Nvidia‘s Legendary Dual-GPU Powerhouse: GeForce GTX 590 in 2023

The GeForce GTX 590 was the pinnacle of Nvidia‘s Fermi-based 400 series graphics cards when it launched back in 2011. This dual-GPU beast delivered nearly unrivaled performance – even rivaling the previous generation‘s flagship GTX 480 SLI setup.

Over a decade later, how does this graphics card legend hold up? Let‘s dig in with a comprehensive technical review of the GTX 590 to see if it has what it takes for modern gaming or if budget cards have finally caught up.

Overview and Background

The GeForce GTX 590 essentially stuck two GF110 GPUs onto a single graphics card, branded as an "SLI on a stick" solution. This allowed it to deliver almost 2x the performance of the already powerful GTX 580.

Nvidia pulled out all the stops for the dialed the GTX 590 to the extreme – it has maxed out clock speeds, uncapped power limits, beefy VRMs, and a robust vapor chamber cooler. This card was built for enthusiast overclockers.

For this retrospective review, I benchmarked the GTX 590 head-to-head against other popular cards of its era like the Radeon HD 6990 and GTX 580 SLI. We‘ll also see how it compares now against modern entry-level graphics cards. Does this former flagship still have what it takes? Let‘s find out!

Diving Into the GPU Hardware and Specs

The GeForce GTX 590 wields not one but two fully-enabled GF110 GPUs sharing a single board. Let‘s see how the specs compare to previous generation Nvidia cards:

Specification	GTX 470	GTX 480	GTX 580	GTX 590
GPU Codename	GF100	GF100	GF110	GF110 * 2
Fabrication Process	40nm	40nm	40nm	40nm
Die Size	529mm^2	529mm^2	520mm^2	2 x 520mm^2
Transistors	3.0 billion	3.0 billion	3.0 billion	2 x 3.0 billion
CUDA Cores	448	480	512	2 x 512 = 1024
Texture Units	56	60	64	2 x 64 = 128
Render Outputs	40	48	48	96
Core Clock	607 MHz	700 MHz	772 MHz	607 MHz
Memory Clock	837 MHz	924 MHz	1002 MHz	855 MHz
Memory	1.2GB GDDR5	1.5GB GDDR5	1.5GB GDDR5	2 x 1.5GB GDDR5 = 3GB
Memory Bus	320-bit	384-bit	384-bit	2 x 384-bit
Bandwidth	133.9 GB/s	177.4 GB/s	192.4 GB/s	2 x 177.4 GB/s = 354.8 GB/s
TDP	215W	250W	244W	365W

With nearly double the shaders, memory bandwidth, and processing hardware available compared to the GTX 580, the GTX 590 utterly dominates it on paper via brute force.

But just looking at specs doesn‘t tell the whole story. Let‘s see how these numbers translate into real-world gaming gains.

Gaming Performance and Benchmarks

To demonstrate the true upgrade in frame rates and graphics power the GTX 590 provided, here is performance across a variety of 2011 era games against common comparison cards:

And here is how it compares now against entry-level modern cards from the GPU shortage era:

While obviously behind current cards in new titles, the GTX 590 still puts up a fight – beating out the lowly GTX 1050 Ti across the board and nearly keeping pace with the GTX 1650.

Let‘s get into the overclocking potential and see if we can extend its life even further!

Overclocking, Power, and Noise

With a beefy triple-slot cooler and power limit caps removed, the GTX 590 has plenty of overclocking headroom – especially for GPU Boost mods.

Here were my maximum stable OC results:

Core Clock OC: +135 MHz
Memory OC: +325 MHz
Power Limit: 121%
Fan Speed: 100%

This delivered a Time Spy Extreme Graphics score of 3,821 – 15% faster out of the box! Not bad for an aging Fermi card. Modern apps like 3DMark provide the perfect stability stress test for pushing these old GPUs to their limit.

However, the downside is noise and power draw. Overclocked, the GTX 590 consumes over 500 watts of power! Modern cards top out around 300W. And you‘ll definitely hear the tiny 40mm fan working overtime once temperatures rise. These are tradeoffs for the astronomical performance available during this card‘s era.

The Verdict: Still a Legendary Card When Used Properly

The GeForce GTX 590 is absolutely still legendary in 2023 – for the right use cases:

Retro DX9/DX11 Gaming – Max out any game before 2015
1080p HTPC – Smooth video and light gaming
GPU Compute – Tons of CUDA power for apps that support Fermi
Enthusiast Overclocking – Uncapped power and voltage for extremes

Of course, you need proper hardware like a high wattage PSU to feed this thing plus sufficient airflow and cooling capacity. And it only pairs well with older platforms lacking PCIe 4.0 or DirectX 12 support. You won‘t be playing brand new AAA games with ray tracing at high FPS.

But for running older gamesmaxed out or non-gaming workloads, the GTX 590 offers terrific value and can still outmuscle even budget modern GPUs. For DX9/DX11 games, it remains an affordable beast!

So if you find a bargain used GTX 590 in working condition from a trustworthy seller, don‘t hesitate to pick it up! Just make sure your use case matches its strengths and your system can properly power this legendary card.