• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

Should I be worried?

Associate
Joined
2 Sep 2010
Posts
2,058
Location
Somerset
I just got my second 6870 and it has been great, near double performance in games like BFBC2 and GTA 4. The problem I am having is the temperatures. In afterburner, GPU1 at idle shows around 40*c which is fine, but GPU2, on the other hand, is not fine at 60*c :eek:

At load, I saw GPU1 reach about 60*c and GPU2 reach 85*c. Is that temperature a problem? I don't really want to run the fans at a high speed because they drown out the noise of the game and I cannot hear anything except them.

So, back to the question, should I be worried of reaching those temperatures?
 
I'm not 100% for ATI cards but pretty sure graphics cards are built to run at a hotter temperature.

I'd say those temperatures are normal, I'm sure someone esle can give more information on it though. :)
 
When you say at load, what load is that? Constant 100% in a benchmark, or normal gaming? 85 is hot, but I wouldn't say it was dangerously so.
 
Are they reference design cards with the exhaust vented to the rear I/O plates, or are they third party designs with "bigger" coolers?

I always find that these "special" cards are great on their own, but for Crossfire they suck, as case temperature skyrockets and GPU2 directly heats the GPU1 above it.

I always buy reference design cooler based cards if I intend to run Crossfire.
 
My 6870s with reference coolers, under furmark reach 89 and 79 respectively I wouldnt be worried about those temps to be honest, if you are alter the fan profiles using Afterburner or something as the normal fan profiles seem to be a little bit slow to kick in at higher temps. As for warmer Idle temps yeah you are warmer than normal, have you checked that its returning to its Power State 1 clocks? Which I think are 300/300 (for the master) 100/100 for the secondary in cfx on 6870s (if your only using one display, more than 1 and this changes), Id have to check to be sure though.
 
Last edited:
It was at load which was GTA 4 and Crysis. They are both reference cards, one from XFX and the other is an engineering sample that I won in a competition.

I was going to buy the MSI £149.99 but I thought it would spoil the "look" :p
 
Last edited:
Are you able to tell if both cards are sharing the load? Could one be running more than the other?

I just got a replacement 480 SOC for my older faulty one and it idles 10 degrees hotter and breached 100 degrees in a bench mark before I noticed and shut it down. For mine I am thinking dodgy thermal bond with the heatsink. If yours levels out at 85 it's not a problem really, just hotter than the other.

Take a pic of the inside of the case and tell us which card is running hotter. Could it be the cooler card has better space to vent air into? Is the hotter card sucking in the cooler cards hot air?
 
Back
Top Bottom