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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 closed 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 Sapphire cooler is as good as we hoped, lowering noise levels significantly. When gaming, the card is basically inaudible, especially with a couple of case fans running. Full marks for the cooling system.
Good card, but I cant help but feel this range of cards from AMD is rather dull and lifeless. why remove alot of the shaders on the cards? makes no sense to go back a step. negates the gains from the manufacturing process and increasing the clock speeds
Very dull launch day, they need to drop the prices.
Sapphire always do good coolers, but id love to know who in AMD thought it was a good idea to lose 140 stream processors on the new card? the HD6770 had 800 !
Crossfire performance is really good. id like to see results from two of the OC’d models.
great cooler, but the card undeneath hasn’t hit the spot im afraid.
I can’t see anybody in the UK listing a Sapphire SKU with 1150Mhz Core clock…
see Scan/Dabs have a 1120 listed…
Hi Muppett, you aren’t the first person to ask me about this, and ive contacted Sapphire today and they told me that SCAN have the core clock speed listed at the older speeds. It should be 1150mhz. you will hopefully see this change on SCAN Shortly.
Thanks for letting us know.
See this for more information http://www.futurehardware.com/latest-tech-news/737.htm
This card works best underclocked if you have a clocked version, some of the overclocked 7770’s have an odd issue that causes your screen to flicker. Performance wise its a good mid/entry range card but a complete failure from the 6000 series. One thing does stand out about the 7000 series though, their using better cooling which would be a nice addage if only the prices would drop.
@Frank I would guess it has to do with the dye shrinkage from 40nm scale to 28nm, I would have settled for a thousand stream processors if it meant abandoning such a useless shrinkage. My guess they shrunk the dye in order to control heat and leverage power out put. Which is just piss poor marketing strategy if you ask me.