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Our acoustic measurements are less precise on this mid-range test system, the noise floor of the totally quiet testing room is 35 dBA as measured with a Benetech GM1351 Digital Sound Level Meter.
We take our measurements with the decibel meter protruding off the front-top section of the chassis, overhanging by exactly 1 inch. The underlying noise level of the system, generated by the 800 RPM Noctua case fans and H100i with fixed 700RPM fans is 39 dBA, thus anything above this level can be attributed to the graphics card since the PSU is passive for most of it's power capability.
Noise levels were measured after 10 minutes of load under three scenarios: Furmark GPU stress test, Unigine Valley looping at the Extreme HD preset and desktop idle.
PNY's cards are both inaudible under normal gaming loads, only under Furmark load were we able to observe a slight increase in noise but barely noticeable at a slight distance. For reference fan speeds were 33-35% (1150~1250) under Unigine Valley load and 42% under Furmark load (1450 RPM), at idle the fans turned off.
Eh, i don’t know if it’s worth buying, especially with 470 and 460 on the doorstep.
Could you include a 960 standard in the comparison for completeness ?
Seems off not to include the RX 480 in the result charts. Yes, the 960 is old, but it seems pointless to pretend newer cards aren’t competition.
This is something I’ll address in my next graphics card review, it will include the Rx 480, GTX 1070 and more. Thanks for the feedback. I disagree that it’s pointless though, the GTX 960 (£150~175) is a different price bracket to the Rx 480.
They should have RX 480 included!
Anyway. We want to compere the cards.
390 and 970 is they cheap?
200$ 960 vs 200$ 480? Even in the conclusion it should have been referenced that buyers should look that way or consider that the 1060 is coming out soon as well.
Awesome, the 1060 review should be interesting. Also is there potential to review the 4gb RX480 as that has a starting price of £175? Would be interesting to see how memory affects performance.
…Use google m8
Yep, working on that – a Rx 480 is now with me so will be testing in due course and try to get this review’s graphs updated before 1060.
In the UK (we are a UK site) Rx 480 is a £240+ card and not (yet) available in 4GB variants. However, yes I will revisit now I have an Rx 480 with me and update graphs/judgement accordingly.