Ideal temperatures for an X800 XT?

[reddragon105]

I've got an Asus X800 XT that I bought at Christmas and added an Arctic Cooler to it. For reference, here's the rest of my PC specs:

Asus P4P800-E motherboard
P4 3.2ghz 800fsb
1gb DDR 400 RAM
200gb Maxtor IDE ATA133 hard drive
450w PSU


Now yesterday was a pretty warm day and after a couple of hours of UT2004 I switched to Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil. Everything was fine until it stuttered going through a door. I thought it was just a fluke, only lasted a second, maybe someone signing in on MSN as i forgot to switch that off and i usually makes games flicker or something. But in the next room there was an x-ray machine (like the one in Total Recall if you've seen that) and the game slowed right down as soon as I was in the room with it. If I looked away, it ran smoothly, looking at the x-ray machine made it grind to a halt.

My PC should be able to handle it - the only thing I could think of was that it was overheating so this evening I've installed ATiTool, but I've realised that measuring the temps means nothing unless I have a rough idea of what they should be.

At the moment its quite warm, according to ATiTool the GPU temp is 44C when idle, it ran at a steady 75-ish C when playing UT2004 for about 45mins. Not sure if this is good or not, anyone know what it should be ideally running at?
I then set the fan speed to 100%, it runs 5 degrees cooler on both accounts, making it 39C and 70C.

Also, I was playing around with the settings in ATiTool and it seems the fan only runs at about 30% by default. I've changed the settings so that it increases with temperature, and that's what it was doing when i played UT, so it might be a bit hotter than that without the ATiTool fan settings.
So another question is - what does the fan on the card do by default? ie before i installed ATiTool was it set to a constant speed, or dynamic?
And - if i set fan speed to 100% do i need to keep ATiTool open for it to stay at that speed? or does it stay at 100% if i shut down the program? does it stay if i restart the PC?

Any help/advice appreciated.

[INSTG8R]

Seeing as it runs so quiet I run my like so.39c at Idle mid 50s max under Load with AC Silencer 4

[W1zzard]

the atitool driver applies fan speeds automatically on startup without the need to launch atitool
the fan speeds stay (only try to keep gpu temp at... needs atitool running)
when you have override fan speeds disabled, reboot and then look into atitool it should show the current settings

[reddragon105]

Seeing as it runs so quiet I run my like so.39c at Idle mid 50s max under Load with AC Silencer 4

39 and 50 :eek:
is that because norway is colder than england?

[INSTG8R]

nope about the same in the South just a quick ferry ride over to you

[reddragon105]

well then i guess i need to sort my cooling out
will have a good look at it tomorrow, clean the dust out, get some fresh thermal paste on the card, make sure the fans are working etc

[INSTG8R]

Well my case is fairly well ventilated(meets Intels "Thermally Advantaged Case Design"read: large Snorkel to the CPU) but can only handle an 80mm exhaust by my Specs you can see I have a Zalman on my CPU(that helps) I also have a whole new set of SilenX fans in the mail as we speak(2 60mm 12dBs for the front and a new 80mm 14dB for the back) I currently have a 1 60mm in the front I scavenged from the Missus's old Athlon cooler. SO I may be able to get those temps lower still(currently sitting at 37C Idle its a cool night)

[wtf8269]

His temperatures are so low because he has an aftermarket cooler. Your temperatures are about normal for a stock HSF. Although I didn't quite read all that you wrote, but judging by your temperatures it sounds that you have the stock cooler and those temperatures are about normal for a stock cooler. "Ideal" temperatures would be sub 30º idle temperatures and sub 50º load temperatures in my opinion, but that's not necessary and pretty hard to get without lots of airflow or water cooling.. Just make sure your load isn't higher than 85º or so and idles somewhere in the mid or low 40's. I remember reading on here that most of the ATIs are rated to I think 130º or 120º.

[reddragon105]

Although I didn't quite read all that you wrote

lol, no it doesn't seem like you even read the first sentence that said 'I've got an Asus X800 XT that I bought at Christmas and added an Arctic Cooler to it', so i've got the same cooler on my card as INSTG8R who is getting the same idle temperature, but under load its 20 degrees below mine.

i've got a copper heatsink on my cpu, its called a sharkoon i think (sounds like a pokemon) which keeps my cpu pretty cool (like 35 degrees last time i checked). its got an 80mm fan on the top and there's a duct above that to allow it to get air directly from outside. (my previous case had a duct with a fan in it above the cpu, this one is just a passive duct). at the rear is a 120mm fan blowing outwards, positioned just above the graphics card, so it should be removing the hot air generated by the heatsink on the top of the card. there's also an 80mm fan in the top of my case which is also blowing out.
i've lived in an old house, student accomadation, since i got this card, and its a pretty dusty house so my pc is in desperate need of a clean now that i'm back home. i'm cleaning it out tomorrow and i'll experiment with fan configuration to see if i can improve airflow. who knows, perhaps a huge dust bunny is blocking all air movement somewhere...

[wtf8269]

Sorry, my bad! :o Maybe check to make sure everything is making good contact, I've heard that Arctic Silencers have had a reputation for making poor contact.

As far as airflow goes, the best thing to have is a fan blowing directly onto the graphics card. Try this, find an old spair case PCI slot filler, and bend it around and attatch a fan to it so you can screw the one end into the case where the graphics card is screwed in, and the fan will be blowing on the card.

[INSTG8R]

yes I needed to "manupilate" read: Bend my back plate a little on mine as it wasnt making great contact with the RAM. Yes Dust is pretty evil here too I clean out the PC about once a month at least and the addition of more fans just adds to extra cleaning :(

[reddragon105]

i swear that when i installed it at christmas it was running 35 idle, 55 load, but i didn't write it down or anything so maybe i just remember wrong.

however it's doing pretty well now, i've cleaned every fan and heatsink in the case, and the fan in the top of the case is now blowing air down into the case, over the ram, and onto the heatsink on the back of the graphics card. got fresh thermal paste on there and made sure the arctic cooler was making good contact.
i've also got a fan in my room to keep myself cool as we seem to be having a heat wave here. damn this country, it's not warm enough for long enough for the houses to be built with air conditioning so i'm sweating in here! i think that's probably the major cause of the 20 degree increase in graphics card temp. i'm going to stick to playing the pc at night when its cool, or when i've got the fan on in my room

its now running at 39-40 idle, and 55 load on UT2004, so that's a marked improvement on this time yesterday

[INSTG8R]

If you have a fan in the top of your case(Blowhole?) make it Exhaust not intake. Heat rises and if you have something that can suck it out at the highest point use it ;)
My Tagan has a Push/Pull fan setup so the back fan on it pulls any hot air out of my case thru the PSU(which I might add produces enough heat of its own)
On another note my set of SilenX fans arrived today and I cant barely hear my PC anymore :D