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We got wind of this story yesterday but we wanted to investigate a little further before going live today. It seems now everyone is discussing it, so we feel its important to let our readers know of potential problems with the GTX590.
It appears that some people who have bought the GTX590 have been having problems with Nvidia Forceware 267.52 driver. This is failing to engage the ‘ramp down' safety mechanism built into the graphics card. This is a system designed to reduce the cards performance if the temperature reaches a critical level, preventing damage. When this happens, then things can go seriously wrong.
Running on the older drivers, the card is overclocked by increasing the GPU voltage which increases the heat output. In the case above, the card ends up popping.
If you are using the 267.71 drivers then you are protected from this failure, so be sure to be using the updated forceware drivers !
Nvidia have issued a statement: “A few press reports on GTX 590 boards dying were caused by unsafe overvoltaging – as high as 1.2V vs. the default voltage of 0.91 to 0.96V – and using older drivers that have less overcurrent protection,” Nvidia explained in response to Thinq_ queries on the matter. “Rest assured that the GTX 590 operates reliably at default voltages, and our 267.84 launch drivers provide additional levels of protection.”
KitGuru says: Its always important to keep the drivers updated, in this case even more than usual.
At least you cant say you arent getting good ‘bang for buck’ 🙂
Bugs like this should never get out cause they should t be in the driver in the first place
So the question for this is it Nvidia’s fault or the peoples fault that are overclocking these cards beyond the cards spec’s. I would say both are at fault. Nvidia’s because they built the card to spec but didn’t build in to much headroom on the card for people that like to overclock their cards. They most likely used cooling that was just good enough to keep the card cool at stock speeds & board components that could handle stock speeds & not to much more.
The peolpes fault because they overclocked the cards to almost GTX580 speeds & thought nothing of it until the cards blew & now are gonna cry because their new $700 card is a paper weight. Should these people get a replacement on warranty heck no they new the risks when they raised the voltage & clock sppeds of these cards. But most will try for a replacement card.
My point is if you run the cards at or close to spec they will run fine oh & also don’t run occt on them 24/7 & expect a working card. This goes to show tha when AMD makes Dual GPU cards & everyone wonders why they over build them & the cards are so large that AMD knows people will want to overclock them & use them out of speced speeds. When I forst seen the 590 I was baffled at how smal it was compared to the 6990 now we know that sometimes smaller is not always a good thing. So at least for now AMD wins this round in my books hands down. Lets face it we are in the winter months right now & what is going to happen to the 590 cards when the temps rise outside & our homes become hot boxes will these cards all start to fry for no reason maybe or maybe not but as it stands I am not willing to find out with my $700. I was going to get a 590 but my money will now be well spent on a HD6990 I guess.
Just my 2 cents