XFX Radeon RX 470 4GB Black Edition Video Card Review
Temperature & Noise Testing
The gaming performance on a graphics card is the most important factor in buying a card, but you also need to be concerned about the noise, temperature and power consumption numbers.
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1070 G1 Gaming Idle and Load Temps:
When it comes to temperatures the XFX Radeon RX 470 4GB Black Edition graphics card ran at 46C at idle on our our open air test bench as the semi-passive cooling fans weren’t spinning. The good news is that with no spinning fans it means the card makes no noise at idle. At full load while gaming we topped out at 76C, which is pretty decent and no where near hot enough to be of concern. GPU-Z v1.9.0 showed the Radeon RX 470 gaming used 0.800V at idle and 1.175V while at full load.
Here is a chart that shows the temperatures of the XFX Radeon RX 470 4GB Black Edition versus some other desktop gaming graphics cards and you can see the Radeon RX 470 is basically in the middle of the pack.
Sound Testing
We test noise levels with an Extech sound level meter that has 1.5dB accuracy that meets Type 2 standards. This meter ranges from 35dB to 90dB on the low measurement range, which is perfect for us as our test room usually averages around 36dB. We measure the sound level two inches above the corner of the motherboard with ‘A’ frequency weighting. The microphone wind cover is used to make sure no wind is blowing across the microphone, which would seriously throw off the data.
The XFX Radeon RX 470 4GB Black Edition is silent at idle, so it ties all the other 0dB video card models as the loudest thing in the room is our water cooler on the test system as that is the only fan we have running non-stop. The XFX Radeon RX 470 4GB topped out at 42dB, which is pretty good!
** The AMD Radeon R9 Fury X reference card that we are using was the original model with a loud water pump that whines. AMD changed the pump design before the cards hit the retail market, but wasn’t willing to replace ours. We expect retail cards to perform quieter for this and hopefully AMD will send us a replacement card for proper noise testing. **