Power and Temperatures
Power was measured at the wall, so it encompasses the entire system’s draw. Considering that all other components in the system are identical, this should not be an issue.
At idle all of the cards behave nicely, with the GTX 480 being slightly more power hungry. Once we hit load, things get interesting. The GTX 480 really sucks down the juice, but this is not necessarily news to anyone. The R6970, even when overclocked by 40 MHz from stock, is still some 30 watts lower in draw.
Temperatures are even more interesting. Measurements were taken from the MSI Afterburner utility for all cards. The HD 6950 in this test features the MSI Twin Frozr II cooling solution, so it performs very closely to the Twin Frozr III unit on the R6970. The HD 5870 is a reference board from AMD with stock cooling.
At idle the R6970 is nearly frigid. Okay, that is an exaggeration, but it is far cooler than any other solution here. Even the Twin Frozr II based HD 6950, which is a lower wattage card with a slower (and partially disabled) GPU. Once things go to load, then the GTX 480 really exerts itself. 92C is pretty damn hot. The older HD 5870 was known as a cool running card, and it shows up at 78C. The two MSI Twin Frozr cards are very well behaved at 70 and 71C. Again we must consider that the R6970 is fully functional, plus runs 120 MHz faster than the HD 6950 from MSI. That it stays at 70C even at full load is exceptional.
got the msi nvidia geforce
got the msi nvidia geforce engtx 580 on 1gh+ range… so why wold i buy this one?
dualcore thats too hot when clocking?
Price would be the big
Price would be the big factor. Get nearly the same performance for $100 cheaper.
Hopefully I can get in the N580GTX Lightning in and see how hot that puppy gets with the Twin Frozr III.
Any idea what might happen to
Any idea what might happen to the frame rates if this card was matched with a Sandy Bridge i5-2400 rather than the hex core AMD? I know in some titles it wouldn’t make much of a difference but in titles like Metro 2033, Dawn of War II and Starcraft II it might help the GPU stretch its legs.
You are most likely right…
You are most likely right… which is why you should check out Ryan’s review of the unoverclocked 6970 to see how it performs with a beefier CPU. Add another 4 to 5% to those numbers, and you should get a good idea of how the card will fare with a i7: https://pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/AMD-Radeon-HD-6970-and-6950-Review-Cayman-Architecture-Revealed