Cooling, Noise, and Power

While the other benchmarks are important, the difference between matching GPU cards is typically minimal. Where manufactures can really stand out is when it comes to cooling performance, noise, and power consumption. Because of that this part of our test suite can sometimes be the most interesting even if typically not everyone worries about their cards power consumption or noise. To start things off, I ran through Heaven benchmark to put the Gigabyte R9 280 under load to check its power consumption. Under load our test bench with the card pulls 396 at peak. This is just below the GTX 770 reference card and well under what the Sapphire R9 280 pulled. The R9 285 is still a more efficient card, but that is still a low enough number that you shouldn’t have to worry about getting a big power supply to run one or even two Gigabyte R9 280’s.

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So when running the R9 280 are you going to need to run earplugs? Well typically three fan cards almost always run noisier. This wasn’t any different with it running a few decibels higher than the other R9 280 tested at 100% fan speed. At 50% fan speed it is actually one of the loudest cards tested, sadly this is the downside of having an additional large fan on the card.

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So did the triple fans help keep things running cool? Well this card ran one degree cooler than the Sapphire R9 280 and as a whole it is on the lower side of charts with a peak load temperature of 62. I would have liked to of seen the performance be a little better when compared to the other R9 280 but the numbers are still good.

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garfi3ld's Avatar
garfi3ld replied the topic: #36141 09 Jan 2015 16:17
Before we hit the weekend, I take a look at an R9 280 from Gigabyte.
jj_Sky5000's Avatar
jj_Sky5000 replied the topic: #36143 09 Jan 2015 20:07
I thought this was a old review till I saw the date. I take it your testing the drivers?

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