Remember the horror of GeForce GTX 590 going up in smoke while benching? Well, apparently NVIDIA has found a way to solve this issue completely without doing a quick fix through the drivers. The solution : a much needed hardware fix where the new inductors are added to the card. However, the new inductors are larger in size therefore a change to the baseplate is needed. What does it mean to the 3rd party cooling solutions especially the GTX 590 waterblocks? Probably back to the drawing board so as to conform to the revised keep outs. The revised GeForce GTX 590 cards denoted with a new -502 marking on the PCB are expected to hit the market in June.

NVIDIA regularly adds alternate source components to products as part of normal supply chain management, but there is no new GeForce GTX 590 board design as rumored. All GeForce GTX 590 graphics cards run great as originally designed.

NVIDIA Revising GeForce GTX 590 Design
No doubt the GeForce GTX 590 is a cracker of a graphics card (no pun intended). It shares a disputed lead with the AMD Radeon HD 6990, where the latter has the reputation of being the more electrically stable of the two. Voltage-assisted overclocking of the GTX 590 has proven to be many an overclocker's $700 misadventure, with the weak VRM circuitry burning up with even the slightest bump in voltages. NVIDIA plans to fix this once and for all with a hardware update of the GTX 590.

In June, NVIDIA plans to release a new revision of the GeForce GTX 590 with a stronger VRM circuitry, stronger inductors, FETs, capacitors, etc. The revision could possibly alter the reference PCB design, at least with the VRM areas, and that could mean water-block manufacturers could have to go back to the drawing boards. Who knows, the new revision of GTX 590 with heightened electrical stability could also create some room for new models from AICs with better overclocked speeds out of the box, to step up competitiveness against the HD 6990.