[Kitguru] Nvidia continue to come under fire for poor GTX590 design

[SirPauly]

Why do you blanket the GTX 590 as stock, when you can over-clock probably to 10-15 percent headroom?

 

[digitaldurandal]

I don't either, but there does seem to be some quality issues with Nvidia based graphics cards over the last few years. At least more so than AMD based cards. How many 8xxx/9xxx 'bake' threads have we seen? It's almost common practice in the list of the first few things to try when a GeForce 8xxx/9xxx is having problems.

A few things to take into consideration

1) THE 8xxx and 9xxx series dominated the market during the period meaining there are likely about 2 to 3 8xxx series for every ati card out around that time. Therefor it stands to reason that you will see more threads about them.

An exageratted example would be to say that VIA is flawless because you always see posts about Intel issues but never see them about VIA processors.

2) Indeed baking does work for many ATI cards, although supposedly it always kills the 3xxx series because the caps die in the heat.

3) It is just one card, the 590 which has some questionable issues when pushed. The 5xxx series definitely had its share of issues that were BIOS and driver related trust me I was there and did that whole dance.

And one question

What is the other quality issue that you have seen with Nvidia?

 

[OCGuy]

Why do you blanket the GTX 590 as stock, when you can over-clock probably to 10-15 percent headroom?

Because these 590 threads wouldn't be as fun without all of the hyperbole.

See: "Exploding" as well.

 

[Pantalaimon]

And one question

What is the other quality issue that you have seen with Nvidia?

Allowing not once, but twice now, drivers that can potentially kill a card to go out to public's hands?

 

[SlowSpyder]

A few things to take into consideration

1) THE 8xxx and 9xxx series dominated the market during the period meaining there are likely about 2 to 3 8xxx series for every ati card out around that time. Therefor it stands to reason that you will see more threads about them.

An exageratted example would be to say that VIA is flawless because you always see posts about Intel issues but never see them about VIA processors.

2) Indeed baking does work for many ATI cards, although supposedly it always kills the 3xxx series because the caps die in the heat.

3) It is just one card, the 590 which has some questionable issues when pushed. The 5xxx series definitely had its share of issues that were BIOS and driver related trust me I was there and did that whole dance.

And one question

What is the other quality issue that you have seen with Nvidia?

I understand that the 8xxx and 9xxx (I'm talking about the higher end parts) were far more popular than the late, hot, and underperforming 2900 or the 'meh' 38xx. But I'm not talking about all issues, such as driver problems or, "Hey my 3870 isn't displaying correctly.". I'm talking about baking threads... sure, there may be the occassional AMD baking thread (not that it means there haven't been any, but I haven't seen any here personally that I remember) but there is a new thread that ends up with someone baking their 8xxx/9xxx pretty regularly it seems. To me it just reeks of shoddy engineering... though I'm sure made it through their warranty period and they sold like mad.

The GTX590 is indeed just one card, but I feel a $700 flagship card should allow a user to overvolt if he wanted. I get an impression if it being rushed together. I can't imagine Nvidia being happy with the way their top card has failed when pushed by reviewers and early adopters.

My own personal experience with a bad Nvidia based part was a 6800 nu that failed, but I did indeed overclock it. I have also seen plenty of laptops that develop video issues that use an Nvidia chipset and graphics adapter. My only other personal issues with Nvidia based hardware has to do with their motherboard chipsets, but that really doesn't belong here... but I will say that if Nvidia gets back into the chipset business any new Nforce would have to offer some fantastic features to get me to buy it.

 

[n0x1ous]

if Nvidia gets back into the chipset business any new Nforce would have to offer some fantastic features to get me to buy it.

I don't think there is any chance of that at this point. There is very little chance to "value add" to that market with so much function being taken on by the cpu.

Our experiences shape our purchases. You have had some bad experiences with NV products and that has affected how you view them and that is understandable.

Me on the other hand, have 3 8800 cards from 2006 that are still running perfectly to this day as well as my current 680i as well.

Haven't had any problems with any of my ATI/AMD stuff either.

I guess I am lucky when it comes to this stuff!

