The last time Nvidia release a dual-GPU graphic card, it’s in January of 2009 in the form of the GeForce GTX 295. However, the Fermi cards arrived, and the GeForce GTX 400 series cards didn’t have any dual-GPU version among them, as Nvidia probably had problems with heavy power leakage and heat issues.

Now that Nvidia managed to refine their Fermi architecture they finally went back and developed a new dual-GPU card, because no matter how strong their cards are, they still seem to be overshadowed by AMD’s HD 5970 back then. The new card, as we all know, is the GeForce GTX 590.

The new GTX 590 is as we all know, based on two GF110 chips. However, similar with AMD, they also faced power issue, and had to cut down on processor speed and memory speed. The GTX 590 had the same GF110 with 512 CUDA steam processors, but their core clock speed is down to 607MHz from 772MHz. Shader speed is also down to 1214MHz from 1544MHz, and memory clock hit a big slump to 853MHz from 1002MHz. Of course, the card will have 3GB of memory.

Therefore, you can’t really compare the GTX 590 with GTX 580 SLI, but more of a GTX 570 SLI, and even so, the performance would not be too great. In contrast, AMD HD 6990 is 12-inch while Nvidia GeForce GTX 590 is 11-inch.

Nvidia is pricing this new beast very closely with AMD’s HD 6990 at $700, which is about the same with two units of GTX 570. However, reviews show that the card itself isn’t really capable of taking the crown away from AMD’s new dual-GPU beast, as both cards are racing neck to neck with each other and winning/losing to each other at about 1-2% difference. Of course, because Nvidia’s version is slightly slower (clocked at lower speed), so it’s also quieter than AMD’s version.

Read – AnandTech
Read – HardOCP
Read – Tech Report
Read – PC Perspective
Read – Guru 3D
Read – X-bit labs
Read – Hot Hardware
Read – techPowerUp!
Read – TechSpot