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Testing Performance At A Constant 40 dB(A)

The Myths Of Graphics Card Performance: Debunked, Part 1
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Why 40 dB(A)?

First of all, note the A in the decibel notation. That stands for A-weighting. It means that sound pressure levels are adjusted using a curve that mimics human sensitivity to noise levels at different frequencies.

Forty decibels is generally considered to be the average background noise level for a commonly quiet apartment. Recording studios might be in the 30 dB range, while 50 dB might be a quiet suburb or a conversation at home. Zero is commonly considered the threshold of human hearing, although it's uncommon to hear in the 0-5 dB range unless you're less than five years old. The decibel scale is logarithmic, and not linear. So 50 dB is twice as loud as 40, which is twice as loud as 30.

Trivia

Trivia: The world's quietest room has a -9 dB background noise level, and will reportedly give you hallucinations in less than an hour if you stand inside in the dark, due to sensory deprivation.

A PC operating at 40 dB(A) tends to blend in with the background noise level of your home/apartment. Generally, it shouldn't be noticeable.

How Do You Dial In 40 dB(A) Consistently?

A card's noise profile is affected by a few variables, one of which is the speed of its fan. Not all fans make the same amount of noise at the same RPM level, but each fan, on its own, should be consistent at a given rotational speed.

So, by measuring directly with a SPL meter from three feet away, I manually set each card's fan profile right at 40 dB(A).

Card
Fan Setting %
Fan RPM
dB(A) ±0.5
Radeon R9 290X
41%
2160
40.0
GeForce GTX 690
61%
2160
40.0
GeForce GTX Titan
65%
2780
40.0

The table above shows us that the Radeon R9 290X and GeForce GTX 690 achieve 40 dB(A) at the same fan speed, although at different fan settings. The Radeon's fan can be pushed higher overall, hitting rotational speeds and noise levels that the GTX 690's cooler cannot. Nvidia's GeForce GTX Titan, on the other hand, has a different noise profile, hitting 40 dB(A) at a higher 2780 RPM, but at a setting (65%) similar to the GeForce GTX 690 (61%).

This table illustrates fan profiles along a variety of presets. Overclocked cards under load can get pretty loud; I measured around 47 dB(A). The Titan is the quietest under a typical load, at 38.3 dB(A), while the GeForce GTX 690 is the loudest at 42.5 dB(A).

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  • 0 Hide
    Jak_Sparra , 10 February 2014 13:38
    Can't wait for part 2. I have a Sapphire R9 290 Tri-X and am enjoying the smoothest gameplay I've ever experienced at 1920x1200 with ultra settings in games like BF4. BUT, I'm interested in getting a 2560x180p monitor for gaming. The only thing holding me back is that I'm worried how much of a drop in FPS I will see. Hope the next article covers stuff like that. Also, as more and more gamers get more system RAM, I'd love to see an article that covers what happens when you use RAM as a RAMdisc and stick the pagefile on it. Would it act nearly as fast as VRAM?
  • 0 Hide
    rolli59 , 10 February 2014 13:51
    Great article, waiting on part 2.
  • 0 Hide
    Jonathan Cave , 10 February 2014 15:11
    Great Article.
  • 0 Hide
    Jak_Sparra , 10 February 2014 15:43
    Can't wait for part 2. I have a Sapphire R9 290 Tri-X and am enjoying the smoothest gameplay I've ever experienced at 1920x1200 with ultra settings in games like BF4. BUT, I'm interested in getting a 2560x180p monitor for gaming. The only thing holding me back is that I'm worried how much of a drop in FPS I will see. Hope the next article covers stuff like that. Also, as more and more gamers get more system RAM, I'd love to see an article that covers what happens when you use RAM as a RAMdisc and stick the pagefile on it. Would it act nearly as fast as VRAM?
  • 0 Hide
    Jonathan Cave , 10 February 2014 15:47
    Great Article.
  • 0 Hide
    kyzarvs , 10 February 2014 15:54
    @Jak - this is covered on page 6?"What happens when graphics memory is completely consumed? The short answer is that graphics data starts getting swapped to system memory over the PCI Express bus. Practically, this means performance slows dramatically, particularly when textures are being loaded. You don't want this to happen. It'll make any game unplayable due to massive stuttering."
  • 0 Hide
    Sunius , 10 February 2014 16:40
    Hey, about memory usage and Windows AERO: did you try benchmarking peak memory usage between various windows versions when in fullscreen mode? Going to fullscreen mode should effectively make Windows use 0 graphics memory as far as it's concerned (hence why it takes a while to switch to and out of fullscreen - it is moving data out and into video memory).
  • 0 Hide
    Wossnames , 11 February 2014 14:05
    10 dB isn't "twice as loud". It is ten times the sound pressure. 3 dB is about the double sound pressure.However, as we humans do not perceive sound linearly, around 6 dB (actually about four times the sound pressure) is generally perceived as "twice as loud".
  • 0 Hide
    HEXiT , 12 February 2014 22:19
    nice... pretty much confirms what i was thinking about overclocking, the results little in the way of real performance gains.for your next foray into overclocking could you do real world cpu performance. as gamers may well be in for a shock... with very limited returns for a massive overclock, power draw and reduced cpu life.productivity on the other hand can bring real returns... so it would be nice to have this confirmed.
  • 0 Hide
    cdrkf , 13 February 2014 11:16
    One myth I think you missed and really should highlight with respect to graphics memory is that as you say the amount doesn't effect performance, but the TYPE of memory really does.There are a lot of lower end cards popping up equipped with large amounts of DDR3 memory (e.g. an R9 250 with 2gb DDR3), and these are categorically a worse buy than a similarly priced card equipped with less but faster GDDR 5 memory...
  • 0 Hide
    jabel_sk , 23 February 2014 00:42
    Skyrim is a not a good game to benchmark VRAM because it's a horrible port. However, the modding community has in what some would argue, redesigned the engine's memory allocation system altogether.