the retail products. This could be a manufacturer mistake. This driver was supposedly for engineering sample testing and nothing more. If you recall the card was delayed 2 days, perhaps due to the driver not being ready. So what do these companies do without a driver days away from time to ship the retail products... they burn the only driver they have onto the retail disk... aka the problem at hand.. possibly. (I'm reluctant to blame the manufacturer until more info is released.)

kac77 said:

How is it a PEBKAC if they received drivers IN THE RETAIL BOX?? What that would suggest is that everyone who buys the card will have bad drivers in the box. Is that what you are saying?

Click to expand...

The retail box has a cd but it's the reviewers responsibility to read the review kit and follow the guidelines. They also receive recommendations by Nvidia or AMD as to what driver to use during a new product launch. Ignore both for god knows what reason... PEBKAC

kac77 said:

There's really only one option here. Nvidia sent two drivers one good and one bad. Either way that's bad because one DESTROYS the card and the second one isn't labeled well enough amongst the reviewers to know the difference in performance between the 1st and 2nd driver revision.

Click to expand...

Possibly but since you and I only know that asus and nvidia took the proper steps, and we don't know what other review kits from Zotac, EVGA and others said we really don't know who is to blame 100% here. So us lowly forum folk should stop forcing facts down someones throat until their argument holds water substantiated by actual facts

dworley said:

Is this [H]ard enough?

I had a GTX 295 in this PC previously and doubled my FPS in Crisis 2 from 50 - 100 with the GTX 590. (Primarily use is for my multi monitor racing cockpit setup for Shift2 and F1 2010)

Shuttle 500W PSU + 250W Drive bay PSU installed

Click to expand...

Interesting!


I have that same case, currently with a GTX 580. Like you I have a drive bay PSU in order to make up the power, but its one of those shitty ones that the [H] reviewed and failed.

How come you cut a hole in the side of the case? For looks? Or is the 590 to big to fit? As far as temperatures go I have no problem with my 580...

My plan is to go GTX 580 SLI in the near future. I toyed with the idea of modding the case and using a flex X16 PCIe riser card in order to make it fit, but I think I have decided to just give up on the SFF, and go with a full sized case instead...

Sure the Shuttle case is nice and quiet, but its also right next to my ear on top of the desk. With a conventional tower it will be under my desk, and I'll be shielded from the noise

dworley said:

Is this [H]ard enough?

I had a GTX 295 in this PC previously and doubled my FPS in Crisis 2 from 50 - 100 with the GTX 590. (Primarily use is for my multi monitor racing cockpit setup for Shift2 and F1 2010)

Shuttle 500W PSU + 250W Drive bay PSU installed

Click to expand...

That's nice, but, see the front of the card, with the open heatsink area near the power connectors, that entire end of the card will blow out massive amounts of heat towards the front of your case, I can see it adding a lot of heat to the inside of the case and craming up right there in that area, even though it is open. I've been doing a lot of testing with this card, and I can see how that could create a heat bubble right there for you in that area.

Brent_Justice said:

That's nice, but, see the front of the card, with the open heatsink area near the power connectors, that entire end of the card will blow out massive amounts of heat towards the front of your case, I can see it adding a lot of heat to the inside of the case and craming up right there in that area, even though it is open. I've been doing a lot of testing with this card, and I can see how that could create a heat bubble right there for you in that area.

Click to expand...

I had that cover originally modded for my GTX 295 and it's a bit tight at the front as you pointed out for the 590 - I'll definitely keep an eye on it and will likely open it up some more to allow better air flow - Thanks!

I have modded all of my Shuttle PC's over the past several years for this same configuration so I can fit an X-Fi in the inner PCI / PCI-E slot, but primarily so the system runs cooler with most of the heat from the graphics card exhausted outside of the case.

Lord_Exodia said:

Yes I have seen the video. This wasn't during post as that would be a hardware issue. The card shuts the system off and fries due to using the wrong driver, and ridiculous overclocking levels on a product no one understood fully. You clearly don't understand the issue and probably have been reading too many fanboy posts at another forum.

Click to expand...

