Performance

After the initial installation the heatsink was immediately removed and the contact area was inspected. Even with the preapplied thermal paste the contact is excellent. The thermal paste used has a feel like ATI's original paste.

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For the overclocking tests I used my ATITool overclocking utility version 0.25 Beta 16 pre 5. Artifact scanning and overclocking worked here, the load setting was using ATI's default 3D profile clocks and voltages. Idle used the 2D profile.

Temperature was measured with one case side open by reading the on-die thermal diode of our ATI Radeon X1900 XT PCI-Express. Idle temperature was measured after letting Windows sit at the desktop for one hour. Load temperature was measured after running ATITool Scan for Artifacts for 30 minutes.

On the X1900 the fan speed is varied based on temperature. The stock fan was running at 55% under load and 36% when idle. To have another value to compare to, I used ATITool to force the stock fan to always run at 100%. The same approach was used with the Arctic Cooling Accelero X2 which runs at 36% under load.

Arctic Silver Lumière was used as thermal interface material for the GPU core in all installations, except for the TMG AT2. Here the included thermal paste was used. Lumière is a specially engineered testing compound - it needs no settle in time to reach its maximum performance, but it's not designed for permanent use.




These are some pretty nice numbers from the Thermaltake TMG AT2. When it comes to temperature, it delivers the best result of all coolers. The maximum overclocks are also better than all the other tested aftermarket coolers. Only the ATI Stock cooler running at 100% fan speed can overclock the core a bit more. However, if you look at the graphs you can see how close the overclocks are together.

In my opinion getting any aftermarket cooler to get more overclocking is not worth the money spent, the gains are just too small. These coolers make a big difference in another testing criteria, fan noise. Turn to the next page to read more.