GeForce GTX 590 on 600W psu

[drunkenmaster]

Sorry for jumping on this one here but I was thinking about this today with a new build - If I got a higher PSU spec it wouldn't necessarily draw any more than it needed? And from what you're saying, the more powerful it is, then the more energy efficient it is?

No, it wont draw more power than needed, as for efficiency, it all depends on load and what the psu is rated for e.g. 80plus Gold, silver etc

As he said, kind of, you need to just find a good PSU, the ratings are UTTER BS, there isn't ANY checking of any kind that firstly, what the companies send the testing people is the same as a production PSU(ie send one that is 85% efficient but is just a mock up and the real ones aren't even making 80% efficiency), neither do they check multiple samples or get retail models to check consistancy, one model might scrape 80.1% efficiency but the PSU maker checked 300 off the production line and it was the only one to break 80%.



As for card choice, the 580gtx is 10-15% faster than a 570gtx, yet costs 40-50% more, its horrible value, the 590gtx, is horrible value as its heavily limited in its overclocking capability, runs hot, and runs loud. There is NO advantage to getting a 590gtx over 2x 570gtx's or 2x580's if you must.

There is NO GAME OUT THERE that 570gtx sli can't handle, there are very few games at 1080p that a single 570gtx will really struggle with, at most drop AA down to a more manageable setting or use FXAA in some games instead.

Thirdly, the 6950 offers awesome performance today at £200.

Lastly, buy NONE of these cards, the 7970 at circa £300 and roughly 70-80% faster than a 6970 is due in early Jan(potentially earlier) and a 7950 with it at probably close to £200, this card should spank, badly spank a 570 or 580gtx, and cost less.

Though if you want to game now the 7300gt isn't going to cut it, buy something VERY cheap for now and move to a 7950 in Jan would be my recommendation, or buy a 570gtx in Jan, when a 7950 is 40-50% faster than a 570gtx, and costs £40 less, what do you think will happen to the price of Nvidia cards

Also physx, is laughable, offers NO gameplay advantage and most of the effects to date have been unrealistic and rubbish. You're paying a company basically to have a game dev remove STANDARD effects, then put them back in the game, at a hefty performance penalty, just to make AMD look bad, none of them are game changing, immersive, brilliant effects you can't live without.

Get Nvidia, or go AMD< whatever, just don't the decision on physx at all.

 

[Rroff]

While I agree that basing decision on PhysX makes no sense at all I do have to mention that the problems with PhysX are due to poor implementation by 3rd parties the API itself is far from laughable - and would actually have merit in adding to the gaming experience if properly implemented.

That said while I still dislike bullet, the latest incarnation is finally starting to tweak things in a way that makes sense for gaming and the CPU simulated softbody performance has increased massively from previous versions, the version I was playing with last week is capable of doing the cloth effects like in Batman AA while still churning out 100s of fps on a relatively modern dual core and was still above 60fps while simulating cloth and volumetric physics (granted this was in a fairly basic scene running at 800x600 but previously you'd be lucky to get above 20fps).

 

[Tute]

Having worked with SFF PSUs over the past few years I think you'll be fine. You normally can draw pretty much the whole wattage out of those things.

I wouldn't go giving it 48 hours of Furmark none-the-less mind.

 

[DarkFury-EX]

Having worked with SFF PSUs over the past few years I think you'll be fine. You normally can draw pretty much the whole wattage out of those things.

I wouldn't go giving it 48 hours of Furmark none-the-less mind.

It is a standard ATX PSU
I just don't want to buy a GTX590, bung it in, have it work like a dream for a bit then the PSU dieing then buy a replacement PSU and find out the wont physically fit in the case.

 

[Mojo]

I wouldn't buy a GTX590 at all, the fact that the issue with dying cards was addressed by a driver fix (ie underclocking to 550mhz) and not a hardware fix would lead me to think:

"If I touch the clock speeds on this card, how long until it dies on me?"

If you need a dual GPU card, go for the louder but slightly faster 6990. Otherwise, don't go dual gpu, as both green and red offerings are horrifically overpriced. A GTX570/6950/6970 should power your system fine. As others have said, new cards are a month or two away, so if you can hold off until then you could pick up any of the above a lot cheaper, or get one of the new cards should their performance stand out.

 

[Rroff]

What issue with dying cards? AFAIK aside from a few people manually removing the failsafe with rivatuner no ones actually killed one and only the first version had a software "fix" to prevent people killing them, 2nd revision had uprated hardware. I haven't seen any mass reports of them dying/catching fire other than a couple of reviews/enthusiast who decided to push the hardware beyond what was regarded safe limits but its not something I've kept an eye on either.

The next iteration of this same rumor came to us late yesterday, with the suggestion that perhaps those web release drivers with overclock protection are limiting clock speeds in games to 550MHz, below the 607MHz base clock for the GTX 590, along with the expected drop in performance. Our response was to install the 269.91 drivers and try them for ourselves. After re-running a portion of our test suite, including AvP, Civ V, and F1 2010, we found zero performance differences between the drivers we used in the review and the public 269.91 package. Also, GPU-Z reported a 607MHz clock speed when we had it log clock frequencies while some of our tests were running. Boring, no? But the GTX 590 still works as expected.

 

[Mojo]

Ah, have they revised the hardware? Sorry, disregard the whole card dying thing then.

I still would recommend waiting for the 7xxx series though, lower prices/newer tech

 

[Rroff]

They still should have issued a recall for the first version tho :S even tho aslong as you stayed away from the initial driver release and didn't try overclocking with the power management disabled they were no more likely to die than any other card. But there was enough of an issue there that it merited them having to change the hardware even tho they tried to keep it quiet (IIRC they tried to claim it was due to a shortage of the original components).

 

[FlyingPig]

As for card choice, the 580gtx is 10-15% faster than a 570gtx, yet costs 40-50% more, its horrible value, the 590gtx, is horrible value as its heavily limited in its overclocking capability, runs hot, and runs loud. There is NO advantage to getting a 590gtx over 2x 570gtx's or 2x580's if you must.

There is NO GAME OUT THERE that 570gtx sli can't handle, there are very few games at 1080p that a single 570gtx will really struggle with, at most drop AA down to a more manageable setting or use FXAA in some games instead.

Thirdly, the 6950 offers awesome performance today at £200.

Lastly, buy NONE of these cards, the 7970 at circa £300 and roughly 70-80% faster than a 6970 is due in early Jan(potentially earlier) and a 7950 with it at probably close to £200, this card should spank, badly spank a 570 or 580gtx, and cost less.

This. I think even a 580 is overkill for your needs. I have a 570 on that resolution and it runs every game on max settings. So why spend more when the new generation of cards is on the horizon anyway?
It always amazes me how much people are prepared to spend on something that in practice they will never benefit from. The truth is most PC games are console ports where you simply don't need all that power.

 

[DarkFury-EX]

This. I think even a 580 is overkill for your needs. I have a 570 on that resolution and it runs every game on max settings. So why spend more when the new generation of cards is on the horizon anyway?
It always amazes me how much people are prepared to spend on something that in practice they will never benefit from. The truth is most PC games are console ports where you simply don't need all that power.

future proof, not planning on upgrading the gpu for a while after this one, to be honest i won't have the money until after Christmas so i might wait till the new batch of cards come out.
May upgrade to a Core™ i7-870 or 880 also.

 

[FlyingPig]

future proof, not planning on upgrading the gpu for a while after this one, to be honest i won't have the money until after Christmas so i might wait till the new batch of cards come out.
May upgrade to a Core™ i7-870 or 880 also.

Fair enough, but yeah, definitely wait until the new year then.