Lord please. We all have used drivers beta and non and most of us seem to be able to keep our cards from frying. 3 reviewers who do it for a living fry their cards during a review no less by using a retail card and all of a sudden they're idiots and you become the Nvidia marketing police by trying to explain away small voltage increases as monumental blunders. If you watched the video the card went up at 1.025V. That ain't shit compared to what these chips normally run at and it's pretty damn far from 1.2V. That's actually LESS than what Asus recommends in the reviewer guide you keep referencing in big red bold ass letters.

Lord_Exodia said:

1. Asus review kit specified not to use the driver on disk and so did nvidia

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How did they get the driver Lord? Did they make it themselves? Did they spin their own? No they came from Nvidia not Santa Claus. In which case maybe they either A) shouldn't have sent it or B) shouldn't have sent it.

Lord_Exodia said:

2. Asus review kit stated overclocking and overvolting is safe for current cooler as long as you adjust the fan profile and keep it within x and y voltage range

Click to expand...

But as you stated if they don't have the correct driver.... the one that doesn't make cheese toast... fooling with the fan should be futile.

Lord_Exodia said:

3. You CAN exceed y voltage but IF you do you will need to disable the power limiter and get a new cooler for the card as it will damage the card over time with the current cooler

Click to expand...

Typically I don't disable the "power limiter" as you reference it in order to prevent my CPU or video card from frying. Usually it's the opposite. Otherwise why is it there? Is it there to make sure the card fries, or not?

Lord_Exodia said:

The only time the card fries is when it's overvolted to ridiculous levels and only with the unrecommended driver. If that isn't PEBKAC from a long time reviewer who should know the drill then I don't know what is.

Click to expand...

1.025V isn't ridiculous and if Nvidia releases the driver whose fault is that?
I'd rather say that maybe the manufacturer of the DRIVER probably shouldn't make a driver publicly available if it will ruin a $700 card from a voltage that is anything but extreme. Better yet if NO ONE should use it how about not releasing it to the REVIEWER OF HARDWARE?!?

Lord_Exodia said:

Well I'm not sure if the reviewers got the same review kit that Hardocp and everyone else that received an asus card got,

Click to expand...

If you're not sure then what are you defending exactly? You are clearly calling them incompetent but you're not sure what they were told? That's like slamming your genitals in the door and getting mad at me for making the door knob.

I'm speaking from the point of view that these cards should not be burning up running at the voltages they were running during some of these reviews. 1.025 is NOT extreme. You're talking about centiwatt differences from nominal. Those changes should NOT toast your card or CPU for that matter. There should be room to play without the card burning.

• 
  If it's the driver... then that's bad because the driver shouldn't be available.

• 
  If it's the voltage and it's not running extremely out of the realm of what the same chips are capable of again that's bad. Cards shouldn't burn down because of small voltage differences.

If you want to make excuses for a $700 video card roasting from small voltage increases (which are under the recommended) as PEBKAC by all means go for it. Call me fanboy. I really do care less in regards to that. I run Linux as my main OS and guess what cards I prefer for that? Guess what card's I've recommended time and time again for HTPC's and MYTH? It isn't AMD/ATI that's for sure. I really don't care. What I do care about is recommending a card that could easily roast on someone who spend $700 to obtain it when it's being marketed as something an enthusiast should buy.

kac77 said:

If you want to make excuses for a $700 video card roasting from small voltage increases (which are under the recommended) as PEBKAC by all means go for it. Call me fanboy. I really do care less in regards to that. I run Linux as my main OS and guess what cards I prefer for that? Guess what card's I've recommended time and time again for HTPC's and MYTH? It isn't AMD/ATI that's for sure. I really don't care. What I do care about is recommending a card that could easily roast on someone who spend $700 to obtain it when it's being marketed as something an enthusiast should buy.

Click to expand...

The first part of your post was addressed by my last few posts here and your either purposely not trying to understand it or not intelligent enough to understand it. What I quoted above is worthy of being addressed.

