6600GT overheating

I have a gigabyte 6600GT with the silent heatpipe (a quiet pc seemed a good idea at the time). While playing 3D games the PC sometimes freezes or just quits to the desktop. A quick look in nvidia properties reports the temp to be 98C.

From reading other articles on overheating people are saying leave the side casing off, or buy more fans. I have a Lian li aluminum case, with 2 front fans set to max power, a fan on the top, + the rear and have tried with the side panel on and off but the temperature still skyrockets.

Do pci slot fans below the graphics card make that much difference, or would it be better to drill a hole in the side panel and attach another fan?

Alternatively I like playing games at 1280x1024 on my 17" LCD and get between 30-60fps at medium to high detail with the 6600GT (with an athlon 3200 cpu). Do you think the 7600GT offers a significant improvement over the 6600GT at present and for the next year or so at this resolution. Or is it worth waiting it out for the next generation of graphics cards?

Dunno if you've seen this review yet, but it compares the 6600gt to the 7600gt:

http://www.elitebastards.com/cms/ind...d=68&Itemid=27

The 7600gt seems to run at around double the frame rate at 1280*1024.

I had one of those cheap pci slot exhausts in my old lian li (it had terrible cooling) with a passive Geforce 6500, and it dropped the temp for it about 3 degrees so it probably won't help your situation much.

I don't know how good one of those pci slot blowers that blow directly onto the card are. A side case fan would definitely help though.

i would wait for DX10 :) , me mate has the xfx 6600gt and seems to get on fine :)

as for temperature, it was known for some 6600's to have extremely hot memory chips"!!! so put a fan directly under it etc or whip off the heat pipe and buy an artic cooler

I have that same graphics card.

It does get hot, and it amazes me how hot those graphics chips are allowed to go (much higher than the fatal temperature of the CPU).

I have just one 80mm intake fan at the bottom/front of the case, and the PSU exhausts at the top/rear of the case, so there is a breeze right through the case.

And as for the 7600GT, it is way faster. In fact, Nvidia recently launched a new entry level graphics card called the 7300GT which is just a 7600 with 4 pipes disabled. It still wees on the 6600GT from some height:

http://www.ngohq.com/home.php?page=a...read&arc_id=86

Yes, we are now officially owners of a budget card!

I've fitted a PCI blower next to my Gigabyte 6600GT and have a 8cm silent fan blowing over the card as well.

I agree with Pie, in that there not much point upgrading to anything below 7900 at the moment it seems - the 6600 is "just good enough" that I can't justify the upgrade to anything other than gucci!

I have a 6600GT with a zalman cooler on it which is very pretty and very quiet - the GPU never gets over 40* even when playing NFSMW on highest settings and iTunes playing

I have the same card...don't use it now, as I upgraded, but I was concerned about the temps....about 70degs idle, and ~100 under load. I emailed gigabyte about it, and they said that if it wasn't causing artifacts or system instability, the card should be fine.
I found that a 92mm fan blowing near the card lowered temps by about 10 degrees, but your mileage may vary :)

could u maybe get another cooler? arctic silencer maybe?

Thanks for the replies. I'll stick with the card until dx10.