Hot graphics card

My Radeon 4850 runs between 45 - 50 at idle (displaying desktop) with stock cooler: the PC is new build so no dust accumulated on fans or any other components yet. Is that normal with this card? I am a bit nervous the card's own monitoring software coming up with such high temperature but I am equally nervous of the idea of changing the stock cooler as I haven't done that before (never had any problems).

My case is Antec 300 and I have 5 12cm fans. The one on the side at the moment blows cooler air in but I maybe it should suck the hot air out? Would it make any difference at all? None of the other components are monitored but they seem to do just fine. The CPU is one of the Phenom (1st generation) quad core family and PSU is Corsair 800W model.

I am assuming - or at least hoping - that the shut down of my graphics card and then pc, which then would not power up until next day. So far this has only happened 1/2 h into watching a Blu-ray documentary.

(I might take a while to get back as I haven't got an internet, but I'll get here eventually.)

 

Your GPU temp is fine. I think the max temp on the card is around 100 C

 

Thanks for the reassurance. So what could cause the display and then computer shut-down when watching Blu-ray? How can I tell what the temperature is when I maximize the video to a whole screen (I'm guessing rendering a bigger picture puts more pressure on the graphics card?)

 

It probably puts a little load on the GPU. If your pc shuts down I would check other temps like your CPU temp etc.

 

When the 4850's were first released they had a shocking Fan Profile and would idle at 65-70C with fan at 4-5%. The fan would not start to spin up till about 85-90C and many were easily going over 100C. This caused a lot of concern in the community and lead to many using a modded BIOS to get it to idle at 50C. You have one with a lot better fan profile and Video Cards will "tolerate" higher temp ranges than a CPU can so 50C is quite fine.

Mine is currently at 75C with a reasonable load and 68% on the fan.

If you want to test your card a bit you can monitor it with GPU-Z 0.35 and then give it a 1-2 minute nudge with OpenGL Fur Rendering Benchmark to ensure fan rpm is scaling well with GPU temps.

 

Thanks for the links for graphics card monitoring. What about monitoring the CPU as PC lover suggested, is there some software like for the GPU? As the PSU resides at the bottom in Antec case and the power should be more than adequate I am doubtful it would suffer from overheating, but it might be possible the contact between heatsink and CPU is not so good after moving house. (I only tried to watch Blu-ray in this home.)

I just thought of something: when I first installed the Blu-ray disk, the software that came with the drive offered to update the driver (as warned by a slip with the disk) but I declined as I cannot connect to Internet with that machine.

I haven't got the technical knowhow to find out why I cannot connect - I used my son's connection so network is not to blame - so tomorrow morning I'm taking the machine to a repair shop. (I thought my copy of XP I bought a year ago from a local shop is cosher but I heard the shop got busted for selling illegal software - would it be possible an illegal copy to have internet access disabled?)

Well, the motherboard comes with Express Gate (mini linux os) so I can use that once I have a normal line; to my knowledge mobile "broadband" dongles don't come with linux drivers, at least in UK. The trouble is, that while I can browse the web, I cannot use any of the any driver update utilities provided by the hardware companies as they run only from windows.

By the way, I love the idea of Express Gate, all mobos should have something like that! No need to load Windows if all I want to do is to browse the net, chat with friends or play online games. You cannot install or save anything on the hardrive which is a bit of a pain but the upshot of this is that it should be darn safe for simple online activities. I can always download things into a USB drive. :heli

 

This is not at all connected with my question, but talking about utilities and links, is there a simple free one that can list what hardware is installed in my son's pc, i.e. motherboard model, CPU and type of RAM used, maybe even graphics card model, without opening the case? The PC is old but working fine and I'm wondering if I could upgrade the CPU and RAM to speed it up a bit, since I cannot afford much better machine what he's got anyway.

 

Info program. Everest, is pretty good, and free. http://majorgeeks.com/download4181.html

 

Thanks for the link.

I used to have an old version of Sandra and although it was the freeware edition so not all the utilities worked but it was still better than the new free versions. In fact, when I downloaded the new version I didn't see any improvement, only loss of functions I had before - SiSoft has not been so generous since.

 

Thats the one and if you goto Computer>>>>>>Sensor it will display your CPU temps and fan rpms, etc etc

 

As far as internet connection goes if you open your Device Manager are there any ! or ? present.

The Network Drivers should be from the Motherboard Manufacturers site which you can get your info from Everest and then search for those.

 

I would just like to add that my son has Radeon 4870 which runs at around 40 C with light load and never goes much beyond 55 - 60 C. His case is cheap-middle range one, not make I recognise, but it has almost the same amount of fans (no top fan) as my Antec 300. The two cards, mine and his, were bought about the same time.