14 DAY TRIAL // Maingear has just announced that the company has updated its high-performance Shift and F131 desktop systems to feature Nvidia's flagship video card, the GeForce GTX 590, making it one of the first boutique builders to include this dual-GPU card in its machines.
The Nvidia GTX 590 was launched officially earlier today and has become the fastest video card in Nvidia's arsenal as it packs dual GF110 GPUs.
These are the same cores used to power the GTX 580, and together feature no less than 1024 streaming processors, 128 texturing units, 96 ROP units as well as dual 385-bit memory interfaces that connect to 3GB of GDDR video buffer (1.5GB each).
Its operating clocks are set at 607MHz for the GPUs and 853MHz (3414MHz data rate) for the memory, while Nvidia's says its real world applications TDP is estimated at 365W.
Performance wise, the GTX 590 is about as fast as AMD's dual-GPU solution, the Radeon HD 6990, but it all depends on the games that are being run, as AnandTech has found out.
Returning to Maingear's systems, the GTX 590 is only available in the S and S6 series of the Shift and F131, and Maingear even allows its customers to pair together two such cards in SLI.
Going this route, Maingear's online configurator automatically updates the system to use a 1000W or 1200W PSU to handle the increased power requirements of the two cards.
Price wise, the standard version of the Shift S paired together with an Nvidia GTX 590 will set you back a full $3,384 and will get you a water-cooled Intel Core i7 2600K CPU, 8GB of Patriot DDR3-1866MHz memory, a 120GB SSD and a 1TB HDD as well as a 850W Seasonic PSU.
On the other hand, the standard F131 S configured with an Nvidia GTX 590 is priced at $2,560 and packs a water-cooled Core i5 2500K CPU, 8GB of DDR3-1600MHz memory, a 64GB Crucial RealSSD drive seconded by a 1TB Samsung HDD, and a 850W Seasonic PSU.
Opting for a pair of GTX 590 cards in SLI, raises the price of the Shift S to $4,324, while the F131 S is priced at $3,459.