 

[AnandThenMan]

The only thing "screwed up" about GTX590 is that is cannot be overvolted with latest drivers and isn't a stellar overclocker. It doesn't need an extra VRM to operate normally and even a small stock voltage o/c +/- @10% as evidenced by public results.

The very fact that a driver change was implemented to protect the hardware is clear evidence that the hardware has some significant limitations, which Nvidia was forced to address. This cannot be overstated, relying on a software layer to protect hardware is simply not an acceptable method. We've seen this type of thing in the past, both in CPUs and GPUs.

There is no fail with the exception of early drivers and the possibility of AIB BIOS issue.

Tweaked drivers and BIOS changes are being done to minimize the hardware limitations.

Whatever issues existed before due to those two issues, are not present now. The GTX590 functions the way is it supposed to.

The card was supposed to be the worlds fastest, and it failed to do so. So I don't think it achieved what it set out to do. If this is the 590 functioning the way it was supposed to, then Nvidia did not aim to take the performance crown, or they ran into physical limitations and were unable to achieve it. And knowing how fierce a competitor Nvidia is, I am certain they did seek the performance crown.

So, in all seriousness and for the sake of the technical community, stop the sensationalism.

I see many sites and also members here just looking for facts, downplaying and minimizing issues does not serve the community or potential buyers, by the same token, sensationalizing does a disservice to the community. We need a balance, saying everything is "just fine" is not accurate IMO, there are real problems with the hardware. We see evidence in the form of a quick succession of driver revisions, firmware changes, potential throttling due to driver clamping. The GTX590 is quite simply up against a thermal and power wall, and unfortunately for whatever reason, Nvidia did not use a robust enough power design. I am 100% confident that future dual GPU cards from Nvidia will not have any of the issues we are seeing. I am also very confident that privately, Nvidia is disappointed with the 590. I know as an engineer I would be.

Oh, and another thing. Did anyone know that the current owner of KitGuru, name of "Zardon" from Driverheaven, now called Hardware heaven, is the guy who once started the contest for the most creative way to destroy a GeForce 6800Ultra? Many can research Zardons past views as well. Not exactly friendly to Nvidia over the years.

I don't see how an attempted character assassination of a site owner contributes in anyway here.

 

[pcm81]

The very fact that a driver change was implemented to protect the hardware is clear evidence that the hardware has some significant limitations, which Nvidia was forced to address. This cannot be overstated, relying on a software layer to protect hardware is simply not an acceptable method. We've seen this type of thing in the past, both in CPUs and GPUs.

Tweaked drivers and BIOS changes are being done to minimize the hardware limitations.

The card was supposed to be the worlds fastest, and it failed to do so. So I don't think it achieved what it set out to do. If this is the 590 functioning the way it was supposed to, then Nvidia did not aim to take the performance crown, or they ran into physical limitations and were unable to achieve it. And knowing how fierce a competitor Nvidia is, I am certain they did seek the performance crown.

I see many sites and also members here just looking for facts, downplaying and minimizing issues does not serve the community or potential buyers, by the same token, sensationalizing does a disservice to the community. We need a balance, saying everything is "just fine" is not accurate IMO, there are real problems with the hardware. We see evidence in the form of a quick succession of driver revisions, firmware changes, potential throttling due to driver clamping. The GTX590 is quite simply up against a thermal and power wall, and unfortunately for whatever reason, Nvidia did not use a robust enough power design. I am 100% confident that future dual GPU cards from Nvidia will not have any of the issues we are seeing. I am also very confident that privately, Nvidia is disappointed with the 590. I know as an engineer I would be.

I don't see how an attempted character assassination of a site owner contributes in anyway here.

+1

 

[AtenRa]

GTX590 @ 675MHz default Voltage vs HD6990 @ 900MHz default Voltage.

http://lab501.ro/placi-video/asus-geforce-gtx-590-vs-hd-6990-clash-of-the-titans

 

[dawp]

I'm kinda surprised that a problem like this did not reveal itself during development and testing, knowing what enthusiast and reviewers would put these cards through.

 

[Suprnovo]

A real pity. Nvidia has rushed the GTX 590 cards as they rushed the GTX 4xx series....

