Controversial tng Staffer Buys Bargain EVGA GTX 590 Classified Graphics Card!

When I wrote my GTX TITAN benchmarks article two days ago, I looked up the UK price at various retailers as part of my research. I then, quite by chance, discovered that Scan Computers were selling the long-discontinued, but still very high performance GTX 590 graphics card. Not only that, but it was the premium overclocked EVGA Classified version for a bargain £359.51 inc vat! This card used to sell for around £650 or so when it was new. However, I really wasn't looking to spend lots of money at this time, but this just called to me and here's why.

I also have some strong words to say about the abysmal way that Scan treat the products they sell and hence the lack of respect for their customers, but more on that later.

Now, I could do with an upgrade to my aging (but still powerful) GTX 580 that I've had for two years. I liked the GTX 680, but the performance wasn't really better by enough margin to warrant spending £400 on it (around £360 nowadays). The performance improvement isn't that great, because the GK104 isn't the top Kepler GPU, GK110 is and you can see just what a slightly crippled version of it can do in the TITAN benchmarks article, linked to above or the charts below.

As a hardcore enthusiast, I also tend to collect dual GPU cards after their heyday when the prices drop significantly, such as here. I've currently got a 7950 GX2, GTX 295, AMD HD 3580 X2 and now the GTX 590 and all of these cards were brand new and boxed. I did actually buy three 9800 GX2 cards (at different times) as well but couldn't resist selling them at a profit on eBay, hehe.

So, what's so interesting about this EVGA GTX 590 Classified of course is its raw performance - just look at the numbers below. As the benchmarks below show, a reference GTX 590 is, unsurprisingly, seriously faster than a GTX 580, but really not so much slower than the mighty single GPU GTX TITAN! NVIDIA might have designed a new and more efficient architecture with Kepler, but as you can see, the framerate performance improvement isn't so great over dual Fermis in SLI and will be even smaller over an overclocked GTX 590 like this one. It runs at 630MHz for the GPU and 3456MHz effective for the memory while the reference model runs at 607 / 3420MHz. Note that the GTX 590 also handlly beats a GTX 680, making mine a real bargain! Also, two GTX 580s in SLI are somewhat faster than a GTX 590 due to the lowered clocks NVIDIA had to use to bring the card to within acceptable power levels.

Also, finding a discontinued card at a bargain price adds another significant pressure: buy it now or never. Therefore, after wrestling with my concience for a whole minute and looking at my credit card cowering in terror, I just went right ahead and bought it. The poor credit card promptly burst into flames, but I'm a heartless soul and just don't care. The graphics card disappeared from Scan's website just a few hours later, proving the point of a time sensitive bargain.


Benchmarks courtesy of TechPowerUp

The Usual Damaged Goods From Scan

So, my card arrived promptly on Saturday, as I'd ordered and the outer bubblewrap packaging was in perfect condition. However, it was a different story when I removed it. The box is torn and battered all around; just take a look at the two pictures below. It was still wrapped in the original EVGA cellophane wrapper and the seals were intact though, so it's not been tampered with.






One could say that perhaps the box is damaged like this due to this being old stock that's been sitting around the warehouse for a long time. Well maybe, but I've bought several items from Scan that were in the mainstream phase of their lifecycles and some were even more battered than this. In fact, one box containing a HD 2900 Pro I bought several years ago looked like it had been used as a football and kicked all around the warehouse, with the large and heavy graphics card knocking around loose in the broken internal tray. While the card did work fine, I got Scan to replace that one.



This model has a backplate covering the whole of the rear of the card, unlike a reference
model, which gives one confidence in its build quality. EVGA are a premium brand,
so I expect this kind of extra in their products, especially the Classified range.
It's also reassuringly heavy!

Now, one might argue that the state of the box is only a cosmetic issue, but I beg to differ. First off, you don't expect to pay many hundreds of pounds for A-grade stuff and get B-grade instead. Importantly, the box damage means that the item has been subjected to severe shock. Now, a graphics card or CPU may not be especially sensitive to shock, but what about a hard disc drive? That's a different story and if not delivered in a completely busted state, could certainly have its lifetime shortened due to some warehouse monkey kicking it around. It's also quite disrespectful to Scan's customers to knowingly peddle stuff battered in this way and in my book Scan should be forced to clean up their act or go out of businesss. This would encourage the whole retail industry to improve its standards.

In this case however, the foam inside the GTX 590 box and the card itself looked pristine, so I don't expect there to be any problems with it.

Due to consistently damaged boxes, I try not to buy from Scan any more if possible, with situations like this discontinued GTX 590 being exceptions. Of course, Scan's website makes no mention about the possible state of the boxes, do they? Just like they didn't with my GTX 590. No that would put off the punters and they'd have to improve their standards.

I would sure like to know what's going on over there that their stuff is always damaged like this. The fact it's been going on for years and they're not out of business or apparently suffering low sales suggests that most customers are oblivious to this problem, or just accept crap from them. Certainly other retailers products only have minimal and acceptable damage to their boxes, so I can easily avoid Scan and sure do.

So, what's my new GTX 590 like? I'm afraid that I've not had a chance to try it out yet due to a busy weekend. However, when I do I'll let you know how I get on, with a benchie or two. I'm also interested in running Folding@Home on it. I tried to do this, but my near-reference (higher clock speeds) Zotac GTX 580 Amp! exhibited severe coil noise that even broke through the audio circuitry, making a loud and intolerable noise through the speakers, so I couldn't use it for this. Such a shame, as it's a monster Folder.

If Scan would like to respond to this issue, then I will be happy to publish their statement in full.

www.scan.co.uk

Here is the official spec sheet for the EVGA GTX 590 Classified:

 03G-P3-1598-AR.pdf   754.56K   47 downloads

Finally, here's the official EVGA unboxing video for the GTX 590 Classified!