Overclocking and Noise
Being identical to the reference design and the reference board clocking like a champion for me, I was keen to see what the Aeolus would deliver. Recent FX 5950 Ultra reviews around the web seem to show that my review sample of the reference card was above average, doing 3DMark03 at a rather silly 585/1050DDR. Here's what the Aeolus sample will do, 3DMark03 stable.
Those faintly rediculous clocks give the card 4480Mtexels/sec of texel fillrate (whoa) and 33.2GB/sec of theoretical memory bandwidth for the Intellisample unit to chew on. Enough to put the willies up any Radeon 9800 you care to mention. I hope it's indicative of the clocking performance retail samples will have. I've no idea if AOpen had the mind to send me a nice one or not, your mileage my vary of course.
Noise
The Delta BFB0712H DC brushless blower, rated to 38dBA at full speed and 12V, isn't the quietest you'll ever lay ears on. In 3D mode, at full speed, the fan itself is silent but the air movement it creates isn't. I don't imagine moving all that air over the finned heatsink is the most optimal design in terms of noise, but it's certainly not an ear splitter either. In the middle of the pack compared to the super quiet ASUS 9800XT/VTD (with SmartDoctor assist) and something like the now infamous 'Dust Buster' on some FX5800 Ultras. 2D mode is pretty silent, I'm very happy with it in that regard, just like the reference board.Before we move on to the conclusion, here's the GPU temperature as reported by the driver after a quick 9 holes of the Predator course on TW2004, with 4xAA and 8xAF applied at 1024x768, at stock card clocks (475/950DDR).
Only 3 degrees above measured ambient air temperature means the fan at full speed does a very good job of keeping the GPU cool.