I'm even more convinced than 2x tweaked GTX 580 is the way to go for powergaming.

 

[3DVagabond]

I'm kinda surprised that a problem like this did not reveal itself during development and testing, knowing what enthusiast and reviewers would put these cards through.

I think nVidia said, how much performance would a ~300W 6970x2 give and designed the 590 to best that. Then the 6990 came out at ~375W up to ~450W in AUSUM mode and nVidia was forced to up the power on the 590 as far as they could to match it. What we have is a 590 that's operating beyond it's original design parameters.

I think AMD new all they had to do was make a card that used as much power as was physically possible to pass through it safely and nVidia couldn't win. Whatever performance level they were able to reach, nVidia would have to use more power to match it. They built the 6990 as big and burly as they could. I'll bet when they saw the relatively diminutive size of the 590 with the single fan blade in the middle, they were grinning. The one thing that could have backfired on them, and I think it's the limiting factor of the 6900 series, is memory bandwidth. But that's another topic.

 

[SirPauly]

I don't think AMD is grinning at all with competition for their high-end sku. They may of been hoping for none based on what they did with the HD5970 - alone on top.

 

[3DVagabond]

Oh, they knew it wouldn't last forever. nVidia was bound to release something to compete for the "Halo" sooner or later. I think considering the 580 is the faster chip, it really couldn't have turned out much better for AMD. The 590 is not faster, there's the whole "blowin' up" thing, and they're not in stock. What's not to be smiling about if you're AMD?

Hopefully for us, the board partners on both sides will come out with custom versions with better coolers and power stages. These cards have a lot more potential than we've seen.

 

[Idontcare]

I'm kinda surprised that a problem like this did not reveal itself during development and testing, knowing what enthusiast and reviewers would put these cards through.

This.

Although Intel had their PIII 1.13GHz debacle too and you would have thought they would know the guys who would buy the flagship $1k processor back then were the guys who were going to try and overclock as well.

But it has struck me as odd, and I still can't explain it, that this managed to slip through the testing retinue of the Nvidia engineers...made all the more ironic as it came right on the heels of their marketing youtube video where they were patting themselves on the back over having spent two years developing the 590's.

Looks like they should have spent 2 yrs and 1 month in hindsight. (to at least get in front of the driver burn-up issues)

But to have so little overhead...I still fall back to my favorite theory being that the 590 was originally intended to debut at clockspeed and power usage that fit within the 300W PCIe spec and they made a 4th down decision to change the retail clockspeeds and power once they saw what AMD did with the 6990 and this little change-up precipitated a handful of unintended consequences.

 

[SirPauly]

Imho,

I think the success of the GTX 580 and its raw abilities has some prospective individuals thinking because the GTX 590 cores are fully enabled -- heck let's try to force the product to be something it wasn't designed for -- GTX 580 Sli with head room in a single card.

It was all on nVidia to make sure the protective mechanisms were all in place and now maybe because of what happened and maybe an over-reaction on any kind of over-volting. It's easy to point fingers at sites, reviewers, individuals but all the responsibility and accountability falls on nVidia and their partners.

 

[Lonbjerg]

I find it funny that "extra headroom" now is a "feature".

 

[SirPauly]

Imho,

I think IHV's and AIB's try to differentiate and find innovative ways to try to create value for their customers and rewarded by selling product and maybe even modest premiums, too.

There is little doubt, having an ability to over-volt safely on a GTX 590, like other nVidia products, would provide more value to the product sku for some individuals. I don't think this was an easy decision to make on nVidia's part.

 

[Kenmitch]

I find it funny that "extra headroom" now is a "feature".

From a design perspective extra headroom is also a safety feature. Not everybody is going to be overclocking their video cards....But on the other hand desinging a card that has some overclocking potiential also can save a company some RMA'ing hassles as the card is operating well within it's design specs and should have zero issues no matter how hard it's pushed at it's stock clocks!

 

[wahdangun]

A few things to take into consideration


And one question

What is the other quality issue that you have seen with Nvidia?

ever heard of bumpgate ?

