Graphic board testing methodology 2020

Passed 13 years since we wrote the first article dedicated to enthusiasts and soon it will be 12 years since we officially launched LAB 501, the site dedicated to hardware enthusiasts, overclockers, maniacs who are not afraid to make the necessary changes to retail products, until they correspond to their needs and requirements. And these requirements are as demanding as they are varied, each reader who opens the LAB 501 every morning being interested in something else.

Some want the highest performance in games, others the highest performance in rendering, photo photo editing or 3D modeling. Some are passionate about the look of their system and will invest time and money to get an out-of-the-ordinary system, and others will want a powerful but first and foremost silent system. Some of you use Lilliputian-sized systems, others real beasts that don’t fit on the desk.

Some use the notebook more, others have been playing the same game for years, while others are only interested in overclocking and benchmark performance. Naturally, the needs and interests of our readers are different, each entering here for something else. And yet, all of our readers have two things in common – the passion for hardware and the trust it gives us year after year, launch release.

And like you, we are passionate about hardware, so much so that we have come to turn this passion into a profession, which we practice with dear, for over a decade. And if at the beginning our passion had a very clear direction – extreme overclocking, without compromises – over time we diversified our object of activity, introducing in our tests applications used in everyday life (in the case of processors), respectively games, in the case of video cards.

Because, isn’t it, no matter how fascinating it may be to see a new generation of video cards simply demolish records in 3DMark, most people who buy a they will use the video card to play. As a result, they will be curious how a new video card behaves in games, what is the thermal or acoustic behavior, how it is in terms of consumption, etc.

And we are here to to answer these questions through the launch articles we have been publishing at the NDA for years. And yet, we do not claim to be the holders of the absolute truth, and we are not pleased to draw definitive, all-encompassing conclusions in the form of a supreme, irrevocable verdict. Rather, at least from my point of view, we are developing a reference system, in which we obtain a series of results, following a precise and laborious testing process. Then we present the results, together with our opinion, in the idea that everyone will draw their own conclusion after reading our article, regarding their needs and desires.

Well, the reference system is called testing methodology and represents a combination between the test platform, the choice of games and settings for testing, the performance of physical measurements related to consumption. , temperatures and noise levels and how all this information is collected and then presented to you, the readers.

And just as times change, each year bringing new components,