Temperatures
Temps were hilariously low with this cooler. Just using the stock fan profile temps were in the low 50s at load with an ambient of 27*C. Pushing the fan to 100% temps were in the 48*C range at stock clocks. Things did not warm up much at all once overclocked. Temps overclocked at full load peaked at 63*C with the stock low-speed fan profile out of the box. Needless to say, you won’t be overheating with this card.
Overclocking
Overclocking with this card was nothing too exciting to say the least. Since there are no voltage controls that ruled out on limiting factor. We went ahead and installed the latest version of the Gigabyte overclocking utility and went to work sorting out overclocks. I was able to get near 1300mhz core frequency for almost all tests but the fire strike test for 3Dmark kept crashing so we had to back all the way down to 1200 core. Still not too bad. Roughly a 10% boost in clockspeed.
GPU-Z
3DMark11
Heaven DX9
Heaven DX11
3DMark
Dirt:Showdown (DX11)
1920×1080, 4XAA 16XAF Max Quality Settings
Compared with stock clocks 3fps does not seem like a whole bunch but when you are under 60fps every bit helps. Things were certainly playable and although not a prime experience it is more than enough for some casual HTPC gaming.
Tomb Raider (DX11)
1920×1080, 4XAA 16XAF Max Quality Settings+TressFX
Even overclocked Tomb Raider is just too much for this poor card when maxed out. High details or maybe turning everything back down to medium should help this card a great deal at 1080p.
Bioshock Infinite (DX11)
1920×1080, 4XAA 16XAF Max Quality Settings+Diffusion
Maximum FPS was actually down quite a bit when compared with stock clocks but the average framerate had a nice boost by 5fps. Turning down AA would be a good idea and should keep things playable at 1080p while still providing a more pretty experience than what you would get on a console.