WHEN THE NEW Macbooks came out a few weeks ago, Nvidia stated that the chips they provided to Apple did not contain the proverbial 'bad bumps'. Unfortunately for them, an investigation led by The Inquirer proves that not to be the case.

Background
If you recall, Nvidia has been in the spotlight all summer for failing chips due to bad materials and thermal stress. The end result is that bumps, the tiny balls of solder that hold a chip to the green printed circuit board it sits on, crack, and the computer it is in dies. If you want the full technical analysis, read this article (and parts 2 and 3).

Nvidia took a $200 million charge over the problem in July, but the firm refuses to support its customers by saying which parts are defective, and what computers they were sold in. You can get some clue from message boards, with Dell, HP, and Apple being prominent victims.

Nvidia says that the problem only affects notebooks, HP says otherwise. Nvidia assures manufacturers that their machines won't have problems, manufacturers say otherwise.

In the end, what you have is a massive cover-up that keeps affected customers in the dark. Doing right by them would cost a lot of money, which says a lot about the reason for a cover up. Fixed parts with a new 'material set' - basically new bumps and underfill - were phased into production starting in mid-summer, and the old, defective bumps are being sold off slowly alongside the new.

The question of the season is whether or not the brand new Macbook was designed and sold with 'bad bumps'. Nvidia told us directly that the chips were not using the 'bad bumps', and we took their word for it even though internal Nvidia sources were telling us that this was not the case.

One thing to keep in mind however, is that these bumps are so small that they are virtually invisible to the naked eye. In this case, they are about 100 micrometers in diameter, near the diameter of a human hair. To complicate things, they are permanently sandwiched between the chip die and the green fibreglass carrier, the bumps literally solder the two together. They are then covered with an epoxy-like material called underfill.

Nvidia could have shipped chips with bumps made of peanut butter and said that they were gold. As long as the chips functioned, there was almost no way of knowing exactly what they were made of. It is a pretty safe bet for Nvidia to call the parts good publicly, even Apple might not bother to check up on them. Again.

To say definitively what the bumps are made of, you would need to buy a Macbook off the shelf, disassemble it, desolder the chips, saw them in half, encase them in lucite, and run them through a scanning electron microscope equipped with an X-ray microanalysis system like this.

That is exactly what we did.

linky

 

[SlowSpyder]

I find it funny that "extra headroom" now is a "feature".

If the cards will run fine and dandy at their advertised clocks, then someone certainly cannot complain that they are not getting what they paid for. But, when the competition's card costs the same and performs (roughly) the same, but seems to be the better built part and allows a user to overvolt it to squeeze every last MHz out if he or she wanted to, then that's the better card in my opinion.

 

[SirPauly]

But does that translate into any huge performance gains? When does AMD's protection mechanisms come into play?

 

[SlowSpyder]

But does that translate into any huge performance gains? When does AMD's protection mechanisms come into play?

For me, flipping the switch and dealing with the extra noise (on an already loud card), power use, and 50MHz probably wouldn't be worth it seeing as at 830MHz the 6990 would likely do everything I need it to do. And if it didn't run something fast enough, I don't see 50MHz making a night and day difference. But, flipping the switch also gives you more voltage ot overclock with in general, so an extra 150MHz may make a difference and may be a worth while trade off for the heat, power, noise.

And if you can afford $700 for a single video card, you probably don't mind going with an aftermarket cooler for a bit more as well. Then you can really stretch the 6990's legs with a superior cooler (or water) and some voltage.

If I never had any intention of overclocking (or moderate overclocks), I am sure the GTX590 can be a fine option. But, this is just me, I think I would always have it at the back of my mind that anytime I am running that card hard, I am right on the edge of what it's compoents can handle.

But, with all that being said, I would still go with two 6950's over anything from either camp if I wanted to buy a multi-GPU set up today.

 

[Dark Shroud]

I find it funny that "extra headroom" now is a "feature".

That can translate into a longer life for the card. If I went with some variation of a GTX 580/590 set up I would have cooling problems in the summers. I said the samething about the GTX 480 as well.

 

[SirPauly]

Is it possible to extreme over-clock these skus with protective mechanisms?