[FurMark] Best VGA Coolers for Radeon HD 5870 and GeForce GTX 280

Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 Rev 2: best VGA cooler for the HD 5870

Arctic Cooling GTX Pro: best VGA cooler for the GTX 280

The guys at bit-tech.net have tested several VGA coolers for Radeon HD 5870 and GeForce GTX 280.

We recorded the idle GPU temperature ten minutes after the graphics card was installed. We then used Furmark to load the GPU. FurMark is a very intensive OpenGL benchmark that uses fur-rendering algorithms to measure the performance of the graphics card. It provides a worst-case scenario to test if a graphics card cooler is able to cope with the GPU at maximum load. However, as FurMark doesn’t stress a graphics card’s memory as much as a game, we also ran a ten-minute loop of a Crysis timedemo in order to check that the memory was being sufficiently cooled.

For the Radeon HD 5870, the 3 best VGA coolers are:
#1: Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 Rev 2
#2: Scythe Setsugen (fan in high-speed mode)
#3: Thermalright T-Rad 2

(source)

For the GeForce GTX 280, the 2 best VGA coolers are:
#1: Arctic Cooling GTX Pro
#2: Scythe Setsugen (fan in high-speed mode)

(source)

The complete test is available HERE.

However, as FurMark doesn’t stress a graphics card’s memory as much as a game, …

It’s true… and it’s just a matter of recompilation with more aggressive texture params 😉
Maybe for the next version of FurMark!