Is the Temp measured in

[obiwill]

F or C? My temp stays around 71 when playing a game. Is this good or bad?

[djbbenn]

Its in Celcius...71 is a little high, but it shouldn't hurt the card in any major way. But it will degrade its life and performance a bit.

-Dan

[Joerg]

What Card do you have?
I have a ATI X800 Pro and it runs idle at about 47 C and while playing a game at max. 70 C.
With the ATI-Tool (3d-View), i get up to 77 C, but never more.

71 C is normal and no problem. A GPU will get much hotter then a CPU.

[djbbenn]

As said before 71 is high, but it shouldn't damage the card in any major way. But it degrades its life and performance. If you get 70+C temps, try to reduce those because all that will happen is the card will lose performance and its life span will drop.

ATI says 95°C is okay but it may not run clean either. I had an ASUS XT-PE that ran at 80C stone stock in the 3DM01se Nature torture loop. While they say it is okay there is a catch to running hot.
For every 10°C you increase a discrete parts (memory chips, cores, Mosfets, IC's, etc) average operating temperature you cut its lifespan in 1/2 what ever that given lifespan may be. Conversely for every 10°C you lower the average operating temperature you double the parts lifespan. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to conclude that a card that runs 60C will have an average life span that is 4 times longer than if the same card runs 80°C.

-Dan

[DanTheBanjoman]

It depends on your card. A 6800 series card for example runs at around 70C which should be fine. The 6600 series runs cooler. I'm not sure about current generation ATi cards though.