Crazy EVGA 8800 GT

[ACJJ619]

Hi all.

I've had an EVGA 8800 GT card for just under four years now and always loved the quietness. At the time of buying, it's price/performance ratio was unbeatable. I've just found out that all EVGA 8800 GT's had a BIOS glitch whereby the fan would stay constant at 30% whilst idling and under load. My card has been like this since day one.

So out of curiosity I've loaded up MSI Afterburner to see what kind of temperatures I've been running at for the past few years with my fan stuck at 30%.

As I write this, I am idling at 65'C and when I step into just about any game, it rises to anywhere between 100'C and 105'C. I play games a lot and have done since buying the card. Which means my graphics card has spent A LOT of time above 100'C, and yet it still chugs along running Crysis 2 on very high settings and Bad Company 2 on highest (Without AA) years later.
Whilst I know I have probably shortened the life of the card, it doesn't matter as I am upgrading in a few days time. Surely this card should have fried long ago?

I just find this astonishing and thought I'd share.

 

[David91]

The Nvidia 8800 series was always a hot running series of cards anyway. my 8800GTS used to sit at 72C in windows when idle and rise to about 90C when playing any sort of game.

If its still running strong then you've got yourself a good card!

 

[Freddie1980]

I had a similar problem with my old 8800GT where the fan wouldn't go above 60% on auto which caused a lot to break including mine. This is an inherent flaw with all 8800GT's but you can get around it with 3rd party software but other then that for the 2 and bit years I had it was a pretty decent card that only took up one slot of space.

Not all chips are equal but I would tend to think the majority of 8800GT's are now in silicon heaven or on dying a slow death or resigned to backup purposes but it's possible some were built on a good bit silicon and are still running. I would have thought at 100c+ the card will have fallen over and crashed so maybe your card isn't running at those temps, just a thought. To be fair the whole 8800 line suffered from shocking reliability issues I'm amazed at the lack angry directed towards Nvidia on this matter and people are prep eared to accept it and fork out £100's more on new hardware.

 

[ACJJ619]

EVGA released a BIOS update which fixed the fan issue and therefore fixed the temperature issues somewhat. I've only just found out about this though.

When I install my new card, I may frame this one and put it on the wall somewhere, like a trophy. It's either that or overclock it until it does actually boil and see how close I've been to cooking it for the past 4 years.

 

[spleenharvester]

How on earth? My 8800 always hung if it went above 95*c

My 9800GT was overheated by my brother to 130*c on a regular basis for about a year, only found out when the fan melted and it died shortly later. Now it's reflowed and still going.

 

[coupe69]

I would tend to think the majority of 8800GT's are now in silicon heaven or on dying a slow death. To be fair the whole 8800 line suffered from shocking reliability issues I'm amazed at the lack angry directed towards Nvidia on this matter

I've still got one going strong in my HTPC. I also know of another one running perfectly fine in a friends pc.....Oh and lets not forget the thousands of steam players still using 8800s of one form or another

I had a similar problem with my old 8800GT where the fan wouldn't go above 60% on auto which caused a lot to break including mine. This is an inherent flaw with all 8800GT's but you can get around it with 3rd party software

Really? All 8800GT's had this problem?

Why have you kept this "inherent flaw" a secret from the community? I'm now just hoping you'll be able to direct all the 8800GT owners, myself included, to where we can get this special "3rd party software" from in order to keep our cards from spontaneously combusting

Maybe you just got confused and actually meant the 196.75 drivers that had a habit of killing cards? A driver that was quickly recalled due to a number of different cards failing and not just the 8800GT.

 

[Freddie1980]

By the time the 196.75 driver came out I had already binned my 8800GT. To get around the 60% limit I simply used Rivatuner fan profiles to run the fan faster when under load.