I'm not making excuses for a $700 video card frying. I've not recommended anyone buy this card after seeing the information up to this point, however it's not for the reason you keep touting. The card is not roasting because of small voltage increases, the card has been over volted even higher than that and still hasn't fried. ONLY WITH THAT ONE SPECIFIC DRIVER WILL IT FRY So no, I can't simply say, "Oh this card is shit and There is a serious problem like you've been saying" Neither you nor I know the facts and we are simply speculating on whether this driver was intended for release or not. Yes there is a driver that fries this card but have you considered that it was quickly whipped up to test the card early on in its design and to be used only for engineering samples. Is it possible this could have been a mistake by the manufacturers with little time to prepare retail packages and no sanctioned driver available. Or it could be a complete and total screw up by nvidia.

Either scenario is possible so again, I ask you to look for your more humble side and try not to force your opinion on the issue down people's throat as their fact.

If a reviewer can't follow basic review guides as they have been doing for most of their career and either reads not to use driver a and to use driver b or they neglect to read anything at all then it's PEBKAC. The only scenarios I could give where it's not their fault is if there really is a design problem, or if they were not privy to the information OR they didn't receive a detailed review guide from the manufacturer or nvidia (this last one unlikely)

Lord_Exodia said:

The first part of your post was addressed by my last few posts here and your either purposely not trying to understand it or not intelligent enough to understand it. What I quoted above is worthy of being addressed.

Click to expand...

Actually no it wasn't. It seems like you would like it to be. But the evidence says otherwise.

Lord_Exodia said:

I'm not making excuses for a $700 video card frying.

Click to expand...

That's exactly what you are doing. You're calling other reviewers idiots for adjusting a card within the limits of what anyone else would easily do (it's even within what ASUS recommended). The normal voltage is what 0.098 and moving to 1.025 should kill the card? Really??

Lord_Exodia said:

I've not recommended anyone buy this card after seeing the information up to this point, however it's not for the reason you keep touting.

Click to expand...

If you're endlessly calling other reviewers idiots and inferring that the card is safe that's exactly what you are doing.

Look apparently you have some affinity for this card. Have at it Hoss. I really really don't care from a Nvidia vs ATI point of view. I'm looking at this strictly from a $700 card shouldn't roast point of view when installing a driver from the manufacturer and overclocking by small voltage increases.

Look it's just not normal for 3 or 4 cards (someone said six) to burn up during a video card review. I don't care if it's driver, hardware, aliens or whatever the reason is. The fact of the matter is this card is expensive and people expect a lot from it. Having 3 or more cards roast during it's review isn't a good sign. You can take that however you like.

Look I'm gaming right now so I really don't care if you love this thing or not. My only gripe is that until this whole thing gets sorted calling reviewers idiots isn't wise.

He never called them idiots.

Anyway those sweede idiots actually burned two cards "in their lab" Some lab LOL

Check them out

I wouldn't give them Celeron 300A to overclock LOL

HohnyF said:

He never called them idiots.

Anyway those sweede idiots actually burned two cards "in their lab" Some lab LOL

Check them out

I wouldn't give them Celeron 300A to overclock LOL

Click to expand...

Honestly man thanks, I don't know where he sees me calling them idiots. He seems to twist things around to try and win his debates but my post history is in this thread. Anyone can read and see the simple things pointed out, simple things he couldn't wrap his head around.

1. Nviidia Asus and probably all partnres said stay away from this driver/yet possibly accidentally packed it with their cards (some)
2. Card overclocks and overvolts quite well with the right driver
3. Driver possibly released accidentally by manufacturers as nvidia is saying it was a early engineering release beta driver not intended for public release

He seems to only be able to argue the merit of the driver OR the voltage increase but not both at the same time and is unable to understand how they correlate;

Sometimes it's not even worth the energy

Again I don't care, 6990 is a better card, same price too!! LOL I never suggested anyone buy this Jeez

NP
Props to you for having the patience to engage in a debate with someone so ill-informed as that Sweedish overclocker up there.

HohnyF said:

He never called them idiots.

Anyway those sweede idiots actually burned two cards "in their lab" Some lab LOL

Check them out

I wouldn't give them Celeron 300A to overclock LOL

Click to expand...

Why are they "idiots" for finding a fatal flaw in hardware? Isn't that what reviewers are supposed to do?

