Temperature & noise

Low range cards are normally based of the high end counterparts, with features cut and less transistors, thus resulting in cooler operating temperatures, this allows for passive cooling on some models. The card tested today however features active cooling, single slot heatsink with small fan embed inside, the fan is controlled by the driver, and speeds up/slows down as the GPU temperature changes. We test the load temps in a closed case (Ultra Grid with 1x120mm front and 1x120mm in rear), ambient temperature was 22.5°C, noise was measured at 50cm from the front of the case, ambient noise of 37.8dBA.



Real-time HDR was run for 30 minutes and maximum temperatures recorded, at the video card stock speed as well as maximum stable overclock:



At stock speeds the core is running already quite hot but nowhere near critical levels, overclocked however the heatsink has a harder time coping, at 87°C there was an 10°C from stock results.

The dBA level at boot-up was recorded, when the fan is running at full speed, afterwards Real-Time HDR was used to stress the VGA card and after 30minutes the maximum dBA was written down and compiled in this chart:



Noise wise the Leadtek 8500 GT DDR3 does okay in 2D mode, even gaming at stock speeds didn’t heat up the GPU enough to speed up the fan, only when overclocked the heatsinks got hot enough for the fan to kick in at higher speed and this results in a noise level which is quite noticeable. Would loved to have seen a larger fan on this video card to keep noise down under all circumstances.

Power consumption

With 1600W power supplies touted as the next best thing, it’s essential to know how much a system really needs, before you go spending your savings on a new PSU.



We measured maximum overall system load during 3DMark03 runs (where we found power usage to spike the highest in the Nature scene). Stock and Overclocked numbers included:



Not a negligible difference here, the GPU is most likely being fed more volts than the reference DDR2 unit, and running at higher speed results in a ~20W increase in power consumption when under load.

Time to wrap things up ->