PowerColor AX5770 PCS+ Temperatures

The FurMark application has the ability to push a graphics processor to higher strains than any video game can. Doing so generates maximum thermal load for a GPU. This makes FurMark an excellent program to use to find out just how hot a video card has the potential to get inside of your computer. Now, the fact that FurMark pushes a GPU to extreme highs means that the likelihood of a video card reaching the temperatures that we are representing as the high here is very unlikely. The numbers we put here are a representation of the maximum thermal output of a video card and don't reflect normal, real-world performance.

To measure the temperatures of a video card, I first measure the idle temperature using GPU-Z. Then I use FurMark to push the GPU temperature to the very limit. The ambient temperature of test environment stays at a stable 20°C. After I am certain that the video card has reached its thermal potential, I close FurMark and measure the highest temperature recorded by GPU-Z during the process. I do this because it has often been speculated that FurMark records higher-than-actual temperatures. Both programs, however, came up with the same numbers for the temperatures of the PowerColor Radeon HD 5770 AX5770 PCS+.

The Radeon HD 5000 series of video cards has a good reputation where temperatures are concerned. The Radeon HD 5770 has never had any problems here and we don't expect the AX5770 PCS+ to either. In fact, PowerColor claims that the changes they have made to the PCB and the reference cooling design helps to keep the AX5770 PCS+ 10 degrees cooler than the reference Radeon HD 5770.

Our open air test bench is great for getting the temperatures of the actual card, but it doesn't help to show what those temperatures might do inside a closed computer case. With the design of the fan shroud on the AX5770 PCS+, more of the excess heat will be left inside of the case and not out the vents on the I/O panel. For this reason, it is even more important that the claims of lower temperatures be true.

PowerColor AX5770 PCS+ Temperatures

The PowerColor AX5770 PCS+ stood idle at a temperature of 30°C with the ambient room temperature at 20°C. After measuring this, I overclocked the AX5770 PCS+ to the stable 920 MHz with the memory at 1250 MHz and ran the FurMark stress test at high about 10 minutes before recording the high temperature. As opposed to the overclocking methodology, I left the fan speed regulated by the GPU rather than setting it to 100%. This kept the noise level down significantly. In fact, if the AX5770 PCS+ were in a case, I doubt highly that I would have been able to hear the card at all. It seems like the BIOS changes made for version 2 of the AX5770 PCS+ probably worked as they were supposed to. After stressing the GPU for about 10 minutes, the temperatures maxed out at 66°C. This is quite cold indeed. In fact, this is only 1°C warmer than our GT 430 got at full load, a significantly less powerful card.

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