Since we are underclocking a factory overclocked card I’m not going to read into the underclocked results too much, but for the FTW we’re looking at power consumption similar to GTX 980 but not quite the performance to match. The GTX 970 FTW actually sees slightly higher power consumption at the wall, while reducing it to reference clocks brings down the power consumption to a flat 300W. Load power consumption for GTX 970 follows the same path as the GTX 980, almost down to the watt in this case. In lieu of other data it’s difficult to determine exactly whether this is due to chip-to-chip variation or EVGA’s board, but the latter explanation is more plausible at this moment. Despite having fewer SMMs lit up, EVGA’s card draws a consistent 3W more at the wall. Moving on to power and starting with idle power consumption, the GTX 970 FTW does not fare quite as well as the GTX 980. In other words, the FTW’s performance advantage is equivalent to a 140MHz overclock.
Otherwise we find that in the FTW configuration the card is on average clocked 138MHz higher than the reference configuration, which isn’t quite as high as the 166-189MHz difference in their official specifications. Overall the GTX 970 FTW is a bit more TDP limited in its factory overclocked FTW configuration than its reference clocked configuration, as higher clock speeds draw greater power levels even though voltages are constant. The actual drop off from the maximum boost bin depends heavily on the game some games average clock speeds close to the maximum, while others have to pull way back. At no point in time are we able to maintain the card’s top boost bin, and instead the card spends its time fluctuating between the boost bins it can hold while maintaining power consumption of 145W.
Gtx temperature monitor series#
GeForce GTX 900 Series Average Clockspeedsĭespite not being temperature limited, what we can see right away is that regardless of the clock speed settings it uses, the GTX 970 FTW is TDP limited under all scenarios. Next up, let’s take a look at average clock speeds. We sometimes see these cards binned to operate at lower voltages for power saving purposes, though with GM204’s already low power consumption I’m not sure how necessary that is from a product development standpoint. At 1.218v for the card’s maximum boost bin, the GTX 970 is only a step below the GTX 980 in voltages. We’ll start as always with voltages, which in this case are in-line with what we have already seen with GTX 980. GTX 970 should offer reduced power consumption at reduced performance, and with EVGA’s open air cooler this card will never hit 80C, so if it is ever throttled it will be entirely by TDP and not by temperatures as was the case with GTX 980. Having already seen GM204 in action with the GTX 980 series, we have a pretty solid foundation to base expectations on for the GTX 970. All things considered, a loud card is undesirable unless there’s a sufficiently good reason – or sufficiently good performance – to ignore the noise. Next to price and performance of course, these are some of the most important aspects of a GPU, due in large part to the impact of noise. As always, last but not least is our look at power, temperature, and noise.
0 kommentar(er)
