9800XT Very hot, please help.

Hey all,

I just ran atitool and left it running in the system try with it showing the temp of the gpu. At the desktop with not much runing in the background it was 67c. Then i played the fall of max payne demo in window mode, and the temp shot up to 78/80c..! The game performance and fps didn't suffer in any way, if fact it was quite good. I also checked the temp on other games and in some of the others it got up to 77/79c.
This is going to kill the crad in the longterm, is there anything i can do to ease the heat ? short of buying a watter gpu cooling kit. The card is in a thermaltake xaserIII case, it has a 8cm intake fan just over the graphics card area, another 8cm intake over the cpu/ram area, and two 8cm exhausts at the rear. There are other fans in the case but they are not near the gpu.

I have been looking via google/gpu tweak sites for answers but all there are is overclocking stuff and drivers. The crad is already underclocked. God knows how hot it would get it was actually at the default speeds.

Are there any programs or utillitys that can push up the rpm speed of a 9800xt card ? i know the psu could handel it, and i don't really care if it gets loud.

Dave.

Well apart from underclocking it theres nothing much you can do except change the cooler (not a difficult task). I suppose there might be a way to undervolt the gpu (would make more difference than underclocking would) but thats not the best long term solution.

Which card do you have? Its more than likely the cooler is just a pathetically thin peice of copper, a few pins around the edges and a loud whiny high rpm fan...

Best then to change the cooler. The artic cooling silencer is the best of ALL commercial AIR coolers, that includes zalman heatpipe coolers and other stupidly expensive carp.
If you want better than that, and are willing to sacrifice some pci slots you could use a cpu cooler, which perform better, but might be more niosy depending on your chioce of fan. You will have to modify one however by drilling holes in the heatsink to mount it with, or finding another method to mount it.

What temps should the card be reaching at idle & load ? i need to compare the new temps. if anyone knows.

Those temps do seem a little on the high side, but then the 9800XT is quite a powerful card... My 6800GT, running at 400/1.1, is idling in windows at 57, and will probably jump by 15 under load, but the the Nvidia limit is 120! I know you are on a different GPU altogether, but I think you get the general idea that your temps are not that bad.

I certainly wouldn't recommened undervolting the GPU, as that will lead to potential instability.

The question I would ask is: How well cooled/ventialted is the rest of your system? What's the ambient temperature in the room when you're testing too? A hot machine in a hot room (or located around hot devices, i.e. other electirical goods, radiators, etc) with poor local airflow is bound to run hot. You need to factor in many other things before coming down on the GPU.

If you think about it, the fan/heatsink on the card (as long as it's not been tinkered with!) SHOULD be enough to cool the card sufficiently: that's what it's designed for. Unless it's been badly fitted at the factory (maybe pull it off and reseat it with some decent thermal paste, if you want) then there is no real reason to change it. If you are overclocking the card, swapping the BIOS, etc., etc., or desire more cooling at lower noise levels, then yes, maybe look at changing it; otherwise, look at the cooling of the rest of your system, as the card by itself shouldn't be considered faulty.

Noamdd

My 9800 Pro gets bally hot as well, don't think it will affect the life of the card too much tbh. By the time it's 'baked out' (years) the card will be worth pennies.

Upgrade the heatsink as suggested if yur worried tho :)

What temps should the card be doing tho (load/idle) ???

i also have a 9800XT 256Mb Sapphire with standard cooling...

idle: 68°
stressed: 75° in a bad ventilated case, limit for Ati's cards is 90-100° so... that card isn't gonna brake..., only OVERDRIVE may stop but that doen't do much anyway.. (412/419)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Davion

i also have a 9800XT 256Mb Sapphire with standard cooling...

idle: 68°
stressed: 75° in a bad ventilated case, limit for Ati's cards is 90-100° so... that card isn't gonna brake..., only OVERDRIVE may stop but that doen't do much anyway.. (412/419)

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This is what makes me thing that this card is overheating when it shouldn't be, as, lol, Davion you have yours clocked higher than defaults and in a badly ventilated case at that ! and you still have lower stress/idle temps than me !? or do you have a different fan on that card ?

I have the cat's 4.3, could the driver set be causing the heating up ?
as some of the past cats have been know to cause excess heat.

my card isn't overclocked ;)

the stock speeds are 412/365, overdrive is 419/365 so only 7Mhz don't do much...
I shound'nt get concerned, in a week or so i have my 3x120mm'ers for airflow i hope temps are lower for OC..., i use the latest 4.7 Catalyst... ;)

80C load is not abnormal for a 9800XT, you are fine.