Temperature Testing
For our temperature testing we run three different tests. The first is idle with our system sitting on the Windows Desktop. The second is our typical load, which we loop Heaven Benchmark for 30 minutes. Our third and final test is running Furmark for 15 minutes, which puts an extreme load on our GPU.
Noise Levels
We will be using the Galaxy Audio CM130 Sound Pressure Level Meter to take sound level recordings from two spots around our test bench at both idle and load states.
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 load test was taken running a loop of Heaven benchmark for 30 minutes.
Thanks for the review! I will say other than listed in test set-up you completely missed covering the Gaming Mode (980 MHz / 5700MHz) as tested “out-of-the-box”, while the MSI Gaming App software is used to enact the OC Mode (1000 MHz / 5800 MHz). I think that would be useful to readers
and those that watched the video to provide some detail on that. Interestingly you did provide a lot of “ink” on that subject back with the MSI GTX 770 Gaming review back Oct, 2013, even providing B-M in both Gaming and OC’d. I think that would’ve been to correct way to provide a consistent position for all your reviews.
You might want to say that the idle temperature is at 52°C as that because the ZeroFrozr technology which stops the
fans when they are not needed at that point basically a full-passive mode.
I’m really disappointed you neglected to include the results of you MSI GTX 960 Gaming review from February 10th. That is the more proper comparison as it’s the Nvidia product that is it closest competitor, while 770’s have be EoL for almost a year now. Looking at both the GTX 960 review and the MSI GTX 770 you’ve appear to have change your test rig, and the B-M titles used so those older reviews weren’t transferable. That said, I have a hard time saying a loop of Heaven B-M is characteristic of gaming loads, and from other reviews I’ve seen the inference that a MSI GTX 770 Gaming is like 4.5% better than a MSI 380 Gaming (@980MHz) at load is abnormal. I mean look at the Stix 970 and the 770 with the Maxwell only using 7% less. That MSI
770 Gaming you have is some golden sample right there!
Agreed, it does seem the review misses the main characteristics of the card–which is really amazing, when you think about it…;) That’s the quickest route to web-site obscurity, imo.