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How hot is too hot?
- Thread starter ChrisD.
- Start date
Because I want to push it to the max so I know I am more than safe when gaming.
but no game would push it that far...
also you'll be loseing out on a higher clock.
Hence I know I will be safe 100%. Are we going round in circles here?
but if u go by furmark you'll be loseing out on a higher clock. you'll only be good for stock just about
My old card (GTX 295) was reaching 104C in furmark but high 80s in games, probably dust clogged 
Just got a GTX 580 and that runs much cooler but I recall my old 7800GT and 8800GT both reached 100C in furmark and they still work
Just got a GTX 580 and that runs much cooler but I recall my old 7800GT and 8800GT both reached 100C in furmark and they still work
furmark = Toast the hell out of your card and risk even damaging it.. Will never let that near any of my graphics cards after seeing how it can damage a perfectly fine card. Only use furmark as a last resort for checking if a card will fail under a certain situation that furmark does.. eg. high load with high power use. It's good for testing if a PSU is on it's way out or just not able to power the system at full loads.
Best way to overclock your card in a safe manner is as others here have told you...eg. gareth170 and Lunawolfy etc..
Also some graphics drivers now come with furmark limiting or in some cases a hardware chip on the card that limits such software (which stops furmark using 100% of the gpu and stops it from frying the cards power circuits), which also proves it's not worth it's weight in salt anymore that test.
Furmark should only be used by people testing cards to benchmark them and to review them, so to show problems with badly designed cards, eg the GTX590 and it's amazing exploding trick if over stressed. (there is ways to disable the driver level or hardware level furmark limiting as reviewers will know, this is why I like it for this sort of test only, to check how well a card is built and gives you an idea how long it will last under normal use)
But to answer your question anything under 90c is fine, but I like to keep my cards at under 80C, my 5870 will max out at 75c with the default fan speeds in games that push it to the max. Never had a need to overclock it and I doubt I ever will. It's a reference Asus 5870 with the ref cooler. Great card and not once missed a beat
. So very happy with it, thinking if I ever update it, it will be used in a HTPC rather then selling it. One of ATI's/AMD's great cards that runs quiet and cool with amazing performance per watt.
Best way to overclock your card in a safe manner is as others here have told you...eg. gareth170 and Lunawolfy etc..
Also some graphics drivers now come with furmark limiting or in some cases a hardware chip on the card that limits such software (which stops furmark using 100% of the gpu and stops it from frying the cards power circuits), which also proves it's not worth it's weight in salt anymore that test.
Furmark should only be used by people testing cards to benchmark them and to review them, so to show problems with badly designed cards, eg the GTX590 and it's amazing exploding trick if over stressed. (there is ways to disable the driver level or hardware level furmark limiting as reviewers will know, this is why I like it for this sort of test only, to check how well a card is built and gives you an idea how long it will last under normal use)
But to answer your question anything under 90c is fine, but I like to keep my cards at under 80C, my 5870 will max out at 75c with the default fan speeds in games that push it to the max. Never had a need to overclock it and I doubt I ever will. It's a reference Asus 5870 with the ref cooler. Great card and not once missed a beat
. So very happy with it, thinking if I ever update it, it will be used in a HTPC rather then selling it. One of ATI's/AMD's great cards that runs quiet and cool with amazing performance per watt.
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+1
Go play some graphically intensive games instead of torturing your poor video card.
What do you need to test it for? Do you think it's faulty?
If not just play your games and keep an eye on temps using MSI Afterburner.
There's plenty of games that will give your card a good workout - Crysis, Metro, COH, Mafia 2, Plants v's Zombies...no wait...
Not all advice is good advice as you see
... Some are very extreme on here and don't care if they blow up their stuff, but some do care about their stuff and don't want to have to replace their perfectly working graphics card because they used a nasty program like Furmark to damage it.. 
Use something safer mate to overclock your cards, like others said games and don't believe everything you read on here or the internet about really large overclocks or unreal volts added to make the overclock stable. Blaa blaa really.. Just play safe and do a lot of research on the card/device you plan to overclock and see what the well known and respected forum members/sites state is safe to do. You will also learn from such members and sites what is not safe to do as they have blown up enough cards/devices in their adventures.
Best way to overclock a graphics card in a safe manner is keep it at stock volts and raise the GPU and memory clocks a bit at a time and watch the tempertures while gaming and look for any graphics that look like they have crashed (artifacts). Also there will come a point where overclocking will not help with frame rates due to maybe your CPU is bottlenecking the graphics card or just the graphics card can not give anything more, when you get to this point lower the overclock a touch and monitor how it goes from there. If the temps and card stay very stable over say a week of different games, then read about voltage increases for that card, but remember same applies small increase in gpu volts (DON'T go silly here this is what will kill your card), gpu and memory clocks and always watch the tempertures of the card not just the GPU temp but the other temps reported by the card. GPU-Z is great to monitor the other temperture sensors on a graphics card.
Also remember if you have a ready overclocked version of a card don't expect it to clock much higher then how it came, you may only see a tiny increase in performance.
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