NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 Cooler Round Up Zotac AMP! vs GELID Icy Vision vs Stock Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
1,490 words · ~7 min read
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this video is going to be a short casual test comparing the stock GeForce GTX 480
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to the Zotac amp Edition GeForce gtx480
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to a GeForce gtx480 with the GED icy
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Vision so you can see these two coolers are quite similar both triple slot
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coolers whereas the stock cooler is a dual slot cooler that blows the exhaust
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out the back of the case both of these are going to exhaust air into the case
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so while this isn't a perfect test because I am using an open test bench as
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opposed to a closed case where these two would be at a disadvantage um it's still
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going to give us a little bit of an idea so you can see I am running furmark in
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extreme burn mode right now I am running
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at uh 87° C so I've got MSI afterburner
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running in the background there 87° C
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fan speed is 79% so I'm going to let you listen to The Fan
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it's quite loud a little bit on the obnoxious side my room temperature is 27
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degrees celsus right now so at 8727
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we're going to take that to be a 60°
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Delta so Delta means the difference between the ambient temperature and the
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uh temperature of the GPU and that's at 100% load at
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79% fan speed so next we're going to run
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the uh the Edition and then we're going
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to run the IC vision and see how they compare in terms of noise and in terms
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of the Delta oh I should probably mention the overclock I'm running at
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right after burner I'm running at uh
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1.07 volts and then I'm running at 850
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and 2200 on the core and memory
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respectively fan speed is set to Auto at all times well here's the Zotac amp
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Edition I have to say right off the bat I'm very very impressed because we're
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running at the same overclock here
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okay so you can see here all of the settings are the same we're running the
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same burn test and we are hitting a
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maximum of 72° on the GPU but that's not
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really the interesting part because that's not a whole lot lower our room
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temperature right now is 26 so oh it's going to make me do math so
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that's about
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40 six I hope 26 72 whatever I'm going
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to guess 46 and then I'll double check my math later so it's a 46°
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Delta at here's the kicker
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47% fan speed so
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47% so let's say we go ahead and kick
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the fan speed up I'm sure we can achieve
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dramatically better temperatures like let's say let's put this fan up around
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80% which is where the other one was and I bet even at 80% it won't be nearly as
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loud oh actually hold on no no no wait ah we
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got to go back to Auto we got to go back to Auto okay so we're back to 45% okay
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so I'll let you listen to The
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Fan basically you can't even hear it it's super quiet so if we go and ramp it
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up to a fan speed that's more like what the other one was at which even at
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80% is still not nearly as loud as the stock cooler at 80%
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then I think we're going to see really really low GPU temperatures so I'll come
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back once that stabilizes you can see my room's heating up a little bit now we're
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at about 30° in the room but so even
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more impressively than it would be if we were still at the same temperature we're
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seeing 64° on the GPU that's very consistent so
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that's at 80% fan speed we're not even going as uh as fast as we possibly could
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so that's only a 34° Delta at 80% on the
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Zotac amp Edition card so that's very
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very impressive running at the same overclock setting so what that means is
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you can either have more overclocking Headroom on on an amp Edition card so
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you can turn your GPU voltages up higher or it means you can run at the same
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settings you could on a stock card but
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you can do it very very quietly now there is the disadvantage that you can't
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install as many expansion cards in your system because you can see it's quite a
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bit thicker than a uh a regular card so
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it takes up one extra slot but you could still put an additional video card right
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here and you can still run SLI even in this motherboard which is just a p-55
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board it just has the right spacing as long as you got three slot spacing you
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can even run SLI with two amp edition cards well the icy Visions temperatures
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and fan speeds have finally stabilized a little bit I'm not I mean okay if I was
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upgrading from the stock cooler I'd be Absol absolutely thrilled with the
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results but uh based on the fact that I'm running this compared to the Zotac
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amp Edition card I am not quite as impressed we stabilize around 80° on the
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GPU let's see if I can get that to focus and at about
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57% on the fan speed but it's the fan noise that's kind of bothering me here
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because even at uh lower fan speed I find it has a bit of a pulsating uh
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pulsating sound to it when it's in a closed case it's probably not going to
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bother you but it's one of the things that I do notice when it's on the test
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bench so here I'll just let you listen to
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it not sure if you can hear that or not but
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um anyway so 80° and my room is actually
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a little bit cooler now whoops oh that's bad I'm trying to turn on my uh my
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thermometer here and I went and moved my probe I'm trying to keep it in front of
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the fan intake without jamming up the
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fan which is what I just managed to do there we go so basically I want the uh
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the temperature of the air that's going into the fan so 80° minus
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about uh okay looks like it's about 27°
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in here so that's 50 a Delta of 53 so
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that's a little bit worse so
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53° at 5
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8% on the fan so I'm going to go ahead and turn it up to sort of a more
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comparable 80% and then we'll see what it settles
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on in terms of temperatures well very interesting that appears to be um as
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high as the fan speed on the icy vision goes so you can see I've turned it up
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even to 100% now it sounds exactly the same and it's
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cooling exactly the same the uh room's
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about a degree warmer now and it's at 82 de so that's all sort of well within
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margin of error so it looks like that's as fast as the fans on the IC Vision run
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I mean it has the advantage of being compatible with a lot of different gpus
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but I'd say overall on the GTX 480 um if
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you're looking at an option of either buying a stock card and then throwing an
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icy Vision on it versus just buying an amp addition card in the first place it
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comes to about the same price so I think the recommendation at this point should
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be fairly clear here I just want to
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explain these results a little bit better so remember this is not the temperature of the GPU this is the Delta
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so that means that's the difference in temperature between room temp and the
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temperature of your graphics card so a Delta of 60° means that if your room was
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40° your GPU would be 100° if the Delta
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is 34 it means that if your room is 34°
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for example sort of a more realistic room temperature although quite warm uh
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even in the summer 34° then your GPU
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would be at 78° or if it was at 40 it
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would be at 84° so you see how what I
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mean there so this is a Delta this is not an absolute temperature so these two
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are for the amp uh this is for
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stock and this is for the
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icy Vision okay hopefully that's all
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pretty self-explanatory