TEMPERATURE & POWER CONSUMPTION
To measure both power consumption and heat, we stress the video card and record the peak values for heat and wattage. We use default values on the cards and stress test them using a mix of Kombustor Dx11 Burn-In Test with Post-FX.
With the AMD Radeon R9 290X designed to deliver performance up to a specified temperature, it can really hit this limits easily as its really a hot GPU. In the case of both reference card and the ASUS custom-cooled variant, the R9 290X tops out at 94-95*C with the DirectCUII cooled model delivering lower idle temps.
In our reference card review, we mentioned how dynamic clocks vary along with power draw. With the ASUS R9 290X DirectCUII sustaining a more desirable temps, the card manages to hit a consistent core clock. The screenshot below demonstrates this but be warned, the temperatures are at the limit so those allergic to 75*C and upwards are advised to look away:
6 Comments
I’m sorry but it is rather disingenuous to rate graphics performance by maximum FPS, instead of Average FPS. I’m getting the feeling that you guys don’t play a lot of games, to not realize something as technically fundamental as that.
Looking at the graphs, I don’t see that the graphics performance was rated by maximum FPS. Are we reading the same article?
Please take a look at the last chart on page #4 for example. It is for “Torchlight II”. The Asus 290X DCU2O OC is positioned at the bottom of the chart based on it’s max FPS (158) being the lowest, even though by it’s average FPS (150.64) it should be placed at the 2nd position. Similarly, in the chart for “Bioshock Infinite” (2560×1440, Ultimate), the 290s are placed at the top even though the 780s have a significantly higher average frame rate. If you look carefully at the charts for other games, it becomes obvious that the performance is being rated based on max FPS, which is technically unsound, because max FPS numbers are based on random performance spikes and hence are never a fair representation of a GPU’s true capability.
Also, it is important to note that high max FPS but low average FPS is indicative of performance inconsistency of the GPU under that particular workload, which means unpleasant stuttering with V-Sync turned on, and significantly profuse screen tearing with V-Sync turned off. Both the scenarios lead to a much poorer user experience, as any regular PC gamer would tell you.
For comparison, please visit a proper hardware review site (e.g. Anandtech.com, Tomshardware.com, Guru3d.com, etc) and look into their benchmark charts, where the Max FPS is often not even mentioned.
We used to only display average FPS for the comparative charts but when readers started demanding they wanted to see both min and max in the graphs.
That said, I can see the flaw in this and we will devise another format for our GPU performance charts.
Cheers. Apart from the aforementioned problem I appreciate the to-the-point article and the format of your site.
Appreciate the inputs also. I look forward to using your advice in our upcoming GPU reviews.