| Sapphire Toxic Radeon HD4870 512MB Graphics Card
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Testing (continued):
Thermal Testing:
With performance testing completed, the next item on the agenda was to analyze the range of temperatures that the GPU core operated in. This was accomplished by running CPUID's HWMonitor (64-Bit) within Windows Vista Home Premium (64-Bit). The idle condition was established by recording the temperature after letting the system sit at the Window's desktop for at least 30 minutes with only HWMonitor running. The load condition was established by running 3DMark Vantage two times back-to-back. HWMonitor logs current, minimum, and maximum temperature, so once both rounds of testing were 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 21C.
Here is one test where the Toxic version really stands out from the stock speed HD4870. The special Vapor-X cooler allows the GPU to idle 31 degrees cooler, and the load temperature is 19 degrees cooler. This type of temperature drop would be pretty amazing comparing GPUs at the same speed, but we're talking about an overclocked card being the cooler one.
One catch with these great temperatures is that the fan is never silent, and does get pretty loud when ramped up. Sapphire has released a BIOS update that addresses the fan noise by running the fan at a lower speed. Even if the temperature goes up by 10 degrees in order to run quieter, it will still be cooler (and faster) than the stock card.
Power Consumption Testing:
The final phase of testing was to monitor the total system power consumption with each of the five graphics cards installed. A Seasonic Power Angel power monitoring device was plugged in between the power supply and the wall outlet, and the Wattage screen was monitored. Since all other hardware remained the same, any change in this value would be the result of the video card's demands. Idle conditions were established by letting the system sit at the Windows desktop until a stable reading was achieved. For load testing I found that DirectX 9 applications required more power than their DirectX 10 counterparts, and I chose to keep an eye on the Power Angel's display while running the DirectX 9 version of the Devil May Cry benchmark.
What we see is that the system with either of the two HD4870 cards requires the same amount of power (164W) while at idle. When the action really gets heavy and the load increases, the system with the Toxic Radeon HD4870 surges to 280W, while the system with the stock speed Radeon HD4870 only hits 269W. Only the dual GPU HD3870 X2 required more power, and I wouldn't consider any of these three cards to be energy efficient. More power generally means more heat, which the Toxic Radeon HD4870 is obviously capable of dissipating, but it will also mean more money spent on electric bills. With the popular trend being to "go green", these recent Radeon cards seem something like gas guzzling sports cars that just wouldn't be the same if they were more conservation minded. Maybe ATI can work on that...
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