Testing Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 960 2GB Graphics Cards In SLI

Temperatures

The cooling solution which graphics card vendors choose to implement is one of the main differences that consumers have to contend with when choosing a graphics cards. Apart from their acoustic properties, the thermal properties of graphics card coolers are extremely important. Lower temperatures are always better and with AMD and Nvidia opting to use dynamic overclocking algorithms that take temperature into account it is important that graphics card vendors use high performance cooling solutions in order to maximise performance. The era of graphics cards reaching dangerous temperatures are now in the past but the importance of lower temperatures still remains. Lower temperatures mean better stability, longer component longevity and lower fan speeds .We take temperature readings after 5 minutes of three different load scenarios: desktop idle, Furmark load and Unigine Heaven load. We always record actual temperatures and make a note of the ambient. In the case where more than 1 GPU is used an average is created.

Normally we would dismiss an SLI configuration at the bottom of a testing graph. This graph however, is different. Despite using more power and having two cards running, temperatures are astounding. Not only are they the lowest at idle, they are the lowest under stress. Those aftermarket cooling solutions and the low power Maxwell architecture are really shining through. This also allows us to disprove a possible error in the testing of the Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 960, the Heaven temperatures were in the mid 70°c’s, here we can see that the temperatures were around 59°c.