NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590: Dual GF110s, One PCB

Before bringing this article to a close, we'd like to cover a few final data points--namely power consumption and noise. Throughout all of our benchmarking and testing, we monitored how much power our test system was consuming using a power meter. Our goal was to give you all an idea as to how much power each configuration used while idling and while under a heavy workload. Please keep in mind that we were testing total system power consumption at the outlet here, not just the power being drawn by the graphics cards alone.

With two GF110-class GPUs at its core, we expected the GeForce GTX 590 to consume quite a bit of power. And as you can see, it did, but it's no more power hungry than the Radeon HD 6990. At idle the GeForce GTX 590 consumed about 20 more watts than a 6990 and about 30 more than a GeForce GTX 580, but while under load the 590's power consumption fell right in-line with the Radeon HD 6990--the 6990 consumed slightly less in "standard" mode, but slightly more in the overclocked "AUSUM" mode.

With regard to noise, however, it's a no contest. The thermal solution NVIDIA designed for the GeForce GTX 590 was much quieter than the Radeon HD 6990. NVIDIA claimed that the GeForce GTX 590's cooler was somewhat louder than the GeForce GTX 580, but significantly quieter than the GTX 480. Having tested all of the cards, we'd have to agree. The GTX 590 is noticeably louder than the GeForce GTX 580 side-by-side, but it's definitely much quieter than the GTX 480. We should also note that temperatures were a non-issue with the GeForce GTX 590 as well. At idle, the card's GPUs hovered around the 44'C mark and under sustained load they hovered in the mid 80's.