Safe to run furmark overnight?

ferret face · 10 Jun 2010 at 10:57

I want to test my gpu and wondered if its safe to run furmark overnight or while I'm at work? Will my card explode/catch fire/melt/burn the flat down?

Thanks
Ferret

lurkio · 10 Jun 2010 at 11:20

I would not , especially if you are using ATI

Rroff · 10 Jun 2010 at 11:22

It shouldn't be a problem but I don't see any need to run it more than an hour tops and overnight furmarks will put significant strain on the card above normal potentially shortening the card lifespan or damaging it.

Orcvader · 10 Jun 2010 at 11:33

lurkio said:
I would not , especially if you are using ATI

Care to explain? :confused:

Swifty123 · 10 Jun 2010 at 11:35

Orcvader said:
Care to explain?

I think he's a hater

Dutch Guy · 10 Jun 2010 at 11:36

Orcvader said:
Care to explain?

I think that the Furmark can kill ATI cards as they heat up the power regulators or something like that

GJ02 · 10 Jun 2010 at 11:38

i wouldnt use it for more than 5mins, and that when i next to the computer !

cupofchow · 10 Jun 2010 at 12:07

ferret face said:
I want to test my gpu and wondered if its safe to run furmark overnight or while I'm at work? Will my card explode/catch fire/melt/burn the flat down?

Thanks
Ferret

haha brave man

Ritsugamesh · 10 Jun 2010 at 12:10

I would definitely suggest not to do this, nor can I quite see the significance in actually doing it. Are you looking to benchmark whilst away? I always figured there were more accurate benchmark tools around if that is indeed your reasoning for running Furmark.

Bottom line, do not do this!

Kelt · 10 Jun 2010 at 12:11

ferret face said:
I want to test my gpu and wondered if its safe to run furmark overnight or while I'm at work? Will my card explode/catch fire/melt/burn the flat down?

Thanks
Ferret

Have a guess what can happen when you torture something for hours on end...

OrphanBoy · 10 Jun 2010 at 12:20

it...signs a confession??

lurkio · 10 Jun 2010 at 12:25

Dutch Guy said:
I think that the Furmark can kill ATI cards as they heat up the power regulators or something like that

Yep , thats why

Though I think ATI deal with this by adjusting things (down clock) when they detect furmark running (tho if you rename it to something else I think it defeats this)

FYI
Iam a hater , I hate both ATI and NVIDIA with equal distain

RavenXXX2 · 10 Jun 2010 at 12:28

A bit of research would have told you that the hot V-REG with furmark is associated with the 4850/4870 cards not the 5000 cards, so the problem is not associated with all ATI cards.

uv · 10 Jun 2010 at 12:31

running furmark overnight is a bad idea - it's wasteful, and could cause irreperable damage to both GPU and PSU.

If you're wanting to test for artifacts, then no more than half an hour of furmark is needed - tbh, if a card is going to artifact, it'll do it within ten minutes of kicking furmark off.

ferret face · 10 Jun 2010 at 12:38

The reason i want to do this is that my pc keeps crashing randomly in games. So i wanted to test my gpu to the max to rule it out

drunkenmaster · 10 Jun 2010 at 13:19

RavenXXX2 said:
A bit of research would have told you that the hot V-REG with furmark is associated with the 4850/4870 cards not the 5000 cards, so the problem is not associated with all ATI cards.

IT does still put an unnatural load on the v-reg's on a 5series, just doesn't crash it as the 4 series just wasn't designed for such an unnatural power load to be placed on a card. I wouldn't run it on any card, it puts a higher load on Nvidia cards than any game does aswell and even a ridiculously well optimised Cuda app would be hard pushed to match the load furmark places on it.

INcredibly simple and predictible stuff like Furmark, like super pi, is basically as good as it gets in terms of efficiency of code/shader usage and as bad as it can get in terms of power load.

The simple fact is, even more so with AMD, but Nvidia to a large degree aswell, Furmark doesn't replicate real life conditions, being stable or temp stable in Furmark is completely and utterly pointless. Lets say you're testing for stability at 900Mhz, Furmark fails so you downclock, if you tested in games you might never find a game or cuda app, open cl ap, that is unstable at 950Mhz. LIkewise the temps you see in Furmark, especially on the v-reg's, might persaude you to downclock or go no further when in real life situations, gaming, opencl/cuda apps, you could be running much lower temps with huge room for overclocking.

Furmark is completely and 100% useless and serves no purpose, stability in Furmark doesn't prove or disprove your stable speeds in games so simply don't use it.

Not only that but it is inconsistant and has problems fully testing many crossfire and sli setups, it does seem fairly consistant for single card setups being put under absolute maximum loads, but again, theres simply no point to that.

ferret face · 10 Jun 2010 at 13:35

ok thanks
So are there are suggestions as to what I can use to test my gpu and system stability?

RavenXXX2 · 10 Jun 2010 at 13:39

Try testing your CPU and memory first with prime95 if that pases then you can safely conclude it's your GPU or drivers causing crashing in games.

It would also be helpful if you posted up your system spec.

ferret face · 10 Jun 2010 at 13:50

ok thanks I'll try prime95 and memtest first but surely there is something to test graphics cards too?

I mean doesnt prime95 put undue stress on the cpu, much in the same way Furmark does to the gpu?

PaulyD · 10 Jun 2010 at 14:10

Furmark is completely and 100% useless and serves no purpose, stability in Furmark doesn't prove or disprove your stable speeds in games so simply don't use it.

Feeling the same as well following my recent testing recently. Can pass 10-15 mins of Furmark on my 5970 @ 850/1175 - 1.1v running full screen 1920x1200 8xAA but heaven benchmark will crash with D3D error quickly at that voltage (got to test 4), nudged voltage up to 1.112 and failed on test 24, needs to be 1.125v to pass fine.