Power, Temperature, And Noise Benchmarks

Although performance is important, power usage, thermal measurements, and acoustic output are perhaps even more critical when it comes time to decide on an overclocked graphics card. Let’s consider power usage first:

Results are similar across the board, but Sparkle’s card uses a little less power when it's overclocked (the dark grey result), while Gigabyte’s Super Overclocked card uses more under load at the factory settings (the green result). The Gigabyte board also uses more, strangely, at idle.

When it comes to thermal performance, we quickly see that Sparkle’s decision to use the reference cooler might not have been optimal. All of the other options perform admirably, especially the Zalman VF3000 on Zotac's AMP²! card.

Once again, the Sparkle X580 Captain and its reference cooler fall behind, generating more noise than the competition. Zotac’s cooler is the quietest at factory settings (the green result), but Gigabyte’s card does exceptionally well when it's pushed to 100% (the dark grey result).