Nvidia Corp. on Thursday formally unleashed its new dual-chip flagship graphics card in years. The GeForce GTX 590, as expected, carries two GeForce GTX 580 graphics processing units (GPUs) and 3GB of memory. In order to keep power consumption low enough, Nvidia had to lower clock-speed of the GF114 chip, which is why the novelty is not as fast as two fully-fledged single-GPU boars.

Powered by two GeForce GTX 580 graphics processors, Nvidia's new flagship graphics board has 1024 stream processing elements, 128 texture units, 96 render back ends as well as 3GB of GDDR5 memory (1.5GB per chip connected using 384-bit memory bus). Just like all the other graphics cards in Nvidia's 5-series range, the GTX 590 fully supports DirectX 11, hardware-accelerated high-definition video playback as well as Nvidia-exclusive technologies like 3D Vision, PhysX, 3D Vision Surround and so on. The can supports SLI technology to enable 4-way SLI multi-GPU system.

So that to keep power consumption in 365W envelope, Nvidia had to decrease clock-speeds of the novelty by 22% for the chip/stream processors and 10% for the memory to 607MHz/1214MHz and 3414MHz, respectively. As a result, the overall horsepower of every GF114 GPUs dropped to 1.24TFLOPS (from 1.58TFLOPS on model 580), which is below that of the model GTX 570 (1.4TFLOPS). Still, with 2.48TFLOPS single-precision peak compute performance, the novelty is definitely the most powerful graphics card in Nvidia's range.

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 590 - the first dual-GPU graphics card from Nvidia since 2009 and also the first dual-chip board powered by a Fermi-architecture processor - is designed for hardcore PC gamers who demand maximum performance at any price. For $699, owners of the novelty will be able not only to play the latest and forthcoming video games at maximum settings with maximum resolution on 30" displays (2560x1600), but also drive a multi-monitor stereoscopic 3D configuration to experience maximum realism at up to 5760x1080 resolution in recent titles. With two of such graphics boards - for some $1400 - gamers should be able to play even most-demanding forthcoming games is stereo-3D surround mode.

"The GTX 590 is the best dual GPU product ever built. 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," said Drew Henry, general manager of GeForce GPU business at Nvidia.

GeForce GTX 590 is available starting today from the world's leading add-in card partners, including Asus, EVGA, Gainward, Gigabyte, Inno3D, MSI, POV, Palit, and Zotac.

Tags: Nvidia, Geforce, Fermi, GF114