How hot do you run your graphics cards?

[EtherealN]

There's hardly a day going by without me tweaking my overclock a bit in whichever direction, and I've found the GPU to be the most difficult one to decide on a sweet spot for, with temperature being my main concern.

 

When I run my 9800GTX+ with the core at 775MHz, memory at 1100 and shaders at 1800, it usually hovers between 50 and 58 degrees Celcius. It doesn't climb much further when I crank it up to 810/1300/2000, which is the point where I have to do serious tweaking of the ratios to stay away from graphical artefacts, but even if that only sends me to 65-70 it is a point where I am starting to get nervous so I usually end up lowering the overclock again. (It's not like DCS, Hearts of Iron, Close Combat or Settlers II demands all it's full attention anyway.)

 

However, I did some searches around to get some comparisons, and the closest I found was a forum post on Tom's Hardware about the 9800GT stating that the normal range under load is 80-90 degrees C.

 

So my question to whomever else out there overclocks their GPU's, have I been too careful? It's performance has become slightly relevant since I started running Folding@home on it, and since that stuff does know how to use the card properly I was thinking at finding out what my cards optimum is for maximum folding goodness.

[CAT_101st]

keep in ming the hotter you get the vid card the more heat you have in the case. and heat on the CPU is bad. So if you can stand it keep the heat down and every thing will be stable. I keep my GPU below 60* but I have a 8800GT

[EtherealN]

Yeah, it's basically been fear of overheating the GPU itself that's been keeping me. I'm not worried about the CPU though - the GPU has it's own 240mm fan feeding it, plus secondary from another 240mm fan going through the HDDs, and the GPU blows it's air straight out of the case.

 

But I have to say I was a bit perplexed to see 80+ listed as "normal" temperature for a 9800... I can only imagine that they haven't tweaked the fan at all, not even with the standard driver tools.

[crazysundog]

Odd, I tried to bump up my settings on my GTX260Core216 using EVGA precision, and I get memory crashes if i move it the slightest bit!?

 

Anyway, my card doesnt go over 58 C, and 80+ sounds extemely high IMHO...i know its for diff cards, but still sounds way too hot.

[EtherealN]

I'll just stick to my own judgement then. :)

 

But yeah Crazy, from what I've gathered the memory is the most sensitive bit, and with the production techniques being what they are it is entirely possible to have two entirely identical cards - even from the same production run - have completely different tolerances. I read a review of the card I have on an overclocking site where they managed to get all variables much higher than I have managed - though obviously they're also better than me at tweaking the ratios. :P

 

But if I have understood things correctly they will often do the same kind of binning with memory as they do with CPUs and GPUs, so sometimes you'll have an identical product but just be lucky and have memory in there that is of a higher tolerance. Some memory production lines apparently have an extra binning level where the cirquits that outperform the standard is placed, which is then put towards "enthusiast" products to be sold at a slight premium. (I think I had such luck with my system RAM, since I've never been able to find a memory crash level in my clocking of it - though I stopped upping it at 1100 (1092 actual) since I can't monitor their temperature.)

[crazysundog]

My card is at 626core/1349shader/1053mem and if I budge it even slightly I will crash or get artifacts when viewing a webpage! I did however raise my fan speed from 40 to 55 to keep my temps a little lower, because I thought 58 was even high....not that i know anything about these cards.