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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.
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. Ambient noise in the room measures close to the limits of our sound meter at 28dBa. 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 Refrigerator
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
Not the quietest card we have tested, but not intrusive either. When idle the fans spin down, and the graphics card could be classed as basically silent. Under heavier load the fans spin up and when gaming, hit a peak around 34.5dBa.
All these benchmarks for games.. can anyone anywhere on the web give me information on using one of these cards in pro applications like Adobe Premiere Pro? I’m wondering how well the 8gb VRAM will help when scrubbing through an effect filled timeline, or if CUDA is still the way to go? I hear lots of opinions, but no testing results. Unfortunately I can’t afford to buy a card from either side and work it out myself.
email me at zardon(at)kitguru.net ill try and help James.
i wouldn’t mind knowing as well, i’m having to put together a workstation focused system for the first time
When do GPU maker stop using “CTRL+C” “CTRL+V” and then rename?
Not only AMD, Nvidia dose it also. but at lease the they go from 580 to 670.
290x to 390x with 99% same card? then make something like 290x boost or anything else then 390x :/
Thanks Allan, I have emailed you just now.
Damn, kinda wished I waited on that 970 I got, this non x version seems to be an excellent value card. Who cares if it’s a rebrand, it’s still relavent.
Seriously though, what do you do with all those cards? ‘Cause the way I look at it, you could have a serious “make a college student’s day” type of deal here. After all, in Graduate school we suffer to do our part to contribute to society, a pat on the back in the process never hurt.
Those chips arent the same thing. The GTX 670 is based on the GK104. You could say the same thing when nVidia moved from GTX 480 to GTX 580 which both were identical except some performance improvements and more shaders. Both are guilty of these practices and won’t go away any soon.
I’d liked to have seen Fury X numbers in the graphs too…
Yes, coming soon…… Bit of a backlog, sorry..
Ahhh right, that’s great thanks 🙂
Which card should i buy 39 or 970. I usually game at 1080p and use 550 watts PSU. Please advise anyone
it would be great if 1080 P benchmarks were available
550 is not enought for the 390 acording to shappire. The 970 is your card.
i just bought this card, but i’d really appreciate a compare between 390 nitro vs 970 g1, stock and oc.
Can you help me?
Ordered mine Yesterday, now I wait Oo
hey, is cx600m is enough for this card(sapphire r9 390)?
That psu isn’t very good.
An xfx is much better.
Anyway, 600W is plenty, unless you plan to OC and will use an OC’ed CPU.