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Nvidia's Dual-GPU GTX 590 Already Sold Out

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I was thinking about buying one of these, but when I went to the store to pick it up the sales rep told me 7 of these cards caught on fire when they were benched. Needless to say I got scared off. Can anyone confirm this?
 
First, GTX 590 does not have leading performance because it actually does not overtake 6990. 6990 also supports multi monitor setups with more monitors than 590, quadfire. I'll give it one thing though: it is relatively quiet. on the other hand, third party providers for 6990 can use other then reference coolers.
 
[citation][nom]zkevwlu[/nom]I was thinking about buying one of these, but when I went to the store to pick it up the sales rep told me 7 of these cards caught on fire when they were benched. Needless to say I got scared off. Can anyone confirm this?[/citation]

he probably wanted one for himself and was trying to deter you. no, they don't catch on fire, not unless you manage to do something stupid with them, or run them without heatsinks (which would fall under the stupid category)

tom's did a review on it http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-590-dual-gf110-radeon-hd-6990,2898.html

in my opinion and tom's opinion is that two 570's would be more thermally efficient and deliver the same results
 
They arent catching on fire, but they do have abnormally high failure rates for a fresh release, their newest drivers decreased its OCP set point to keep the card safer and reduce the number that blow their VRMs like this one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRo-1VFMcbc&feature=player_embedded

I dont think that them selling out is noteworthy, i think its a sign of low supply and possibly a reduction in supply until they get the blowing up thingy figured out
 
[citation][nom]Kevin Parrish[/nom]It's speculated that the European price may be set too high..........[/citation]

For starters who's speculating? Where are you getting this information from? Sources? Links?

Also for the record there are loads of 590's in Europe (just checkout OCUK, they have a lots of 590's still in stock) because IMO people outside of North America have to pay a higher price to off set the lower price consumers pay in the US (the typical price of 590 here is £600 where as the 6990 goes for about £515-£520). How else do explain away the fact the chips on the 590 are large and thus expensive to produce yet are retailing at a lower price then the 6990 which is cheaper to make (the die's are smaller).

[citation][nom]Kevin Parrish[/nom]perhaps reports meant USD?[/citation]

Again which reports are you referring to?

[citation][nom]Kevin Parrish[/nom]There's also indication that Nvidia is even offering rebates to some European customers....[/citation]

Do you have any evidence of this? Sources, links?

[citation][nom]Kevin Parrish[/nom]
Nvidia's new 11-inch dual-GPU, dual-slot card packs some pretty impressive hardware, using a 12 layer, 2-oz copper printed circuit board (PCB) designed with a 10-phase power layout[/citation]


Can you please explain why a 12 layer 2oz PCB 10-phase power layout is impressive?

[citation][nom]Kevin Parrish[/nom]
Nvidia's new 11-inch dual-GPU, dual-slot card packs some pretty impressive hardware, using a 12 layer, 2-oz copper printed circuit board (PCB) designed with a 10-phase power layout. There's also dual vapor chambers, 3 GB of GDDR5 memory (1.5 GB per GPU) running at 1707 MHz, and a PCIe dual x16 custom bridge chip. To round out the package, Nvidia slapped on the two GF110 GPUs with a total 1024 (2 x 512) CUDA cores, and four individual video outputs for a max resolution of 5760 x 1080.

"The GTX 590 is the best dual GPU product ever built," said Drew Henry, general manager of GeForce GPU business at NVIDIA. "With leading performance, support for multi-monitor 3D gaming, Quad SLI, and an acoustic envelope that begs to be heard for how quiet it is, the GTX 590 epitomizes what a perfect dual graphics card looks, performs, and sounds like." [/citation]

Nice advert that holds no relevance at all the topic at hand.
 
[citation][nom]zkevwlu[/nom]I was thinking about buying one of these, but when I went to the store to pick it up the sales rep told me 7 of these cards caught on fire when they were benched. Needless to say I got scared off. Can anyone confirm this?[/citation]

I don't think stores run benchmarks on video cards. Even if that one does, why would they do it with SEVEN cards or more? They lose money every time they open a card and have to sell it as "open box". They'd just use one or two. This doesn't make sense to me.
 
but nvidia nerfed their supposedly flagship dual gpu card so they can drum about how quiet it is. burning down your apartment is what Nvidia is all about. They have the reputation of being super hot. Don't be ashame of it, give us a faster card!
 
[citation][nom]zkevwlu[/nom]I was thinking about buying one of these, but when I went to the store to pick it up the sales rep told me 7 of these cards caught on fire when they were benched. Needless to say I got scared off. Can anyone confirm this?[/citation]
[citation][nom]hunter315[/nom]They arent catching on fire, but they do have abnormally high failure rates for a fresh release, their newest drivers decreased its OCP set point to keep the card safer and reduce the number that blow their VRMs like this onehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRo [...] r_embeddedI dont think that them selling out is noteworthy, i think its a sign of low supply and possibly a reduction in supply until they get the blowing up thingy figured out[/citation]
Like hunter315 wrote, no, the GTX590 doesn't catch on fire. I'm not sure what sales rep you spoke to at which store (...Best Buy?), but in general they aren't the most reliable source for tech advice of this nature.

