Thermal Performance

We've changed our thermal testing methods for this review, as we found that simply using high resolution gaming wasn't really cutting it any more. Even a game as demanding as Crysis will have peaks and troughs in terms of GPU load, whereas some GPU utilities, such as Nvidia's Badaboom media encoder or certain Folding@home work units will now place your graphics card under extreme load for extended periods of time.

With that in mind, we've selected FurMark 1.6.0 to stress graphics cards to their absolute thermal maximum. We've used the benchmark's Xtreme burning stability mode, running at 1,280 x 1,024 with 0xAA, 16xAF and waited for five minutes for the GPU to reach its absolute maximum temperature.

While this is an extreme GPU test, pushing cooling solutions to the limit, do remember our test rigs are all housed inside Antec 1200s, with all fans set to full speed to ensure our benchmarks run reliably. In less well ventilated cases, these cards will likely run a few degrees hotter, or will spin up their coolers to higher RPMs to maintain GPU temperature.



The Radeon HD 4770 not only ended up being the coolest graphics card on test at both idle and load, but it was also one of the quietest cards we tested with FurMark. There are random intervals where the fan does kick up to full speed, but it quickly returns to its standard and very quiet normal operating mode. We don't think these spin ups are much of a concern, as they only seemed to happen when the GPU was loaded - it's something that can be fixed with a firmware update, too.

The good thing is that although the dual-slot cooler will likely split opinion in one way or another, there's no arguing about how well it performs. Combined with the 40nm process technology, which is sure to have had an effect on the card's thermal characteristics, the copper heatsink/fan solution works incredibly well.