- Banned
- #1
Since roughly sixteen months I am the satisfied owner of an XFX 7800 GTX. The card has always performed well for me, even though it can get quite hot.
Recently, though, the card got a little bit too hot. I was used to roughly the following temperatures:
- Idle: average 58 °C
- Load: average 80 °C
- Load: max. 81 °C
- Highest ever reached: 84 °C
A temperature of 84 °C is quite hot, but apparently temperatures around 80 °C are somewhat standard for high-performance videocards like this one. And the critical temperature is 115 °C, according to the nVidia ForceWare drivers. I have my alarm temperature set at 84 °C.
However, last week the card reached 86 °C in a game of Call of Duty 2 and later even 89 °C so I was starting to get a little bit worried. I restared my PC, tried again, and the card still overheated.
So I figured I had to clean the fan. But the fan was relatively clean. Sure, it was a bit dusty, but most things inside a PC are a bit dusty. I unscrewed the shiny metal plate on top of the videocard and noticed huge 'dust fluffs' (not sure what the correct term is) between the fins of the cooling block, so I vacuum cleaned the cooling block.
I screwed the shiny metal plate back on again, installed the videocard in my PC, and started Call of Duty 2 again and everything was fine. The videocard didn't sound the alarm, so the alarm temperature of 84 °C wasn't being exceeded. I didn't really check the actual temperature, though.
Today, however, I was just browsing the internet without listening any music, so the only thing I heard was the ambient buzz of the fans in my PC. Suddenly, there was even less sound. So I looked in my PC (I have a transparent side window) to see if all the fans were still going. The temperature of my videocard (which was idling) began to rise so I figured it was the videocard fan. I couldn't see it at first, because the fan is pointed downwards (as you'd expect in almost every PC case) but indeed, the fan of my XFX 7800 GTX had stopped rotating. I was all like "God damn it, I hope I didn't break it when I vacuum cleaned it" and thought of methods to solve this problem.
I tried "kick-starting" it with a pencil multiple times, but that didn't do any good. As the idle temperature of my videocard rose to 79 °C, I figured I'd restart the PC and see if the fan would start rotating again.
Fortunately, it did. But I figured I'd load up a GPU-intensive program to stress my videocard and see what temperature it would reach. So I started the "Azure Temple" Quest3D graphics engine demo and I waited a few minutes until the temperature didn't rise anymore.
The results were quite surprising:
- Load: average 61 °C
- Load: max. 65 °C
- Highest ever reached: 65 °C
Then I checked the idle temperature, which appeared to be:
- Idle: average 43 °C
Now compare that to the original temperatures:
- Idle: average 58 °C
- Load: average 80 °C
- Load: max. 81 °C
- Highest ever reached: 84 °C
That's quite an improvement! But I wanted to stress my videocard even more. I figured I'd do so by running Dark Messiah at maximum settings.
Before I cleaned my videocard, I ran the game at the following settings:
Resolution: 1280 * 1024
Model detail: High
Texture detail: Medium
Shader detail: High
Water detail: Reflect all
Shadow detail: High
GFX Detail: Medium
Anti-aliasing mode: None
Filtering mode: Anisotropic 2X
Wait for vertical sync: Disabled
High Dynamic Range: Full (if available)
These are the recommended settings for my system. I completed Dark Messiah multiple times using these settings, and in some scenarios I'd still lag to death with only 12 FPS.
Anyway, I wanted to stress my videocard, so I maxed the few settings out that weren't maxed out yet:
Texture detail: Very High
GFX Detail: High
Anti-aliasing mode: 4X
Filtering mode: Anisotropic 16X
If you set the texture detail to "very high" and the anti-aliasing mode to "16X", the game actually warns you that you need at least 512 MB of graphics memory. My videocard has 256 MB of graphics memory.
Anyway, I ignored the warnings, made sure every setting was maxed out, and loaded up a map that's quite large and has lots of stuff that needs to be rendered.
The lowest amount of FPS I got was 30! And before I had cleaned my videocard, using the recommended settings for my system, I averaged out on 20 FPS in this particular map! And the maximum temperature my videocard reached while playing Dark Messiah was only 64 °C!
I never figured that vacuum cleaning a videocard could have such a huge effect. I guess I'll have to do this more often.
Also, can anybody link me to a program that's very demanding in terms of graphics so I can stress my videocard a bit more? I'm talking about something as demanding as 3DMark06 or perhaps even more demanding.
Anyway, the moral of the story is: (vacuum) clean your graphics card often for great justice!
