Cooling Noise and Power
For my last few tests, rather than focusing on in game performance, I like to check out other aspects of video card performance. These are also the most important ways to differentiate the performance between cards that have the same GPU. To start things off I took a look at power usage.
With our PCat v2 powered testing I ran into a few issues including damaging our PCat. With that, I did two rounds of testing our RX 9070’s with one round showing too high for the wattage and one showing too low. Rather than put out information that could be wrong I have to skip those results for now until I can get the issue worked out.
My next round of tests were looking at noise levels. These are especially important to me because I can’t stand to listen to my PC whirling. Especially when I’m not in game and other applications are using the GPU. For my testing, though I first tested with the fan cranked up to 100% to get an idea of how loud it can get, then again at 50% to get an idea of its range. The Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC came in at 41.4 dB when testing at 50% fan speed, this put it up in the top 1/3 of our chart. Interestingly though cranking the fans all the way up it was down in the bottom 1/3 of our chart with 57.2 dB. The Fan RPM chart shows that the Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC punched above its weight class with the fan cranked.
I also take a look at noise performance while under load. For that when running AIDA64’s stress test I wait until the temperature of the card has leveled off and then measure how loud things are when the card is at its worst-case scenario with the stock fan profile. Here the Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC was the second loudest tested. The second chart, which shows what percentage the fans were running when under load helps explain that when combined with our previous test that had the Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC being noisier than most at 50% fan speed. When under load it has the fans running at 63% which was only behind the old blower reference cards.
To finish up my testing I of course had to check out the cooling performance. To do this I ran two different tests. I used AIDA64’s Stress Test run for a half-hour each to warm things up (on everything except the 5090 which was tested on a similarly matched OCCT workload). Then I documented what temperature the GPU leveled out at with the stock fan profile and then again with the fans cranked up to 100%. With the stock profile, the Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC leveled off in temperatures at 73c which was only behind some of the older Founders Edition cards and reference cards. This was by far the warmest of any card with an aftermarket cooler on it tested. It did that with the fans running at 63% as well. For the memory temps on the stock fan profile, it was running even warmer at 88c. Cranking the fans up to 100% didn’t change much for the memory temperatures, they ran at 84c, 4 degrees less. For the GPU temperatures, at 100% fan speed the Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC moved up into the top spot on our chart at 69c making the difference between the stock fan profile and 100% just 4c. With this being our first 9070 tested, I don’t know how much of that is from the GPU and how much is from Acers cooler, but it is surprising either way.
While running the stock fan profile testing I also took the time to get a few thermal images so we could see what is going on. On the fan side of the Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC, the card ranged from 33c down to around 20c with the left side of the card being the warmest and the blow-through end of the card being the coolest. You can see that same thing happen across the top of the card but it is more obvious because the top down view gives us a peak at the PCB temperatures as well which at the end near the power connection is our hottest spot at 57c. On the back of the Acer RX 9070 Nitro OC with the exposed PCB directly behind the GPU that is by far the hottest spot at 80.9c. The rest of the backplate is between 37c and 38c then down at the end the blow-through section is running cooler at 27.4c.
