GeForce GTS 250 Roundup (ASUS, Gigabyte, Sparkle, EVGA)

Heat & Acoustics

For all temperature testing, the cards were placed on an open test bench with a single 120mm 1200RPM fan placed ~8” away from the heatsink. The ambient temperature was kept at a constant 22°C (+/- 0.5°C). If the ambient temperatures rose above 23°C at any time throughout the test, all benchmarking was stopped.

For this test we use the 3DMark Batch Size test at it highest triangle count with 4xAA and 16xAF enabled and looped it for one hour to determine the peak load temperature as measured by GPU-Z. For Idle tests, we let the system idle at the Vista desktop for 15 minutes and recorded the peak temperature.


Gigabyte GTS 250 1GB OC

When it comes to both load and idle temperatures, the Gigabyte GTS 250 with its Zalman cooler was simply unmatched. Things were a little less rosy when it came to acoustics since the fan on the VF1050 can’t regulate its speed based on core temperatures. This leads to this card being (subjectively) the noisiest of the roundup but its acoustical footprint is small enough that it was easily drowned out by the two 120mm Yate Loon fans installed onto the tech station. Unfortunately, this is the only card which we couldn’t control its fan speed through software like Rivatuner.


Sparkle Calibre GTS 250 X250

We didn’t have very high hopes for the heatsink on the Calibre X250 and its performance bore this out to some extent. In its straight position with the fins as close as possible to the PCB, the fans had to operate at a constant 80% of their rated speed just to keep the core at a toasty 78°C. Meanwhile, when we elevated the two cooling assemblies, the peak temperatures dropped 4°C while the two little fans went to 74% output. High fan speed coupled with relatively near-80° temperatures tell us that the Dual Fly heatsink is very close to its thermal capacity and is struggling to keep the core within an acceptable temperature range.

Personally, I think there are two real stars of this show: the fact that elevating the heatsink assemblies really did decrease temperatures and that even when working their butts off, the fans stayed extremely quiet. The only real complaint we have about the fans is that at higher RPMs their slight vibrations are amplified by the copper fins into a very faint mechanical resonance.


ASUS GTS 250 1GB Dark Knight

At the beginning of this roundup, I expressed some doubts regarding the efficacy of the heatsink used on the Dark Knight. Well, ASUS proved me wrong since this heatsink literally competes blow-for-blow with the Zalman unit found on the Gigabyte card. In the end it lost by a few degrees but that didn’t stop it from impressing the hell out of me.

Noise-wise, the small fan usually keeps to its own company while happily gobbling away at temperatures but every now and then it will ramp up speed for a few seconds. This speed ramp-up doesn’t increase fan speed to the point where it will be noticeable fro within a closed-case environment.


EVGA GTS 250 1GB Superclocked

Considering this card uses what many would call the “reference” GTS 250 heatsink, the temperatures it showed where very good. Not once did its fan speed increase to levels where we could hear it and even though this is the largest heatsink of the bunch, the fact that it exhausts all of the hot air outside the case is a welcome addition.