Lord_Exodia said:

1. Nviidia Asus and probably all partnres said stay away from this driver/yet possibly accidentally packed it with their cards (some)
2. Card overclocks and overvolts quite well with the right driver
3. Driver possibly released accidentally by manufacturers as nvidia is saying it was a early engineering release beta driver not intended for public release

Click to expand...

Do you have any evidence of these claims?

The main problem here is that simple software controls the over voltage protection. That's a major engineering oversight IMO. What happens when you're overclocking and the driver crashes? Does the card then go up in flames? How about if it crashes and recovers, but the OCP doesn't? Are we sure that neither of these situations would occur?

Putting critical functionality for hardware protection in software is a design flaw.

/thread

Not sure if this has been posted, but someone clued me in a bit ago and I swear, it's got to be the most awesome subliminal joke ever in the tech industry:



I had to go back to the actual TechPowerUp conclusion page of that review to verify it:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GeForce_GTX_590/27.html

but it's for real... that is absolutely BRILLIANT.

Kudos to TechPowerUp for having a little more fun while they could.

Testing out OC'ing capabilities now. Already ran memory @ max of 2053 with GPU/shaders at stock. working on GPU max now. Now volt increases for me, until I get more info on what is safe to overvolt to.

Joe Average said:

Not sure if this has been posted, but someone clued me in a bit ago and I swear, it's got to be the most awesome subliminal joke ever in the tech industry:

I had to go back to the actual TechPowerUp conclusion page of that review to verify it:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GeForce_GTX_590/27.html

but it's for real... that is absolutely BRILLIANT.

Kudos to TechPowerUp for having a little more fun while they could.

Click to expand...

haha, that's brilliant!! Good find

compres said:

Putting critical functionality for hardware protection in software is a design flaw.

/thread

Click to expand...

QFT!! This about sums it up really. No matter if the reviewers used wrong drivers or whatever, to have no failsafe built into the hardware is a fatal design flaw in these dual gpu monster cards.

Joe Average said:

Not sure if this has been posted, but someone clued me in a bit ago and I swear, it's got to be the most awesome subliminal joke ever in the tech industry:

I had to go back to the actual TechPowerUp conclusion page of that review to verify it:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GeForce_GTX_590/27.html

but it's for real... that is absolutely BRILLIANT.

Kudos to TechPowerUp for having a little more fun while they could.

Click to expand...

OMG that was fracking hilarious wow. Good eye, good eye. I wonder if they did that on purpose or just a coincidence.

Here's what I've gotten the GPU to, so far. No overvolting on my part. I've found that if I start low, and slowly increase incrementally, I can get all the way to max mem (2053MHz) and 825 on the GPU with shaders locked to the same scale (can't recall what that puts them at), but I can't just jump straight to that OC.

For now, I'm going to consider this my baseline OC, and fuck with it again later...got family stuff to do in a few hours, so I've got to end the OC search, for now. I'm going to load up OCCT while Furmark hammers away, while I'm out running errands, and make sure I'm golden @ these speeds. Note that CPU is at stock as I'm relegated to an H67 on mini-ITX, at the moment...but I still want to get a good full load test scenario under the belt. Not going to resize this, as it's all important info for you to see.



Specs in Sig.

Mr. K6 said:

The main problem here is that simple software controls the over voltage protection. That's a major engineering oversight IMO. What happens when you're overclocking and the driver crashes? Does the card then go up in flames? How about if it crashes and recovers, but the OCP doesn't? Are we sure that neither of these situations would occur?

Click to expand...

I'm not a fan of nvidia doing it in software either but it's not a wrong way of doing it, just a different way. Obviously I would agree it's more risky but again it's being blown out of proportion by too many over-speculators and fanboys alike. I guess it could be way too convenient as nvidia is maimed so all the fanboys are going in for the kill. It's too convenient to discredit the possibility of overclocking the GTX 590 by simply saying "it'll blow up!" deep down most fanboys are really scared that it'll be faster than 6990 if overclocked

I on the other hand have no agenda except to see the pathetic fanboyism stopped as if I had a choice and a chance to recommend I'd choose 6990 because it has the vram to shine where it should be used Uber High res gaming. AMD won this round on a value standpoint but that doesn't seem like enough for some people.

