Power-draw, temps, real-world noise assessment
Idle power-draw is a little higher than the Sapphire TOXIC's but both systems draw the same kind of juice from the mains when under load - and both are lower than the GeForce 400-series duo.
Temperatures are good for the ASUS card, especially at idle, but the card's fan speed is setup such that it sacrifices ultimate cooling performance for a quieter fan. You can, of course, change this in the iTracker2 software.
A real-world assessment
Examining the whole noise/heat/power issue in more detail and taking a real-world game into account, we played through Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and noted where system-wide power-draw was highest. The game works the CPU's cores and gives the GPU(s) a good going over. We then left the card rendering the high power-draw scene for 10 minutes and logged the maximum temperature, fan-speed, and power-draw.
The observations were noted with the card(s) installed inside a Corsair Obsidian 700D chassis with side panels on. The 'upper' (hotter) card's temperature and fan-speed are noted if we're evaluating a multi-GPU setup. The table, below, highlights our findings and provides a subjective analysis of the fan noise.
| GPU | Power-draw (maximum) | Temperature (maximum) |
Fan speed (maximum) |
Quietness /10 (higher is better) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Radeon HD 5970 2GB | 386W | 77°C | 2,460rpm | 5 |
| Radeon HD 5970 MATRIX | 325W | 74°C | 1,888rpm | 7 |
| Radeon HD 5870 TOXIC 2GB | 324W | 66°C | 1,950rpm | 7 |
| Radeon HD 5870 1GB | 288W | 76°C | 2,350rpm | 6 |
| Radeon HD 5850 1GB | 260W | 63°C | 1,650rpm | 7 |
| GeForce GTX 480 1.5GB | 419W | 94°C | 2,720rpm/3,785rpm | 4/2 |
| GeForce GTX 470 1.2GB | 354W | 94°C | 2,350rpm/3,290rpm | 5/3 |
Let's explain the table. The noise perception is a subjective rating out of ten for the quietness of the card when under gaming load. Simple rpm doesn't always tell the full story. The second figures for the GeForce GTX 400-series represent the noise if the temperature is capped to 80°C.
During our session of Battlefield: Bad Company 2, the fan speed remained below 2,000rpm at all times. The numbers show that the cooler's not quite as effective as the Vapor-X on the Sapphire, yet the combination of noise, fan speed and temperature is better than the reference's.
