Fan control: back to the Stone Age?

[2March]

My new computer has a XFX GTX260 graphics card. It's really a nice card.

It has a quirk though that most will allready be familiar with. The automatic fancontrole doesn't work.

Sounds like something easy to solve but something is wrong about this concept. I don't want to wine or anything but lately my system hardlocked a couple of time showing the famous wacky color schemes. The horror...

I'm thinking about returning the card for the following reasons.. I'm interested in others point of view.
Fan controll is supposed to protect the card while keeping noise levels low. If the control for whatever reason (not the users fault) does not work, who gets the blame when the card burns out?
I'm aware that certain tools can reduce this problem but often after a reboot these tools are reset. Risk of forgeting is a fried GC...
However (!) am I, as a customer supposed to hand hold the 250 Euro card when it is used completely within the confines is was designed for?
Why is it that my TNT never had this problem, neither did my 7950GT, 6800GT or Ti4400. And whatever that reason may be, is it me who should bother about it? Are we going back to the stoneages again, like the Screen Refresh bug and the likes?

I guess it's the driver but several driver sets have the same problem. What is the use of releasing an advanced controle panel if it doesn't do what it is supposed to do.

Thanks in advance for your input

 

[BassBomb]

I like how you explained how the fan control is "not working".

10/10 will read again.

 

[2March]

While reading in various forums about the problem I thought it was a common one.

It speeds up from 30% to about 40% under full load but never beyond that. At 60% (manually set) there are no signs of overheating but I have to set that manually.

 

[Narynan]

Same problem once upon a time for me too. However, I just keep the fan at 60% and then 80 for my gaming.

Works good!

 

[nitromullet]

IMO, if a card artifacts at stock speeds/settings it is a legitimate grounds for an RMA. It shouldn't be necessary to modify or manually adjust the stock cooling.

 

[2March]

Originally posted by: Narynan
Same problem once upon a time for me too. However, I just keep the fan at 60% and then 80 for my gaming.

Works good!

Often when the system is rebooted the control goes back to automatic. My point is: I don't think its my responsbility to check it everytime just because either Nvidia or whoever is to blame, can't get that auto function to work. This is IMO a basic funtion of the card/driver that simply is supposed to work.

This is not something we, as customers are supposed to worry about. I overclock my processor and are more then willing to take the blame when something happens to it. But my VC is running stock and its fanspeed should not be my concern. It can spool up to 3000 RPM! but it never exceeds 1600RPM regardless of the temps of the card!

 

[2March]

Originally posted by: nitromullet
IMO, if a card artifacts at stock speeds/settings it is a legitimate grounds for an RMA. It shouldn't be necessary to modify or manually adjust the stock cooling.

Yup,

But ofcourse I ran the GPU-Z logger and found out what causes the overheating.

So I feel kind of wierd to RMA that card. I think it is a driver issue.

But ofcourse I could be wrong.

 

[novasatori]

can you use evga precision?

i dunno if it will work with xfx but it works great for loading custom clocks and fan speeds at bootup