Test System

Testing Considerations

I would first like to point out that the stock cooler was benchmarked after it was reseated with Arctic Silver 3 thermal compound, instead of the inefficient thermal tape supplied with it. I always put AS3 on stock coolers as the thermal tape may create a handicap - you are not going to use thermal tape on your aftermarket cooler, after all.

To ensure equal testing conditions, all benchmarks of the stock cooler to demonstrate its performance were conducted with AS3 applied and the cooler reseated carefully to ensure good contact. Every modder and overclocker should refit their stock cooler with good thermal compound, as it is a very inexpensive mod, and sometimes corrects problems of insufficient contact with the heat sink from the factory.

For comparison purposes, we benchmarked the stock cooler twice: once at its default fan speeds, then again with its fan forced to its maximum speed using AtiTool. Some stock coolers perform better when tweaked in this way by the enthusiast, and it provides a good idea of the kind of performance an overclocker can extract from stock equipment.

To test the graphic chip's temperature under load we used the free AtiTool utility (version 0.25, beta 14) because it includes a built-in artifact tester that really stresses a video card. I find the artifact tester useful not only to test for artifacts, but also to heat up a video card to maximum temperature. We haven't found an application yet that can work a video card harder, nor warm it up to maximum temperature faster.