Legit Reviews

For both Temperature and Power consumption load testing I fired up Furmark v1.8.2 with PostFX for as long as it took for either to stabilize after a minimum 3 minutes. Idle was obtained after fresh boot and after all applications finished launching again after a minimum three minutes.

The 9600 GSO has the highest idle temperature because the GeForce 9xxx series does not have thermal throttling at idle so it stays at 600/900 all the time. The AXLE Radeon HD 5670 has the same idle temperature as the AXLE GeForce GT 240 and is just two degrees higher at load, I imagine the load temperature has changed now that I have taken the card apart and removed the excess compound, but all testing is "as is" how the consumer would receive the card in question (granted the other cards have all had new thermal compound applied prior to this round of testing).

Clearly power consumption is ATI's strong suit, though the AXLE GeForce GT 240 consumes four watts less at idle and 17 watts less at load than the AXLE Radeon HD 5670.