Radeon HD 5970: The Undisputed Performance Champ
Radeon HD 5970 overclocking “issue”
The protection mechanism brings down the GPU voltage/clock (click to enlarge)
Our test proved that the clocks of HD 5970 significantly dropped after extended FurMark benchmarking. According to Dave Baumann, the Product Manager at AMD, “there are protection measures in place that kick in when thermal or power levels exceed maximum permitted levels, so the card was taking the correct actions to protect both itself and the motherboard.”
“No real world app or game does that for an extended period of time. FurMark was lighting up everything, with average power draws exceeding the requirements of any standard app by 20-40 percent.”
We dropped the GPU clock to 600MHz to see if the protection measures would take action at low clock after extended FurMark benchmarking.
The protection measures didn’t work at high voltage and low clocks
The answer is “no” – we didn’t see any drop of GPU clock or voltage after running FurMark for a while. Therefore, it can be said that the protection measures only work when the GPU power consumption exceeds the safe level.
So would this happen in real games? Let’s have a check. We run the Crysis Warhead for a long period of time with a voltage of 1.162V and clock of 850/1200MHz.
The clock didn’t decrease
Baumann was proved to be saying the truth – the protection measure only work when the system is particularly stressful, not in real games or applications.
Introduction
Radeon HD 5970 specs
Sapphire Radeon HD 5970 overview
Radeon HD 5970 taken apart
Radeon HD 5970 power supply design
Radeon HD 5970 heatsink
Benchmark platform & settings
Power Consumption Results: Better than expected
Temperature benchmark: rather hot
Overclocking ability: not much headroom
Radeon HD 5970 overclocking “issue”
Radeon HD 5970 vs. GeForce GTX295
Radeon HD 5970 vs. HD5870 CrossFire
Radeon HD 5970 OC vs. Radeon HD 5870 CrossFire
Final thoughts
December 13th, 2009 at 10:14 pm
If only nvidia would release some fermi benchmarks before christmas…
December 14th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
Those benchmarks gonna have a little effect on ATI sales, I assume.
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