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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. The motherboard is also passively cooled. This gives us a build with almost 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
At idle, the Vapor X cooler fans only spin at 1,100rpm, which is basically inaudible in the real world. When loaded, the noise emissions rise to 33.1dBa, which is hardly audible, especially when positioned inside a computer chassis. Under synthetic Furmark load, the noise levels rise to 33.9 dBa forcing the dual fans to around 1,900 rpm.
Sapphire seem to have mastered the art of fan profiles this year, supported by an excellent selection of low noise, quality fans.
That is fantastic, although ive a feeling £300 might not be possible with the card. I hope im wrong as I think if they get the price right this could sell well for them.
They make the best video cards on the planet. Imagine what they could do if they worked with Nvidia.
Whatever happened to XFX by the way? they disappeared off the face of the planet.
I still think £300+ is too much for most people, but they are pushing the reference designs pretty much as far as they can do.
Excellent review as always Zardon. Quick question – will people actually be able to buy this one? the toxic 6GB has never appeared in the UK as far as I know.
Strange they didnt opt for the 6GB of memory again. or did they realise that its a waste of money basically?
thats very tasty but they need to make a 7850 like this for the mass audience and try to keep it around £200 🙂
Will they actually be selling this one though? the 6GB Toxic was never on sale anywhere I could find it.
Excellent, im more an nvidia guy, but Sapphire are pulling out all the stops lately with their designs.
Are you sure about the bios settings? At http://www.sapphiretech.com it says:
“On its standard settings, the SAPPHIRE HD 7950 Vapor-X Edition engine clock runs at 850 MHz with 3GB of the latest DDR5 memory clocked at 5000 MHz effective. When the Dual BIOS button is operated, the base clocks are the same but the PowerTune Dynamic Boost is enabled allowing the clocks to rise to 950 MHz or more on the engine. The fan profile and PowerTune limit is also changed to performance settings. In addition, users will be able to individually tune the card with SAPPHIRE TriXX, the company’s free to download software tool that allows key parameters to be adjusted for maximum performance.”
Yes, thats right 🙂 we tested in performance mode with core boost to 950mhz
Shouldn’t it than say 850mhz for bios 1 and 850mhz-950mhz for bios 2 in the chart on page one if the base clocks are the same? Also the GPU-Z Screenshots on page 2 confuses me because it looks more like bios 1 = 850mhz-950mhz and bios 2 = 950mhz?
In case the 850mhz-950mhz is correct for the tested bios it would have been interesting to see if the card can handle the 950mhz constantly ingame or frequently falls back to 850mhz?
I’m so curious because I don’t like this whole boost thing would have been much better to not imitate nvidia in that field an leave it fixed at 850mhz for bios 1 and fixed at 950mhz for bios 2.
Apart from that little uncertainty you have made a great Review an I wold like to thank you for that. 🙂 The only thing I mist was a small audio file to actually hear the characteristic of the fans at idle and load.
The first bios setting – the core runs at 850mhz. The secondary ‘boost’ bios has the core running at 950mhz. It was running at 950mhz constantly according to my analysis when under gaming or synthetic load. We only tested at the faster setting, as I dont imagine any enthusiast would pay a premium for this card to run it at the slower speed. seems almost pointless. Still it is a good fallback option in some instances.
The table on the first page, basically just shows the full gamut of core clock speeds. but 950mhz was used throughout testing.
Glad you liked the review.
Thank you for the fast answer at this late hour 🙂
Since the 660 Ti didn’t convince me with it’s cut on the memory bandwidth which is already the weakness of the 670 and 680 I will go with this one as soon as it is available providing that the price isn’t ruining the good package. The other Sapphire HD7950 with 950mhz and no boost is most likely louder or hotter I guess.