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...

Temperatures and clock rates

Now we close the circle again to what we had written on page 3 about the optimizations. Since the power consumption and GPU temperatures were very similar to the gaming loop and the stress test (with this one conscious exception of the gaming loop in the open setup), we focus at this point for better clarity only on the gaming loop in the before-and-after comparison. That is enough to illustrate this.

If it is still 83°C and the mentioned temperature target, as well as a whole 1519 MHz or 90°C and the dangerous hot flashes of the GPU, but with a little more than 1700 MHz, the temperatures then fall to a more pleasant 80°C after the intervention at the settings. Less is technically hardly possible if you don't want to go into an open sleeping car compartment, in which the wind blows all illusions out of the brain.

But it is enough to scratch at least the 1700 MHz mark permanently. The missing 20-30 MHz will be possible to put away, because in practice you don't notice this difference in clocks. However, the open-plan map is still significantly faster than the original in the thermal limit.

Temperature analysis of the board in the gaming loop

Since the before-and-after comparisons are also visually obvious, we have also made an effort for the board our IR camera and carried out both adjustment variants in both open and closed construction. The almost 82° represent the card in the Throttling at 83°C CPU temperature, while on the right figure one can admire the full thermal aura of the Katana. To enlarge, please simply click on the graphics.

After our foam brake, both temperature detections look almost humane and you can hardly see any difference between open and closed construction. Acoustically, too, the result holds the balance here, but we do not want to prejudge

Temperature analysis of the board in the Torture Loop

We saved the curves of the GPU diode, because they were very similar, almost identical to those of the gaming loop. What is striking, however, is the very different thermal load in the range of the voltage converters and some memory modules.

With the new settings, there is peace even now, because the up to 107°C in the area of VRM are now finally a thing of the past. It's truly amazing that a moderately reduced Power Target can effect such changes.

As an interim conclusion, it can be noted that you can easily access performance and temperature-related above the level of a GeForce GTX 1070 Founders Edition. At least if you have enough air and you are not too wasteful at the socket.

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