Mr. K6 said:

Why are they "idiots" for finding a fatal flaw in hardware? Isn't that what reviewers are supposed to do?
Do you have any evidence of these claims?

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This is not about I'm right and you guys are wrong. My stance here is simple. Here are the few facts I kinow 0 people have had the card explode while using the right driver, The cards are overclocking and over volting fine for a dual gpu card with the correct driver. Nvidia's and Asus review Kits said to use the correct driver and some reviewers didn't for whatever reason. Instead of asking me if I have proof ask yourselves do you have any proof to the contrary. All the stuff I'm saying can be verified by reading hard ocp's review, and understanding the review process in general.

All the other stuff is just me saying we don't have the facts so don't force your opinion down someone elses throat as a fact. I'm not right, you and he are not right, we are all just speculative forum folk who only know a small part of the picture. Until we get some facts and have a valid argument we should ALL STFU LOL

Lord_Exodia said:

I'm not a fan of nvidia doing it in software either but it's not a wrong way of doing it, just ....ve forum folk who only know a small part of the picture. Until we get some facts and have a valid argument we should ALL STFU LOL ...

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good post really

the OCP is hardware and software the driver tells it to enable or not (far as i know)

i be all ATI if it was not for unpredictable drivers my self (New release game issues or having to reinstall windows to install updated drivers {they need to stop using .net framework or make an clean tool}) also recant issues with VRMs wining under load or Simple mouse moving around making the VRMs wine

only issues i have with Nvidia (and ATI some times) is with noisy fans, most are None ref Nvidia video cards (wine noise or poor fan that has to spin fast to cool)

again 590 is been sold as expected (2x570 speeds) they did this with the 295 (performs like 2 270)

@sabregen
correct your size of your post (why the forums does not auto crop them with the option to full size it is unknown unless the poster picked the incorrect option)

" With a card like GeForce GTX 590, that has so much latent performance, I couldn't wait to try bumping the voltage to see how much I could gain from it.

As a first step, I increased the voltage from 0.938 V default to 1.000 V, maximum stable clock was 815 MHz - faster than GTX 580! Moving on, I tried 1.2 V to see how much could be gained here, at default clocks and with NVIDIA's power limiter enabled. I went to heat up the card and then *boom*, a sound like popcorn cracking, the system turned off and a burnt electronics smell started to fill up the room. Card dead! Even with NVIDIA power limiter enabled.

So he thought he knows how OCP/OVP works on a brand new design /sigh

W1zzard, next time just RTFM.

An extract from ASUS’ GTX 590 reviewer’s guide:

It is not advised to exceed the 1.050 to 1.065 vcore range as this begins to meet the limits for the OCP/OVP mechanism on the card. Exceeding these values without disabling OCP/OVP. or having superior cooling could affect the lifespan and functionality of the card/gpu.

What voltage program can I use on this card?

Afterburner 2 point something

Might be a TL;DR thing, but: NV didn't say boo about "Uh, guys, that voltage thing...don't do it like that..." until after a dozen or so cards got fried, right? Were they seriously not expecting enthusiasts to crank the hell out of this thing?

The card feels like it was slapped together at the last minute... using software to protect hardware is just facepalm worthy

latest MSI afterburner doesn't allow me to do voltage control.

THAT is not the latest.
http://en.expreview.com/2011/03/24/...-beta-1-let-out-supporting-gtx-590/15615.html

Lord_Exodia said:

I'm not a fan of nvidia doing it in software either but it's not a wrong way of doing it, just a different way. Obviously I would agree it's more risky but again it's being blown out of proportion by too many over-speculators and fanboys alike. I guess it could be way too convenient as nvidia is maimed so all the fanboys are going in for the kill. It's too convenient to discredit the possibility of overclocking the GTX 590 by simply saying "it'll blow up!" deep down most fanboys are really scared that it'll be faster than 6990 if overclocked

I on the other hand have no agenda except to see the pathetic fanboyism stopped as if I had a choice and a chance to recommend I'd choose 6990 because it has the vram to shine where it should be used Uber High res gaming. AMD won this round on a value standpoint but that doesn't seem like enough for some people.

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Wow this is rich, do you really want us to pull up some of your Caymen related posts?