ATI Radeon HD 5970 Dual-GPU Video Card Review

Temperature Testing

Since video card temperatures and the heat generated by
next-generation cards have become an area of concern among enthusiasts
and gamers, we want to take a closer look at how the Radeon HD 5970 does at idle and under a full load.

ATI Radeon HD 5970 Idle Temperature:

At idle the Radeon HD 5970 had some pretty good temperature numbers for being a single card with two GPUs on it. We were seeing right around 60C at idle. As you can see from the screen shot above, the idle state of the
Radeon HD 5970 drops the GPU frequency down to just 157 MHz and the memory clock down to 300Mhz to help conserve power and lower temperatures.

ATI Radeon HD 5970 Load Temperature:

We fired up FurMark and ran the stability at 1280×1024, which was
enough to put the GPU at 100% load in order to get the highest load
temperature possible. This application also charted the temperature
results so you can see how the temperature rises and levels off, which
is very nice. The Radeon HD 5970 maxed out at 86C. The fan on the Radeon HD 5970 video
card was left on auto during temperature testing and the fan speed is dynamic. This means that it will increase/decrease depending on the GPU temp and GPU load. You can see a slight dip in the middle of the chart where around 86C the fan speed increased and cooled the card down. The fan then slowed down again and the temperature started to rise again. Once we stopped the fur rendering the card cooled down, but it takes a while for the massive card to drop down to around its starting point.