ECS NVIDIA GeForce GT 240 512MB

The first tests we carried out were looking at the thermal performance of the GT215 core on the GeForce GT 240. For this tests and the others we compared the results to a GeForce 8600GT, GeForce 9800GT, and GeForce GT 220.

As can be seen from the graph above that was generated by the Phoronix Test Suite when monitoring the NV-CONTROL extension for the GPU core temperature as the Unigine Tropics test ran at 2560 x 1600, the GT215 core by far had the lowest operating temperature. This 40nm GPU had an average temperature of just 31°C while the three other GPUs all had an average near or above 50°C. Even the lower-end GeForce GT 220 had an average temperature of 54°C. The GT215 may be more efficient than other GPUs, but its Arctic Cooling heatsink really helps the situation.

During the entire time that Unigine Sanctuary ran, the Arctic Cooling fan was constantly running at 35% its rated fan speed. This cooler is very quiet and there are no issues at all with its noise level.