Temperatures
The cooling solution which graphics card vendors use is one of the main differences that consumers have to contend with. Apart from their acoustic properties, the thermal properties of graphics card coolers are extremely important. Lower temperatures are always better and with AMD and Nvidia opting to use dynamic overclocking algorithms that take temperature into account it is important that graphics card vendors use high performance cooling solutions in order to maximise performance. The era of graphics cards reaching dangerous temperatures are now in the past but the importance of lower temperatures still remains. Lower temperatures mean better stability, longer component longevity and lower fan speeds. That said temperatures are one of the most important non-performance related properties on a graphics card.
Find details of our temperature methodology on page 3.
ШИКАРНАЯ ВИДЕОКАРТА
You seem to have real problems overclocking a lot of cards you get in for review. Have you tried swapping out other parts of your test bench to see if it fixes it?
The majority of cards we get overclock okay. The only cards I can think of that didn’t were the two MSI GTX 700 ones (GTX 760/GTX 770 TF Gaming) and this card. Everything else did what was expected or sometimes more. Overclocking is more a result of the silicon lottery than anything else. We’ve got a capable motherboard, CPU and PSU so there’s no reason to assume it is being caused by anything other than rubbish overclocking samples.
These temps make no sense. Unless you are testing inside of a commercial refrigerator there is no way your temps can be this low. Cards at less then 5c when idle??? That would literally be just 5 degrees above freezing, so even if powered off those cards could never hit those temps as they would never go below the ambient room temperature.
Your 290 and 290X temps under load are also a full 20c, or more, then every other benchmark that has been posted. No way these numbers are real unless you are doing something else to chill the units.
We use delta temperatures as stated in the methodology and as written on the graphs, normally the room temperature is about 21-23 degrees.
That way readers can estimate what temperatures it will run at for them by adding on their typical room temperature. Of course if it is an card with a thermal control point (which is increasingly becoming the trend these days) then deltas can become a little irrelevant.
Hmm I have R9 280X DD Black 1080/1550 1.2v (cant use the voltage on XFX BIOS lol but on the box i have that has unlocked voltage, strange indeed) but i have flashed the BIOS from Sapphire TOXIC and now i have ulocked Voltage 🙂 so i Gaming on 1050/1550 1.175v +5%POW and its safe, cool and efficient even better that my last XFX 7970DD GHzEd 😀 My temps in BF4 1h gaming is about 56-58 deg. cels. I have Corsair 750D Silento with 3x140mm fans on 50-75% I cant even hear my XFX 😉
the last one was noisy and hot 68-71deg. cels. So XFX is better and better. RMA is Great also.
And question 4U – why the v is locked? is maby the BIOS is set to 2 (default?)
my xfx r9 280x idles at 30 c and folding 57c and heavy gaming 63c
#