So, of the eight known GTX 590 fatalities, TPU, Tbreak, Tweaktown and Hardware.fr have all stated that they pushed their cards to 1.21v. The other four are pleading innocence or no comment. Although it sounds as if Lab501's card was DOA- so nvidia successfully tripping itself up yet again.
So, what's the excuse for Neoseekers HD6990 blowing up?
...however, when we were testing the performance of Dragon Age II the HD 6990 died on us. At the time of it's demise the card was set at the stock 830MHz setting and the BIOS switch was in the default position. The fact that it died could have been that we tested the graphics card at both the 375W and 450W settings, but since the review we have left the settings at default level.
Presently this leaves Neoseeker without a HD 6990 for future testing. AMD will not warranty the card so we are left with no choice but to reach out to their partners to see if we can get a sample
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source]
Is it possibly the same reason that the
HD6990 of Overclockers Club and four (+ possibly two more) other HD6990's bit the dust ?*
And this considering AMD's solution is hardware based, and
supposedly is designed with twice the power handling capability of the GTX590
I think we can safely say that both AMD and Nvidia have effectively found what is, and isn't feasible to stick onto one pcb.
And while the tribulations of the HD6990 shouldn't have any bearing on failing GTX590 cards, it seems fairly strange that the HD6990 seems immune from criticism. So the GTX590 will in all likelyhood be reworked with beefier VRM's and/or BIOS-locked/driver locked BIOS cap, but what precisely is the fix for the HD6990...assuming it needs one ?
*chances that these facts become mainstream news I guesstimate at 0 - 10% (based on these
posts =#68, #70 from OCC's main guy). I would assume that if OCC/Neoseeker were spreading fud then the AIB's and AMD would be fairly quick to retute the claims since I would (again) assume that the dead cards would be returned to the vendor.
Can't wait to see who turns out the first three-GPU card.