Heat And Noise
When you start talking about cutting edge graphics, you have to address heat and noise—the collateral damage of complex GPUs and high clock rates under the duress of synthetic 3D loads.
We’ll actually begin by touching on Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 285, though. With one of these cards in a gaming machine, you’re probably in peachy shape. Toss a couple into an X58-based board like our Asus Rampage II Extreme (with its slots spaced just wide enough for dual-slot graphics cards) and you’re asking for trouble, though. We had to manually key in 100% duty cycles for both boards to keep them from crashing in games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R., since the fan couldn’t spin up fast enough. At full tilt we achieved stability, but at the expense of more than 54 decibels of noise.
It's not like the GeForce GTX 295 treated us much better. In fact, once we hit 99 degrees in FurMark, we stopped our acoustic testing for fear of frying the card (it was already pumping a special smell into the room). That board’s fan was generating 54.6 decibels up until we shut it down.
But a pair of Radeon HD 5870s was the loudest combination in our tests, generating 54.7 decibels from our plucky little Extech 407768. These cards actually did hit 100 degrees C, at which point they’d throttle, dip back to 99, and then hop back up to 100. What you really need to be careful with in a closed case, though, is a rising ambient. The Radeon HD 5870’s decked-out bracket doesn’t have a full slot’s worth of ventilation anymore, so half of the card’s air actually blows out the top back into your chassis.
Overclockers—especially those with the dosh to purchase more than one Radeon HD 5870—need to make sure they’re handling cooling, since the 5870 behaves a little differently than any of ATI’s other high-end boards (more like a GeForce GTX 295, which also exhausts super-hot air into your case).
At idle, a single Radeon HD 5870 is just slightly louder than its predecessor—on par with a pair of GeForce GTX 285s in SLI, but quieter than a single GeForce GTX 295. Most impressive is the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which is noticeably less noisy than any of the other cards, despite the fact that it’s only .6 dBA away from the GTX 285.
- 1 / 2
- Next
-
anyone seen these in the uk?
now this is someting. cant wait to see what nvidia will come up with.
does this mean that the prices of existing 48xx cards will go down?
They are scheduled for release on the 25th in the UK according to major online retailers expected stock date.
check out novatech and ebuyer.
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech [...] 800Series/
http://www.ebuyer.com/search?store [...] ubcat=2999
best price for 5870 £299.99 delivered ebuyer
My god the 4870x2 finally got a rival
Smooth gaming again!?!? YAY
available for pre order on scan.co.uk now £320
All those connectors are nice but first thing I thought when I first saw pictures was there is not enough vents on the backto cool that card properly. Hopefully some board partners will come up with versions with full PCI slot cooling. Eyfinity looks better, but all I need is two DVI connectors one for monitor and other for projector.
Now lets see what Nvidia brings out, lets hope something competitive in performance and price. I hope prices drop by Cristhmas to £200-259 for 5870
At guru3d they overclocked to 925 core/ 5400 memory could not go further because of temp problems. I wonder what would they do with better cooling. 1GHZ/6GHz?...Now that would be sweet.Link: http://www.guru3d.com/article/rade [...] ew-test/26
All those connectors are nice but first thing I thought when I first saw pictures was there is not enough vents on the backto cool that card properly. Hopefully some board partners will come up with versions with full PCI slot cooling.
Anandtech addressed this concern in their review: "As far as the 5870 is concerned, this is solid proof that the half-slot exhaust vent isn’t going to cause any issues with cooling."
Here's the source link to the above quotation.
Third time's the charm?
I have seen Anandtech's article, however they did hit 100C and started to throtle in /crossfire on Toms review and Guru3d temps limited overclocking so there is room for improvement in cooling.
Also I wonder if 2GB version would perform better at high resolutions with AA
No Crossfire? Really? What was ATI thinking releasing a top of the line video card that can't support a major feature set? One of the major selling points is that you can run 3 displays off this one card, yet you need to Crossfire two of these to get playable frame rates. Problem, you can't Crossfire these cards (yet?).
They should have dispensed with the third video connection in favor of extra ventilation, which it sounds like this card needs. If users are so gung ho about running 3 or more dispays, then wait for the Eyefinity card.
Glad to see ATI releasing a product that puts a boot up Nvidia's arse, but they shouldn't have released it without solving the Crossfire issue.
Must be mistake. Check benchmarks, they include crossfire results so it is working. They probably had the cards for some while for testing and started writing article and drivers did not support crossfire at the start and does support now. They just forgot to edit part of the article where it says that it does not support crossfire.
any word on when the 5670 is gonna come out
Yes, try www.overclockers.co.uk
£320 ouch, what a rip off and no Physx. I think this time round Nvidia's mid range card, the GTX360 will trounce all over this card from a great height.
£320 ouch, what a rip off and no Physx. I think this time round Nvidia's mid range card, the GTX360 will trounce all over this card from a great height.
Wow, 8 minutes before the first fanboi commentard...
As someone who holds allegiance with neither vendor -- both have a place in our house -- this looks great from a stirring-up the market perspective.
R.