Hot Flat man: KFA2 / Galax GTX 1070 Katana in test

And no, it's not a flat joke that Galax / KFA2 presents to us here in the form of the GeForce GTX 1070 Katana. Speaking of Katana: This name is now almost a running gag, because you can find Katana or Shinken (not ham!), so d... The board at a glance If you remove the cooler, we see a very short board with 17.3 cm, in which all voltage transformer ranges have been consistently changed to the left side, while the memory is top or bottom. below and to the right of the... The cooler in detail The light metal radiator cover is held in a gun metallic look, sits above the actual radiator block and also covers the black plastic chamber of the protruding radial fan part on the front side. Since the slot panel is... Foreword to the benchmarks The following benchmarks are based on the results of our roundup for the GeForce GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 and, for better comparability, the correspondingly frozen image of our test... Overview of power consumption and voltages We quickly remember the history with the 90°C passage in the closed housing, as well as the Throttling in the open structure and now look at the direct juxtaposition of the Leistun... Temperatures and clock rates Now we close the circle again to what we had written on page 3 about the optimizations. Since power consumption and GPU temperatures were very similar to the gaming loop and the stress test (with this very... Speeds before and after the change Now let's look at the fan speeds before and after our small, surgical intervention. Even if they should have been lower with the original BIOS, the fan speeds in the 90°C... Summary Yes, physics is a serious science, not a stretchy field of activity of modern utopians. And so the same restrictions apply to single-slot cards as we have known for years. If you accept that for yourself...

Overview of power consumption and voltages

We quickly remember the history with the 90°C passage in the closed housing, as well as the throttling in the open structure and now look at the direct comparison of the power consumption before and after, as long as it is not yet through the heat limited. We save up to 14 watts under full load and easily achieve up to 10°C lower GPU temperatures. So much for the practice, as long as the GPU didn't start to throt.

Let us now take a look at the tensions behind these values. The blue curve shows us once again the classic break-in when reaching the 83°C limit, which is stored in the BIOS as a temperature target. The green curve shows the state with the new settings, which are much more hardware-friendly.

Gaming loop before and within the thermal limit (Original BIOS)

As long as nothing throtten smininininates in the normal power limit of 150 watts ex works, approx. 152 watts not an issue. However, the peaks can sometimes speed up to just over 175 watts, which is acceptable as a short-term peak, as long as it does not occur extremely heaped. The flowing currents match our introduction to the board layout and the power supply. But we will come back to that in a very far right there way.

What exactly happens when the map can warm up slowly enough in the open structure to let the thermal limit take hold, then looks like on the following graphics. With approx. 112 watts at 1519 MHz, the card is completely underpowered and also unnecessarily slow.

Gaming loop with new settings

So let's make the power limit a little more modest at 90%. We measure just under 140 watts, which is low enough not to overwhelm the radiator and still let the ears survive. This possible compromise has emerged as the optimum after a long back and forth with Power Target and fan curve, so we finally worked with it. The flowing currents are also on all rails at any time where one would like them.

Torture Loop vs. old and new

With the first factory BIOS, gaming loops are in a closed housing, as well as the torture loops in open and closed construction at approximately 152 to 153 watts and the GPU makes a stressful 90°C glow.

With reduced power-traget, the 14-watt diet is enough for a quieter and significantly cooler continuous load operation. Apart from the fact that the nervously twitching snapbreathing should not be a permanent state for such a map, now also the remaining values of the system are exactly where you can leave the place for a long time.

Load distribution on the motherboard slot

Let's go back to the load balancer that Galax implemented so smartly. We see that the 5.5 amperes recommended according to PCI SIG are exactly adhered to as the maximum value for the 12V motherboard rail. Here, the fight is fought for the last watt and nevertheless care that an existing standard is also observed. Let's take a look at the original BIOS:

After our slim-fast hunger cure, the flowing currents even decrease significantly, because you don't need the full roar anymore. Nevertheless, it is good to know that you have some reserve. This applies above all to users with e.g. small Dell or Fujitsu ready-made rifles that have been sewn on edge from the house.