Last week we saw AMD release the world’s fastest graphics card, the Radeon HD 6990. The HD 6990 is essentially two HD 6970s crammed onto a single card, and manages to nudge out the single GPU performance king, the GTX 580, in terms of raw grunt.
However, we don’t expect the HD 6990 to retain the title of world’s fastest graphics card for too long, as Nvidia will soon be releasing the GTX 590, a card derived from using to GTX 580 cores in a single enclosure. Since the GTX 580 easily beats the HD 6970 in most games, it seems safe to assume that the GTX 590 will be more powerful than the HD 6990.
According to Fudzilla, the card will be released on 22 March. This remains firmly in rumour territory, but given Fudzilla’s track record in these matters, there is a good chance that the information is accurate.
Rumour has it that the GTX 590 will use two slightly underclocked GTX 580 cores, a necessary measure to keep the card’s power consumption within the realms of sanity.
The most important variable will be pricing. With the Radeon HD 6990 carrying a hefty local recommended retail price of R7, 300, we can expect that GTX 590 to come in at well above the R8000 mark.
Since NVIDIA has not released any official comment, our local distributors and retailers have been unable to give us any information regarding local availability and pricing.
In the meantime, the HD 6990 is scheduled to start appearing at local retail from today onwards.
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