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 XFX ATI Radeon HD 4770 512MB uses a cooler which exhausts the hot air straight out of the back of the case although, like the Gigabyte ATI Radeon HD 4770 512MB, this cooler isn't in contact with the memory. Luckily, the memory didn't get very hot during our FurMark stress test in our Antec Twelve Hundred case, but it might be worth checking the temperature yourself if you have a smaller case and adding ramsinks if necessary.

The performance of the cooler supplied by XFX is impressive and was two degrees cooler than the meatier looking reference cooler at load. It was also relatively quiet although it did spin up so to be noticeably loud during the stress test. Even so, for gaming and general use, the XFX ATI Radeon HD 4770 512MB shouldn't present any annoyances in the noise or heat department and it appears to work well too.