However it should also be noted that in the cases where people have bricked their cards as a result of blown VRM's, these cards were running at full load and at higher then reasonable voltages. So unless you plan on doing some extreme overclocking you have nothing to worry about.

I'd just like to echo Chris's response to the linked "Geforce GTX 590 burns" video:
"Anything goes up in flames if you're an idiot and overvolt it past the point of reason. Would it be so surprising if I blew up a Phenom II using 2V and then posted a video of it on the Internet? Is it really a coincidence that these guys were filming their benchmarks at the moment their card died? Don't fall for sensationalism."
 
LOL @ the "Catch on fire" bit.

First of all, that would be on the 5 o'clock news. Then on tom's hardware.

But most importantly, the circuits would quit working from overheating long before ignition point would be reached. In other words it would quit working before it caught on fire. You would have lockups, and by the nature of a lockup, the card would stop processing, and in turn stop producing heat.

Need I say more?

The only other way I could see it happening is if a gross defect in the power structure was to manifest itself. Causing a short circuit. But again, the power supply would shutdown in that case. So you could have a few sparks, but certainly nothing to roast marshmallows with.
 
[citation][nom]aevm[/nom]I don't think stores run benchmarks on video cards. Even if that one does, why would they do it with SEVEN cards or more? They lose money every time they open a card and have to sell it as "open box". They'd just use one or two. This doesn't make sense to me.[/citation]
...lol, I don't think that's what he meant.
 
If I were to build a new PC right now, which I'm not since I'm waiting for Z68, I'd also buy this over the 6990.

Reasons:
Better drivers
Lower noise
Similar performance in general


I don't mind paying a little more due to power consumption.
 
Unless you're running at insane resolution, this card is a total waste.
You can probably tell majority of the buyers has more money than brains and they buy it to run their games at 1024x768! 😛
 
Sold out is only relative to how many of something was on sale in the first place, so when it's not very many, selling out isn't much of an accomplishment. This is pretty much a puff-piece/turd-polishing-contest for an utter failure of a card, that Nvidia has no desire to sell in any kind of volume, since the warranty costs for failed cards is likely to eat any profit they're making off it.
 
[citation][nom]JeanLuc[/nom]For starters who's speculating? Where are you getting this information from? Sources? Links? Also for the record there are loads of 590's in Europe (just checkout OCUK, they have a lots of 590's still in stock) because IMO people outside of North America have to pay a higher price to off set the lower price consumers pay in the US (the typical price of 590 here is £600 where as the 6990 goes for about £515-£520). How else do explain away the fact the chips on the 590 are large and thus expensive to produce yet are retailing at a lower price then the 6990 which is cheaper to make (the die's are smaller).
Again which reports are you referring to?
Do you have any evidence of this? Sources, links?
Can you please explain why a 12 layer 2oz PCB 10-phase power layout is impressive?
Nice advert that holds no relevance at all the topic at hand.[/citation]
I also noted the advert that you were talking about, but going on a rant over everyting else is just wrong. Right under the authors name is the source: Softpedia in blue like Kevin's name. If you had noticed that and clicked on the link you would have found an article on softpedia that reported that the cards were sold out in the United States. In the article itself is another bold blue(unless color blind, than I don't know what color it appears to you) link that went to another softpedia article explaining the price Nvidia originally wanted for the 590. If you had the time to write out such a long response you most certainly could have used it reading the sources. For the record I don't know who Kevin Parrish is other than he's the author of this article, I just don't like bigoted comments.
 
[citation][nom]zkevwlu[/nom]I was thinking about buying one of these, but when I went to the store to pick it up the sales rep told me 7 of these cards caught on fire when they were benched. Needless to say I got scared off. Can anyone confirm this?[/citation]

Yes the card caught fire because it was driver faulty. After updating driver to latest one(hotfix), no more problem.
 
[citation][nom]kimyeang88[/nom]Yes the card caught fire because it was driver faulty. After updating driver to latest one(hotfix), no more problem.[/citation]
not true, they syill blow up, its not a driver problem. its low quality/power handling vrms and board temps up to 110C thats the issue.
 
[citation][nom]lp231[/nom]Unless you're running at insane resolution, this card is a total waste.You can probably tell majority of the buyers has more money than brains and they buy it to run their games at 1024x768![/citation]
Is that what you're running for a monitor? Nobody buying a dual GPU video card of any brand would be using a monitor with those crap resolutions. The 590 is for triple monitor setups or 2560 x 1600 resolutions. Isn't that obvious?
 
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