Gigabyte GeForce GTX 970 G1 Gaming Graphics Card Review

Temperatures
So how does the newer WindForce 3X cooler do? We will be running it through our set of temperature tests. First is our idle test, which is taken from the Windows desktop.

temps-idle

Our first load test is a loop of Heaven Demo 4.0 for 30 minutes. This is a good representation of typical gaming conditions.

temps-load1

Our final test is Furmark’s 15 minute 1920 x 1080 benchmark. This puts the maximum load on the graphics card. Although most users would never put their cards under this much stress we like to include it in our tests.

temps-load2

As you can see the WindowForce 3X cooler does a great job cooling off the GTX 970 GPU. I also do want to mention that even during the most extreme tests the card is very quiet.

Power Consumption
Power consumption for a system is of course very important. To measure power consumption I used a killawatt meter. The idle test is taken on the Windows 7 desktop. The first load test was taken running a loop of Heaven benchmark for 30 minutes and the second load test was running Furmark’s 15 minute 1920 x 1080 benchmark. Keep in mind the wattage value is for the full system not just the graphics card.

power

As you can see the card is more efficient than both the R9 280X and R9 290X.

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