Overclocking and Conclusion
The first thing that hit me is that the card runs very silent at idle mode, my cpu cooler managed to make more noise even though it has two fans. Overall the temperature was pretty much the same as with the rest of the cards. Stability wise though it was rock stable, even during overclocking we were able to keep the temperature below 70 celsius so I believe that the real power of this cooler comes when you overclock or game for longer periods.
Overclocking:
To overclock the card we used Rivatuner, the gpu and ram runs at 680MHz and 1250MHz at stock speed. After som tweaking and rebooting we managed to run a couple of 3dmark Vantage runs without artifacts or lockups at the following speed, gpu@849MHz and ram at 1375MHz. I find these results to be very satisfying and the fan did not speed up to bad even at these clocks so the cooling was quite humane.
Conclusion:
This is a very well performing card in my eyes but I really can’t say if the new cooling on the card really works any better than the others more than when it comes to the noise. The cooler runs way more silent than the previous videocards we have taken a look at. I found this card on Newegg for 370$ which is a tad more than I would personally pay for it, I mean we saw the 4850 perform somewhat decent vs this card and since it only cost 150$ people might end up getting that anyways with the economic crisis and all. However if you want to have the latest well performing products then this is definitely something to get. It overclocked quite well and I mainly was surprised that even during high overclocking stats there were no artifacts and this is where the cooling comes in again, it was able to maintain and keep the chips cool enough. Overall I like this card though for good performance and overclocking ability.
Pros:
+ Fast
+ New cooler
+ Good accessories
+ Overclocks well
Cons:
- Big
- Price
- No HDMI
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