en.hw-lab.com GeForce GTX 470 — detailed view
Determination of temperature levels, overclocking potential and possibilities to use alternative ways of cooling of GeForce GTX 470 video cards
Testing configuration
| Motherboard | DFI LP UT X58-T3eH8 |
|---|---|
| Processor | Core i7 920@4400HT |
| Memory | G.SKILL Trident 6GB F3-16000CL9T-6GBTD |
| Video card | EVGA GTX 470 SuperClocked |
| Hard drives | 2 x VelociRaptor WD1500HLFS RAID0 / Hitachi P7K500 500Gb |
| Case | Benchetto 101 open teststand |
| OS | Windows 7 64-bit |
Motherboard and CPU liquid cooling.
GTX 470 at work
I used 3DMark Vantage for a short card performance test since it (test) is a tool that gives an overall performance score.
17520 points — not a bad result at all. However, PhysX technology, rarely used in games, significantly effects the overall score. So we turn off PhysX in driver settings and repeat the test:
Despite the overclocking, the number of final points significantly decreased — total video card’s score has not changed reaching 14000 points, however, the number of points for the processor test has fallen from 64.679 to 27.248. Still, there is a lot of potential behind PhysX, but its hard to find a real application that uses this technology. Number of PhysX supporting software can easily be counted by the fingers of one hand. So, we now have a basic picture of performance results, but what about temperatures?
Let’s see what happened with the card during the test:
During tests the ambient temperature was 25°С, GPU temperature hit 93°С, but no worries — GPU GF100 critical temperature is 105°С. Stock cooling system fan’s ans speed increased to 3600 RPM while making a terrible hum. To tell the truth — the noise generated by the card at Load makes you feel really uncomfortable.
At Idle, card uses its power saving features by reducing clocks and voltages:
| Core Clock | Memory Clock | GPU Voltage (measure) | Temperature at 25°С | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Desktop | 50 MHz | 65 MHz | 0.88 V | 46 |
| Blu-Ray Playback | 405 MHz | 162 MHz | 0.89 V | 53 |
| 3D Load | 625 MHz | 850 MHz | 1.06 V | 93 |
To deal with temperature and noise level issues I tried reducing GPU voltage using MSI Afterburner 1.6. After several attempts to change voltages I found that for card to work at stock (factory) clocks 0.95 V (1.0 V according to multimeter) is enough:
GPU temperature fell a bit — from maximum of 94°С to 91°С, however, fan’s speed decreased noticeably — from 3600 (78%) to 2700 (65%). Now video card runs much quieter, so this is the way to fight noise.
No comments