Temperatures
Now when it comes to cooling performance, starting with the 7800 XT and things were kept pretty under control with a peak GPU temperature of 58 degrees, while the hotspot did climb quite a bit higher with a peak of 79 degrees all while the memory junction peaked at 76 degrees. For the most part, the clock speed sat around 2510MHz, though on occasion it did peak higher around 2536MHz all while using just short of 250 Watts. In terms of the fans, which is arguably what these cards are all about, they did sit pretty comfortably between 1100 and 1400 RPM which meant that the card was no louder than the rest of our system, though it’s quite interesting that the fans changed speed by around 300 RPM to keep the temperatures under control. We’d normally see a GPU at a more constant speed, though if this means a quieter operation, then I’m all for it.
With the 7900 XTX, the GPU peaked at 62 degrees, and with a hot spot of between 78 to 79 degrees, though we did record a peak of 80 degrees for a brief amount of time. The memory junction was consistent throughout the test at 84 degrees, all while recording a total board power of 389 Watts of power. The clock speed was a bit more erratic on this card, floating between 2595 and 2615MHz for the most part, though it did peak higher at around 2627MHz all with slightly louder operation with a fan speed of between 1480 and 1610 RPM which on the higher-end of the scale, you may hear over the rest of your system, but again, the fan speed fluctuates quite a lot, so is nothing really of concern.
