If we removed Far Cry 2 from the results, we would actually have the GTX 590 to be 2% slower than the Radeon HD 6990. It’s also interesting to note that a vast majority of the GTX 590’s losses were in DX11 titles: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat (-15%), Metro 2033 (-20%), Battlefield Bad Company 2 (-9%), and Aliens vs. Predator (-10%). Besides its 46.3% lead in Far Cry 2, the single GPU GTX 580 was also 22.5% faster than the HD 6990. The rest of the games, including Mass Effect 2, Call of Duty: Black Ops, F1 2010, Splinter Cell Conviction and World in Conflict all favored the GeForce GTX 590 by a margin of just 6% or less. Therefore, we think both dual-GPU cards are evenly matched and considering the GTX 590’s $699 MSRP, Nvidia seems to think so, too.
Since GeForce GTX 590 and Radeon HD 6990 cost and perform roughly the same, we can take our conclusion from the 2-week-old Radeon HD 6990 review and paste it here… “While this all sounds very positive, we consider the steep $700 price tag to be a showstopper. Although having a single graphics card can be convenient, it’s hard to justify a price premium for the luxury when two separate cards are not only cheaper but also a bit faster. About the same level of performance can be achieved with a pair of Radeon HD 6950 graphics cards for $100 less. Meanwhile, most of these cards can be unlocked to HD 6970 specifications making them a seriously good value.” That about sums it up (again). But before we drop the curtain on the GTX 590 let’s quickly explore a few other results. Nvidia’s new flagship was 49% faster than the GTX 580 on average, which isn’t a bad deal as it only costs 40% more. A pair of GTX 570s cost roughly $660 and provide about the same performance as two HD 6970s, making them cheaper and faster than the GTX 590. The GeForce GTX 590 faces a similar fate as the Radeon HD 6990. Since both are outgunned by pairing cheaper mid-range offerings like the HD 6950 (unlocked) or GTX 570, it makes more sense to go that route unless you’re building a monster rig with quad-GPUs. The average gamer or enthusiast might as well skip over this generation of multi-GPU graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia.
