Gigabyte Radeon HD 6870 OC Graphics Card Review

AcousticsNoise is generally the bain of most consumers lives and in the hope of finding the quietest operation, we feel it’s necessary to show you the audio level of components. We use the same components throughout this test and use a sound level meter to record the audio level of the system with a passive graphics card installed. Once we have the level recorded with the passive card, we continue to change the graphics card for the one that we are testing. Due to us having the audio level recorded before installation, it gives us a guide to work with and shows that anything over our initial level is an audio gain.

To gauge how effective the cooling is, we thought it be best to compare it to another aftermarket cooling solution which showed results at idle were very similar whilst at load the Gigabyte with its WindForce cooler gave a slightly quieter noise output.