How does FurMark work?

[ricksummon]

The program FurMark is commonly used as a stress test for graphics cards. It’s specifically designed to make them run at higher temperatures than normal. What I’d like to know is how it does this.

I realize, of course, that a CPU or GPU gets hotter the more calculations it performs. However, if I’m running Folding@Home on my GPU and the Nvidia System Monitor says the GPU is at 97% utilization, it will show a temperature of 65 C. If I run FurMark, the temp quickly climbs to 78 C or higher.

My question is, how can the specific type of calculations used in FurMark generate substantially more heat than the calculations used in Folding@Home?

[tomndebb]

Off to General Questions.

[astro]

Per this

http://wiki.digital-digest.com/index.php/Folding@Home

it does not sound like folding@home is necessarily all that wildly stressful for a modern GPU.

Re furmark

FurMark Homepage

FurMark is a very intensive OpenGL benchmark that uses fur rendering algorithms to measure the performance of the graphics card. Fur rendering is especially adapted to overheat the GPU and that’s why FurMark is also a perfect stability and stress test tool (also called GPU burner) for the graphics card.