Temperature testing & overclocking
Temperature musings
We perform our testing on an open test bed with a 120mm fan simulating case airflow.
| Graphics cards | Inno3D 9800 GT iChiLL 512MB | Leadtek 9800 GTX+ 512MB | PowerColor HD 4850 512MB |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ambient temperature | 24°C | 23.5°C | 25°C |
| Idle temperature | 48°C | 53°C | 77°C |
| Load temperature | 61°C | 67°C | 82°C |
| Ambient-to-load delta | 37°C | 44°C | 57°C |
The Arctic Cooling Twin Turbo manages to keep the Inno3D 9800 GT iChiLL nice and cool during testing, offering the lowest ambient-to-load delta of the tested cards. The card lives up to its name, huh.
The Radeon HD 4850 looks incredibly toasty compared to its rivals: the single-slot cooler prioritising quieter operation over lower temperatures.
Overclocking
We managed to raise the iChiLL's frequencies to a maximum stable overclock of 738MHz core, 1,782MHz shader and 2,214MHz memory.
These represent overclocks of 5.4 percent on the core, 18.8 per cent on the shaders and 10.7 percent on the memory, all over the already pre-overclocked speeds.
Looking back at the ET:QW test at 1,920x1,200 we see that the iChilLL card, at its shipping clocks, scored an average 49.9fps. When overclocked this rose to 55.43 fps, an 11.1 percent increase, which pushes performance close to the reference 9800 GTX+. That's not too surprising considering similar core and memory speeds.
