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Before the release of any product we attend briefings with the company, and it is common for us to feel a mixture of scepticism and disbelief when we listen to executives rant on about performance benefits and why we should be telling the public to buy their solution. nVidia this time around were really pushing the ‘cooler running nature' of this Fermi product as well as extremely low levels of noise from the redesigned cooler. We can understand why it would be a focus mind you as the GTX480 was the complete opposite.
From today we have changed our method of measuring noise levels. We have built a system inside a Lian Li chassis with no case fans and have used a fanless cooler on our CPU. We are using a heatpipe based passive power supply and an Intel SSD to keep noise levels to a minimum. The motherboard is also passively cooled. This gives us a build with completely passive cooling and it means we can measure noise of just the graphics card inside the system when we run looped 3dMark tests. Ambient noise in the room is around 20-25dBa. We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation.
Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the video card. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.
KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refridgerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum
The nVidia solutions are extremely quiet and noticeably better than the cooler that is on the reference HD5830 card. When the HD5830 is loaded it becomes audible very quickly, whereas the GTX460 remains fairly quiet at all times.
What is most important to take from this however is that in ‘Real world terms' this basically means that the GTX460 will never be heard above a few case fans. Excellent results for nVidia here.
performance is very good indeed.
Third time lucky, good card, seems to be almost worth the wait
Nice overclocked performance. Seems a reference card would be a good buy and then manually overclocking it to save some money,.
That evga board is really good value for money, under 200? the 5830 I never liked, and I can see why now.
Very good card from nvidia, power consumption is also impressive considering the performance.
I am quite surprised how good this card is, seems to be the top buy now under £200.
It is a tough call to make, spend a bit extra on evga superclocked to get moer performance for sure out of the box, or save some money, get the reference card and hope it overclocks as good. They all seem to overclock well, but you never know by how much until you take it home and trash it.
I think nvidia shares should go up with this one.
Ohhh, I like this card and I never thought id say that about fermi. which to this point has been a power sucking waste of space.
Yeah I agree the power consumption and noise levels are class leading. well done.
Well color me impressed with this one. Wasnt expecting such good performance and temperatures.
Its still not as good as the AMD 5850.
well of course its not as good as the HD5850, that card competes against the GTX465. its about £50 more?
Big release for nvidia, probably their biggest card release for sales in 4 years. It might save their sales in 2010. I know they are struggling.
performance figures are good, read a few reviews and it seems to be sending the HD5830 home in a coffin. its about time we see nvidia competitive again, even if its a mid range sector. the big sales are here and in the 100-150 sector.
thanks for including the HQV Benchmark 2.0 results.
Interesting results, and its good to see nvidia working on their drivers for IQ now in HQV Benchmark 2.0
fermi for the masses methinks. its a very solid product all round. Cant get over how small it is, but it still needs 2 x6 pin connectors.
Figures are good, noise is great, power drain is excellent. size is tiny. Not much to knock, even the price seems competitive.
wow, nvidia leading a price point, hell just froze over !
I like this card a lot. Might pick one up later in the month.
Have one on preorder.
Nice comeback. I’m waiting to see how AMD will respond, and find it hard to speculate on that. AMD can probably lower prices considerably if it wants, but on the other hand if Southern Islands are indeed expected in a couple of months’ time, perhaps it would just wait for that.