Temperatures & Acoustical Characteristics

To measure temperatures I have used nTune’s temperature monitoring program to log the GPU temperatures over a 1-hour time period. The graphics cards were installed into a Gigabyte Aurora 570 case and the temperature of the room was kept at a constant 24.2°C at the beginning of each test. The side panel of the case was closed for each of these tests.



The switch away from a single slot cooler is paying dividends for the temperatures of the G92 core used on the 8800GTS 512MB. Temperatures are the lowest I have seen out of a stock cooler even though the copper contact plate leaves a lot to be desired in terms of quality. Without a doubt, this is a very convincing result.

The older 8800-series dual slot coolers were quiet until the card was under load for a good amount of time and they kept the core relatively cool. On the other hand the original heatsink on the 8800GT was completely inadequate to the task of taming the heat produced by the G92 even though it was still dead-silent (it refused to ramp up in speed without some hands-on Rivatuner modding). Unfortunately, it seems like Nvidia got a bit scared with the heat problems on their 8800GT cards and decided to give the fan on the 8800GTS 512MB a far too aggressive speed profile. I measured 10 minutes of load under Company of Heroes until the fan was noticeably louder than anything else in my case. It stayed that way until the end of the hour test and by then it was beginning to get a bit annoying. While it was A LOT quieter than the racket put out by the HD2900XT, its sound profile did not blend into the rest of the fan noise in my case like the 8800GTX’s fan does. Simply put; if you are looking for a silent performer, this is not it.

I should also note that people’s perception of what constitutes “noise” is highly subjective and tends to vary a lot from person to person. On the other hand, I had a few friends come over and they all agreed that the XFX 8800GTS 512MB was louder than all of the other cards except the HD2900XT “dustbuster”. This is too bad because I would have been more than willing to sacrifice a few degrees in temperature for a quieter fan.

I am hoping to get my hands on another 8800GTS 512MB card soon to see if this fan speed issue was unique to this card.