| Sparkle GeForce 9800 GTX+ Graphics Card
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Testing (continued):
Power Consumption:
For this test, a Seasonic Power Angel power monitoring device was used to monitor the AC wattage drawn by the test system with the five different cards installed. Since all other hardware remained the same, any change in the Wattage would be the result of the graphics card's demands. Idle conditions were established by letting the system sit at the Windows desktop until a stable reading was achieved, and for load testing the Devil May Cry benchmark was executed in DirectX 9 mode. Peak values were recorded from the Power Angel's display and recorded in the chart below. What we see is that the Sparkle 9800 GTX+ is not a very energy efficient card. It idles higher than most, and then surges 120W higher under load. If the gaming performance had been incredible this may have been acceptable, but the results were as good or better on cards drawing less power.
Thermal Testing:
The final test was to monitor the GPU temperature by running CPUID's HWMonitor. The idle condition was established by recording the temperature after letting the system sit at the Windows desktop for at least 30 minutes with only HWMonitor running. The load condition was established by running 3DMark Vantage two times back-to-back, followed by two back-to-back sessions of the DirectX 9 version of the Devil May Cry benchmark. HWMonitor logs current, minimum, and maximum temperature, so once all testing was completed, the maximum temperature was recorded. All testing was completed on an open testbed with relatively still air in a room with an ambient temperature of 20C.
The cooling is definitely a strong selling point for the 512MB Sparkle GeForce 9800 GTX+. Not only did the temperatures stay relatively low, the noise produced by the fan while doing so was very low. The fan looks to be wired for PWM speed control, but at no point did I notice it ramping up. It apparently didn't need any extra speed (or noise) to keep the GPU cool.
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