ASUS Matrix HD 7970 Platinum Video Card Review

Temperature & Noise Testing

Temperatures are important to enthusiasts and gamers, so we took a bit of time and did some temperature testing on the ASUS HD 7970 Matrix video card with the ASUS DirectCU II GPU Cooler!

ASUS HD 7970 Matrix Platinum Idle:

The ASUS HD 7970 Matrix Platinum 3GB video card had an idle temperature of 30.0C in a room that was 22.0C (72F). The dual fans were spinning at ~1000 RPM and was the card was very quiet.

ASUS HD 7970 Matrix Platinum 3GB in Furmark:

With Furmark fired up and running at 1024×768 we saw the temperature reach 71C and level off there. At full load the two 100mm fans used on the DirectCU II GPU cooler were spinning around 1,893RPM. This did cause the fan noise of the card to jump up a bit!

Sound Testing

We recently upgraded our sound meter to an Extech sound level meter with 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 38dB. 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 ASUS HD 7970 Matrix used the ASUS DirectCU II GPU cooler and let me tell you this cooler is amazing when the card is idling. It was not even 1dB over the ambient noise of the room with the system turned off, so you can’t hear the card when it’s in a case as the fan spins at just 1,000 RPM on each 100mm fan. When you start to game or run Furmark the fans ramp up to nearly 1900 RPM in Furmark and around 1650 RPM in game titles.

For example we played Battlefield 3 for an hour and reached 67C on the GPU and the fans hit a maximum rotational speed of 1649 RPM. Not bad results at all and it shows how well this triple-slot card performs when it comes to temperatures!