Testing (continued):

Unigene Heaven v2.5:

Unigine Heaven is a DirectX 11 benchmark, and it presents its results based on FPS (frames per second) and a generic score. Each test was run at a 1920x1200 resolution, with 8x AF and 8x AA. For each of these results, a higher score is better.



Thermal Results:

Using the onboard sensors to monitor the operating temperature of the three configurations shows some interesting results. Here we want the system to be a cool as possible, so the lower values are better.

To evaluate the idle temperature, the system was left sitting at the desktop with nothing running for 60 minutes in a room with an ambient temperature of 70 degrees Fahrenheit (approximately 21 degrees Celsius). At default settings, the M5A99X EVO was a couple degrees cooler than the M5A89GTD but it was 1 degree warmer than the Sabertooth 990FX.



To obtain a load, 3DMark Vantage was run three times with the highest settings possible. The results are similar to the idle temperatures, where the Sabertooth 990FX is the coolest. This time, the overclocked M5A99X EVO was approaching what I would consider to be dangerously hot at 68 degrees Celsius.