Edit: And no, I still have no idea what caused the fan of my XFX 7800 GTX to suddenly stop rotating. I'm just hoping it doesn't happen again.
Recently, though, the card got a little bit too hot. I was used to roughly the following temperatures:
- Idle: average 58 °C
- Load: average 80 °C
- Load: max. 81 °C
- Highest ever reached: 84 °C
A temperature of 84 °C is quite hot, but apparently temperatures around 80 °C are somewhat standard for high-performance videocards like this one. And the critical temperature is 115 °C, according to the nVidia ForceWare drivers. I have my alarm temperature set at 84 °C.
However, last week the card reached 86 °C in a game of Call of Duty 2 and later even 89 °C so I was starting to get a little bit worried. I restared my PC, tried again, and the card still overheated.
So I figured I had to clean the fan. But the fan was relatively clean. Sure, it was a bit dusty, but most things inside a PC are a bit dusty. I unscrewed the shiny metal plate on top of the videocard and noticed huge 'dust fluffs' (not sure what the correct term is) between the fins of the cooling block, so I vacuum cleaned the cooling block.
I screwed the shiny metal plate back on again, installed the videocard in my PC, and started Call of Duty 2 again and everything was fine. The videocard didn't sound the alarm, so the alarm temperature of 84 °C wasn't being exceeded. I didn't really check the actual temperature, though.
Today, however, I was just browsing the internet without listening any music, so the only thing I heard was the ambient buzz of the fans in my PC. Suddenly, there was even less sound. So I looked in my PC (I have a transparent side window) to see if all the fans were still going. The temperature of my videocard (which was idling) began to rise so I figured it was the videocard fan. I couldn't see it at first, because the fan is pointed downwards (as you'd expect in almost every PC case) but indeed, the fan of my XFX 7800 GTX had stopped rotating. I was all like "God damn it, I hope I didn't break it when I vacuum cleaned it" and thought of methods to solve this problem.
I tried "kick-starting" it with a pencil multiple times, but that didn't do any good. As the idle temperature of my videocard rose to 79 °C, I figured I'd restart the PC and see if the fan would start rotating again.
Fortunately, it did. But I figured I'd load up a GPU-intensive program to stress my videocard and see what temperature it would reach. So I started the "Azure Temple" Quest3D graphics engine demo and I waited a few minutes until the temperature didn't rise anymore.
The results were quite surprising:
- Load: average 61 °C
- Load: max. 65 °C
- Highest ever reached: 65 °C
Then I checked the idle temperature, which appeared to be:
- Idle: average 43 °C
Now compare that to the original temperatures:
- Idle: average 58 °C
- Load: average 80 °C
- Load: max. 81 °C
- Highest ever reached: 84 °C
That's quite an improvement! But I wanted to stress my videocard even more. I figured I'd do so by running Dark Messiah at maximum settings.
Before I cleaned my videocard, I ran the game at the following settings:
Resolution: 1280 * 1024
Model detail: High
Texture detail: Medium
Shader detail: High
Water detail: Reflect all
Shadow detail: High
GFX Detail: Medium
Anti-aliasing mode: None
Filtering mode: Anisotropic 2X
Wait for vertical sync: Disabled
High Dynamic Range: Full (if available)
These are the recommended settings for my system. I completed Dark Messiah multiple times using these settings, and in some scenarios I'd still lag to death with only 12 FPS.
Anyway, I wanted to stress my videocard, so I maxed the few settings out that weren't maxed out yet:
Texture detail: Very High
GFX Detail: High
Anti-aliasing mode: 4X
Filtering mode: Anisotropic 16X
If you set the texture detail to "very high" and the anti-aliasing mode to "16X", the game actually warns you that you need at least 512 MB of graphics memory. My videocard has 256 MB of graphics memory.
Anyway, I ignored the warnings, made sure every setting was maxed out, and loaded up a map that's quite large and has lots of stuff that needs to be rendered.
The lowest amount of FPS I got was 30! And before I had cleaned my videocard, using the recommended settings for my system, I averaged out on 20 FPS in this particular map! And the maximum temperature my videocard reached while playing Dark Messiah was only 64 °C!
I never figured that vacuum cleaning a videocard could have such a huge effect. I guess I'll have to do this more often.
Also, can anybody link me to a program that's very demanding in terms of graphics so I can stress my videocard a bit more? I'm talking about something as demanding as 3DMark06 or perhaps even more demanding.
Anyway, the moral of the story is: (vacuum) clean your graphics card often for great justice!
Edit: And no, I still have no idea what caused the fan of my XFX 7800 GTX to suddenly stop rotating. I'm just hoping it doesn't happen again.
