Going back a month or two I was in despair to see that my shiny new 8800GT was hitting 95°C when really pushed hard. Maybe it was within specification for it to run that hot but being an 'overcooler' I was none to happy.
Anyway nVidia's new 8800GTS 512MB card is here and it has a big strange looking dual-slot cooler, hmm wonder if its any good? Only one way to find out. . . "Say Hello to my little friend!"
Ok if you don't know what this program above is, lets just say it is the Prime95 of the GPU world, when run for any length of time it will stress your GPU out big time, nothing else I've used can heat a graphics card up as much as this little 'furry' monster.
The Fur Test is being used as a worst case scenario and its unlikely the card will ever get as much stress from normal gaming but for the purposes of testing how well a cards cooling is I think its first rate. I set it to run for 10mins in the tests below.
I have tried to recreate an average setting for this card, its in a closed case which features 2x 80mm fans (one intake, one exhaust) so there is basic airflow but not brilliant. The room the computer is in is warm enough to wear tracksuit bottoms and a T-Shirt.
The 8800GTS 512MB is running at stock nVidia speeds . . .
The results were better than I was expecting and as such I reduced the number of tests to three
36%-38% *Auto* Fan
50% *Fixed* Fan
60% *Fixed* Fan
Verdict: Yes I'm happy, looks like nVidia have done a real nice job in designing this cooler but once again there is scope to improve things a little.
The fan is pretty quiet, I can't hear it at all at stock or 50% and only just at 60%. As you can see from the results above the difference between [Auto] Fan and [Fixed 50%] fan is quite large, 15°C lower in fact and in virtual silence, nice!
Cranking up the fan to [Fixed 60%] further reduces the temps but introduces a more noticable whoosh, nothing too bad but if gaming using speakers you will notice it a little [note: not all gamers are fraggers, it may be a quiet/atmosphere game lol!).
Final Thoughts: No problems here, move along pls. Can't see anybody having overheating problems with this one, even using the stock Fan-Duty-Cycle but I personally have used RivaTuner to run my fan at 50% when the card gets over 50°C and then drop the speed back down to 36% when below 50°C.
I can live with 66°C full furry beast load, its unlikely to ever get that hot in normal gaming and 50% Fan is nice and quiet.
In the near future I will look at the stock cooling again on an overclocked card and perhaps SLI . . .that's all for now and thanks for reading!
[edit] having problems getting RivaTuner to detect your 8800GTS? the fix is listed below
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