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.
For this, our test setup utilizes the Nvidia-designed PCat v2 along with cables to handle both traditional 6 or 8-pin connections as well as 12VHPWR. The PCat also utilizes a PCIe adapter to measure any power going to the card through the PCIe slot so we can measure the video card wattage exclusively, not the entire system as we have done in the past. I test with a mix of applications to get both in game, synthetic benchmarks, and other workloads like GeekbenchAI and AIDA64. Then everything is averaged together for our result. I also have the individual results for this specific card and I document the peak wattage result. The Prime RTX 5070 averaged 270.75 watts which was 1 watt lower than the Founders Edition. It was two watts lower at its peak as well which it peaked at 285.25 watts. It is sitting just above the RTX 3070 which shows how much things have improved in the last two generations as well.
With having exact peak wattage numbers when running Time Spy Extreme I was also able to put together a graph showing the total score for each watt that a card draws which gives us an interesting look at overall power efficiency in the popular and demanding benchmark. The Prime RTX 5070 pulled 10 fewer watts when running Time Spy Extreme and had a slightly higher score than the 5070 Founders Edition so its efficiency score jumped up from 37.79 up to 39.19. That put it in between the 5080 and the 5090.
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. With an extra fan compared to the Founders Edition, I was curious how the Prime RTX 5070 would compare for noise levels. At 50% fan speed it is in the bottom ¼ of our chart at 35.2 dB, the Founders Edition was just over 5 mode dB higher, a huge gap. At 100% fan speed the Prime RTX 5070 moved up near the middle of the chart and was 57.8 dB, this was .2 dB over the Founders Edition. The RPM chart shows that the Prime RTX 5070 was in the right spot at 100% fan speed as well.
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 Prime RTX 5070 is down in the bottom ¼ of the chart once again at 35.5 dB. That is opposite of the Founders Edition which is up in the top section of the chart with 40.9 dB. While under load the Prime RTX 5070 had the fans running at 51% which is aggressive making the great noise performance even more impressive.
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 * Prime RTX 5070 leveled off in our testing at 62c, 9c lower than the Founders Edition. The memory was at 60c, 6c lower than the FE. At 100% fan speed, it ran even cooler at 53c a delta of 9c when compared to the stock fan profile which is average but better than I thought I would see given how aggressive the fan profile was. At 100% fan speed the memory dropped down 10c as well to 50c.
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. The fan side of the Prime RTX 5070 has a range of 8c between one end to the other. The left side which has the GPU behind it runs as warm as 33c at its hottest point and then as you go to the right it is 6c less in the middle fan and 8c on the far right blow-through fan. The top has PCB exposed which above the GPU is the hottest spot on that point of view at 70c. The PCB is cooler down at the end at 48c and then the heatsink in the blow-through section is cool in comparison at 29c. For the back of the Prime RTX 5070, the blow-through section is cool enough that you can see the heatpipes running through it. The exposed section behind the GPU is by far the hottest area at 82c with most of the heat focused on one area of the GPU which is interesting. The backplate itself is warm but not nearly as hot.
