Power Consumption (Idle and Gaming)

While "power virus" applications like Furmark have their uses, they are not necessarily representative of gaming. As such, in order to get an idea of a GPU's power draw when gaming, we record peak power consumption during a 15-minute run of Far Cry New Dawn at 3,840 x 2,160 using Ultra settings with HD Textures on - this keeps the card active in a realistic way. We use a watt meter to measure multiple instances of peak system power draw at regular intervals, disregarding the extremes and averaging out the remaining results. We also take an idle reading at the Windows desktop (3,840 x 2,160).

Thermal Performance (Idle and Gaming)

Thermal output is measured using the same Far Cry New Dawn stress test as above. The GPU is installed in a closed but fairly well ventilated case (Corsair Carbide Series Air 740) with all case and CPU cooler fans running at fixed speeds for consistency. We leave all GPU fan profiles and settings as they come and leave the game running for 15 minutes so that temperatures plateau. We record the peak GPU temperature using GPU-Z or equivalent and present the data as the delta T (the difference between the GPU temperature and the ambient temperature in our labs) in order to keep results comparable between cards tested on different days. We also take an idle reading at the Windows desktop (3,840 x 2,160).