Nvidia GTX 590 Dual-GPU Graphics Card May Launch in Mid-March During PAX East 2011

Eagerly awaited by many computer enthusiasts and hard core gamers, Nvidia's GTX 590 dual-GPU monster graphics card could be officially launched during the PAX East gamer festival, if we were to believe the latest rumors that have reached the Web.

The report comes from the DinoXPC website which doesn't offer any additional detail regarding Nvidia's upcoming card.

However, from the pieces of information leaked until now, we know that the card is built using dual GF110 graphics cores that are installed on the same printed circuit board (PCB) and setup to work in SLI.

The GPU's used for the board will be hand selected from the GF110 cores that are manufactured over at TSMC and the board could pack as much as 1024 stream processors, 128 texturing units, 96 ROPs as well as dual 384-bit memory interfaces.

These will connect the GPUs with a massive 3072MB of GDDR5 video buffer.

The reason why Nvidia is hand picking these chips is because the company wants to limit the power consumption of the GTX 590, and this method will enable them to choose only the cores that work at reduced voltages, effectively making the card more energy efficient.

Unfortunately for Nvidia, this approach has a major downside as it limits the number of GPUs available, which, in turn, limits the number of GTX 590 cards to reach the market.

Nvidia's GeForce GTX 590 was made official at the end of last week when an Nvidia beta driver listed the card in one of its configuration files.

The card is designed to compete with the AMD Radeon HD 6990, which is also expected to arrive sometime in the first quarter of 2011.

PAX East 2011 will be held between March 11 and March 13 at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, in Boston, Massachusetts.