ASUS GTX560 TI DirectCU II Graphics Card Review - PAGE 18

Temperature:

To measure core GPU temperatures, we run three in-game benchmarks and record the idle and load temperature according to the min and max temperature readings recorded by MSI Afterburner. The games we test are Crysis 2, Lost Planet 2 and Metro 2033. We run these benchmarks for 15 minutes each. This way we can give the included thermal solution and GPU time to reach equilibrium.

During our testing the DirectCU II thermal solution proved to be a very efficient design. All in all it's performance was 19% better than the reference design, but even while it was more efficient it also had quieter noise levels. However, we did find that it was louder than anticipated when the fans were at high RPM.

Power Consumption:

To measure power usage, a Kill A Watt P4400 power meter was used. Note that the numbers represent the power drain for the entire benchmarking system, not just the video cards themselves. For the 'idle' readings we measured the power drain from the desktop, with no applications running; for the 'load' situation, we took the sustained peak power drain readings after running the system through the same in-game benchmarks we used for the temperature testing. This way we are giving the real-world power usage, as opposed to pushing a product to it's threshold.

The power consumption for the ASUS GTX560 Ti was right were it should be, and when taking the performance into account the 354W maximum power rating is not too bad.