Thermal Performance

To thermally test the cards we recorded GPU temperatures for each individual core using RivaTuner. Idle readings were taken at the desktop in Windows Vista 64-bit Home Premium with Windows Aero enabled, while the load reading taken while the GPU configuration was running our Crysis benchmark at 1,920 x 1,200 with 0xAA.

This is one of the most demanding tests in our benchmarking suite, and is sure to get those GPUs sweating. We didn't go higher because we felt that if we increased the load too much, some of the slower cards wouldn't deliver realistic numbers because they'd be bottlenecked in other ways.

All temperatures were taken with the cards cooled using only their standard stock coolers and running on our open air test benches, which have no additional airflow other than that present in the room.



Like the HIS Radeon HD 4870 1GB IceQ4+ Turbo we looked at earlier in the week, Sapphire cheats a little in this test as its fan speeds are high enough to be audible not only at load, but also when the card is idling. Moreover, neither fan has a third pin to control or watch the speed at which they're spinning in any third-party monitoring software, so we're left to guess. The only option for reducing the noise, then, is to add a variable resistor to each cable.