Overclocking the GTX 590 - redemption
The GeForce GTX 590 hasn't been able to topple the Radeon HD 6990 thus far, save for StarCraft II. But knowing that the green team regularly launches GPUs with conservative frequencies, overclocking the GTX 590 is an absolute must.
ASUS provides a SmartDoctor application that enables you to toggle the card's frequencies and voltages. However, adding just a few mV to the card causes power-draw to spiral. As an example, pushing the voltage from 0.925V to 0.975V increases Just Cause 2 power-draw by 60W - and that's at stock frequencies.
We believe it's only safe and sensible to increase the voltage if watercooling is used. Taking this approach, the ASUS card is overclocked with voltage set to default levels. Just Cause 2 provides a lower overclock than any other game in our suite, so we used it to determine the ceiling on this particular GTX 590.
Yup, we got some juicy extra MHz out of the GTX 590. Clocking in at 690MHz core and 3,800MHz memory, the GPUs scale rather nicely, begging the question as to why NVIDIA was so conservative in the first instance.
We ran Aliens vs. Predator and Just Cause 2 at the highest settings
You see, that's more like it. The GTX 590 OC pushes the Radeon HD 6990.
