Gainward GeForce GTX 590 3GB Premium Edition Video Card   Page 1

Reviewer: RWL Staff Article Publish Date: 5/26/2011

 

 

 

 

 

 

INTRODUCTION

 

 

 

 

    Up until a couple of months ago if someone was to ask me whether or not i was fond of mGPU graphics cards my answer would be no. You see with just about every single mGPU solution in the market up until today there have been more issues than with any single GPU graphics card ever released. True most of the times the performance levels achieved by an mGPU card can't be reached by their single GPU versions but taking into consideration the incompatibilities between games and higher temperatures of these cards compared to their single versions resulted in me never wanting one in my primary system. However with the arrival of the latest Gainward offering that changed, as for the why follow us in to find out.

 

 

    Gainward Co. Ltd was founded in Taipei back in 1984 and their main goal was to produce a variety of PC video enhancement products. In 1989 Gainward starts production of new VGA technology and becomes a major developer for Tseng Labs ASIC in Taiwan. Their USA presence was officialized in 1991 and by 1992 Gainward was ranked Top 1000 Industrial companies in Taiwan. TNC Industrial Co. Ltd. merged with Gainward in 1997 and with that move they became one of the largest graphics cards suppliers, shipping more than 2 million boards during the year. In 2000 Gainward establishes their presence in Europe with a new branch in Germany while in 2001 they become an NVIDIA Certified Selection Solution Provider and NVIDIA Launch Partner. Gainward and Palit Microsystem Inc. merge together in 2005 to ensure a higher level of accessibility and the highest possible product quality. In 2006 they introduce a new company logo which they change again in 2008 when they become an AMD authorized partner.

 

 

    Unfortunately it will take a while for us to see a Golden Sample based on the GeForce GTX 590 3GB (if they decide on making one) so for now the Gainward offering is based on the reference design and clocks which should be more than just enough even for hardcore gamers. So just like all the other 590's in the market the Gainward model features 6 Billion transistors, 1024 CUDA cores and 3GB of DDR5 memory sporting over 384GB/s. These numbers alone should impress just about everyone but since numbers don't always represent performance we will be taking this beast for a spin to see just what it's capable of.