X1800 XT... How hot is too hot to handle (and for how long)?

[xe-cute]

The temp of my X1800 XT is around 55'c idle, however i was playing some 'tomb raider: legend' today with everything maxed out and after a few slow downs on heavy action scenes (i.e. the 1st level with the 2 helicopters) i went to look in my control centre and noticed the card had jumped up to 75'c.

This worried me a little, sometimes i can play a game for half a day none stop and i was wondering if it could cope for that amount of time at that temperature?

It's not overclocked or anything either, i dare do any overclocking to it now.

I was also thinking of taking out one of my fans (5 fans going and only one of them bugs me with its noise level) but i don't think i will now.

What kinda temp results do you get on idle and under heavy load?

Thanks in advance for your response and input upon this matter.

 

[Street]

Mine is idling around 40-45C at the moment, when I'm gaming it goes up to around 65C. Thats with a Zalman VF900 on it though...

I should think 75C would be fine, GPUs can handle heat more than CPUs

 

[Hawklord]

My temps are the same tbh 55deg idle 70ish under load so nothing to worry yourself about. If mine were approaching 90 deg though I'd start to worry
Mines clocked at 680/790 though so my load temps are probably the same but the fan speeds a bit higher and louder.
How much difference does the Zalman VF900 make to the noise these cards make as they're pretty loud tbh?

 

[Street]

I never tried mine with the stock cooler, should have done in hindsight. The first thing I did when I got it was to stick the Zalman on... But I can say that the Zalman cooler is pretty damn quiet

 

[Ripsore]

Mine idles at 54C and I think when I was playing oblivion it was running at 70C. (Wasn't really a heavy scene from what I could tell; it was a little dark)

If you look in Catalyst control center I think 70C is about half way on the temperature meter in the ATI overdrive section, so I'm not too worried about it. I'm sure I read somewhere that the approx max temperature is 145C-ish.

Maybe I'm thinking of another card while browsing lots of sites of different gfx cards - Personally I wouldn't get too scared until mine hits 100+

 

[BS Dave]

145!!! my god i flashed my xt to xtpe and ran the catalyst overclock utility but when it hit 85 i bottled it.

 

[Darkwave]

My X1800XT idled at 60°c and went up to 80°c under load before I reseated the heatsink and put some Arctic Silver 5 on it, now it idles at ~55°c and goes up to ~75°c under load. The stuff that was already on wasn't actually on properly to start with, was uneven with tons of core exposed to the copper base of the heatsink.

Either way I think anything up to 100°c is fine, I have heard they can handle much higher but I would worry once it hits the point where water vapourises.