Question Do modern video cards have a single temp sensor or a grid of them ?

mildewman

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Feb 8, 2017
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Do modern video cards (e.g a 1070 TI) report temperature with a single sensor for the whole die, or do they use a grid of sensors all over the die and report the highest temp ?
 

GodisanAtheist

Diamond Member
Nov 16, 2006
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Good question. At a guess, I cannot imagine modern lithography and boost techniques allow manufacturers to get away with a single thermal diode anymore, so likely all modern gpus have strategically placed sensors all over the die.

That being said, I doubt that data is necessarily being reported to the programs we use to track GPU temps, although AMD might be doing something of the sort with their new "junction temperature" reporting in wattman.

Consumer side reporting software probably picks up an average of the various sensors or there is one primary sensor located near the middle of the die that returns that info.

Long and short of it is... I don't know.
 

mildewman

Member
Feb 8, 2017
25
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Thanks for the response, the reason i ask is that when i conductonauted my 1070TI i had to file down the cooler height standoffs to compensate for the much lower viscosity of the LM compound. Because my (MSI) card does not have the square height protector around the gpu core i had to be careful not to lower it so much that i crushed the core.

As a result im not confident that the heatsink has equal contact over the whole chip - it might have a "hot corner" from unequal filing down of the height standoffs.

Performance wise im stable at 2ghz, but if i run MSI afterburner in "core" mode things get less stable. Im worried that i might have a hot core corner thats not being picked up by the thermal diode - but if the GPU has a grid of thermal sensors like a cpu does that would not be so much of a problem.

Going liquid metal made a huge improvement - 65 degree max temps gaming or benchmarking !
 
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