Power, Temperature and Noise
...there had to be a downside, didn't there? Factory-overclocked partner cards are typically made available at varying levels of aggressiveness, and going too far can result in unwanted side effects. Sure, a near-20-per-cent performance boost in most games is nice, but on the flip side we found that system-wide power draw increased by practically the same amount.
The WindForce cooler is obviously having to work harder on the GHz Edition, yet the card doesn't have too much trouble keeping to the target temperature of 80ºC. Readers should note, however, that the extra heat does prevent the card from hitting top gear at all times. As temperature increased during our benchmarks, we found that the Boost frequency would fall from 1,228MHz to just 1,215MHz.
Higher power-draw and increased temperature lead to the inevitable: more noise. Gigabyte's standard WindForce OC card is the quietest on show, but the GHz Edition - which uses the same triple-fan cooler - has to work much harder to tame the massively-overclocked core. During testing, fan speed would increase to 64 per cent (almost 3,000RPM) and at that point the card becomes clearly audible.
That's the dilemma - do you trade overall composure for more performance? The hardened enthusiast would probably be willing, but personally, we favour the WindForce OC over the GHz Edition.
