Heat & Acoustical Performance

For this test we loaded the core of the 9800GTX with 3dMark06’s Batch-Size rendering test at the highest triangle count with a resolution of 1600x1200 and 2xAA. This puts a constant high load on the core for the indicated time. All temperatures were recorded with nTune’s temperature logging program.

It should also be noted that after trying two of these Asus cards we have come to the conclusion that the stock thermal sensor seems to be disabled or certain software programs just can't detect it properly. Rivatuner, Ntune and ATItool did not pick up a temperature from the core on two of these cards. ASUS' SmartDoc software is able to monitor the temperatures but did not play nice with a fresh install of Vista x64.

Thus, we took the Glaciator off the 8800GT TOP, installed it on an EVGA 8800GT (overclocked to 700Mhz / 2000Mhz) and then hard-wired the fan to run directly off a Molex connector. Additionally, we ensured it was being fed the same voltage as when it was installed on the original ASUS card by way of a resistor.

However, we continue to look for a solution to this and will update you when we get to the bottom of it.

Update: Please refer to the ASUS EN8800GT TOP Review Comment Thread for a work-around to our temperature monitoring issue.


Well, the results we achieved can only be called definitive since the Glaciator cooler reduced the temperature of the test card quite significantly. You should also remember that this is on an overclocked card so there is quite a bit more heat to dissipate than with an 8800GT running at stock seeds. Not only does this show that the heatsink attached to this card is extremely efficient but it also shows just how inefficient the stock 8800GT unit is at removing heat from around the core.

While it is busy cooling off the graphics card, the Glaciator stayed remarkably quiet and it did not increase in noise output since it is rigged to run at a constant speed. This in itself is a reason to seriously consider buying the 8800GT TOP since the stock 8800GT heatsink puts out a massive racket when the GPU core is under significant load.


Power Consumption

For this test we hooked up our power supply to a UPM power meter that will log the power consumption of the whole system twice every second. In order to stress the GPU as much as possible we once again use the Batch Render test in 3DMark06 and let it run for 30 minutes to determine the peak power consumption.


As we can see here, with increased clock speeds comes higher power consumption. With the core overclocked to 700Mhz and an additional 200Mhz overclock on the memory, the ASUS 8800GT TOP shows that it consumes quite a bit more power than a stock card and even more than a stock 8800GTS 512MB. Indeed, it even comes close to equalling the power consumption of the newly-released 9800 GTX. No one said performance didn’t come witout some sacrifices folks!!