Temperature, Noise, Overclockability

The three graphics cards all come with nonstandard cooling systems and we want to know how efficient and quiet these systems are. The temperature factor goes first.

Sapphire’s Vapor-X technology is far from setting any records in idle mode although it is better than ATI’s reference cooler. The Vapor-X cooler is not extraordinary under load, either. It is 2°C worse than the reference cooler and than the cooler installed on the MSI card. Gigabyte-Zalman’s design is inferior to its opponents under load but has a record-breaking result in 2D mode. This must be due to the combination of the cooler with the 2oz Copper PCB technology. The thicker metallization layers should improve the ability of the PCB to dissipate heat that is actively produced by such components as GPU, memory and power transistor chips.

The reference point for our noise measurement tests is 43dBA which is the level of ambient noise in our test lab as measured at a distance of 1 meter from the testbed with a passively cooled graphics card inside. When we installed the tested graphics cards, we got the following results:

The Sapphire is the only card of the three to be automatically adjusting the speed of the fan and was subjectively silent even in 3D mode despite the growth of the noise meter’s showing. The cards from MSI and Gigabyte behave similarly to each other and their noise did not depend on what mode the card was working in. The only difference is that the MSI card allows to adjust the fan speed manually in CCC whereas the Gigabyte does not permit this.

As for noise level proper, the MSI R4890 Cyclone OC proves to be almost as quiet as the Sapphire Vapor-X HD 4890 2GB whereas the Gigabyte GV-R489OC-1GD was distinctly audible amidst the other noises of the working testbed. The noise spectrum was not irritating, though. It must have been the hiss of the air passing through the heatsink ribs.

Judging by the measurement results, this round is won by the MSI R4890 Cyclone OC, but the Sapphire Vapor-X HD 4890 2GB is not much worse in practical terms. The Gigabyte GV-R489OC-1GD is inferior to its opponents in this respect even though its cooler is effective.

Next we tried to overclock the cards and the Gigabyte GV-R489OC-1GD showed its best then. We easily boosted its GPU frequency up to as high as 1015MHz! The graphics core of the MSI R4890 Cyclone OC overclocked to 970MHz and the Sapphire Vapor-X HD 4890 2GB sped up to 960MHz only. The cards’ memory frequencies could be all increased to the same level of 1200 (4800) MHz despite the rated frequency of 1000 (4000) MHz. Thus, the Gigabyte is good at overclocking even though inferior to its opponents in terms of noise and cooling efficiency. Overclockers don’t mind noise, so the GV-R489OC-1GD is the best option for overclocking. We’ll see in the next section how beneficial such overclocking can be.