furmark question

[bradyapba]

Do you use the same settings to benchmark as well as the stability test? And what Settings are the norm to use?

Thanks!

 

[bunnyfubbles]

furmark is somewhat controversial in the sense that it can easily place more stress on very specific parts of the video card that will never ever be stressed that much in any game scenario, particularly on ATI cards where they refer to it as a "power virus"

it isn't too hard to ream the VRMs using a tool like furmark (or OCCT) and potentially damage and kill the video card

that being said, while I wouldn't advocate furmark as anything close to a be-all-end-all GPU stress testing app, it certain is an easy way to run some very quick diagnostics by heating up your card with some safe settings.

640x480 w/ 8x MSAA set on "stability test" for a couple minutes until the GPU tops out (assuming the temps, particularly the VRM, called VDDC, temps you are monitoring with a tool like GPU-Z are staying safe) is what I've seen most people use for such purposes.

 

[bradyapba]

Thanks. I was just curious, as i see people comparing temps, etc or like "please run furmark for 20 minutes, and tell me your temps" etc, but no one ever says what they have furmark set at. So i was curious as to, if there was a standard, because your temps can vary widely, depending on the setting in furmark. So i thought maybe i was missing something

I have a 5850, with an arctic cooling pro on it, with stock plate reattached. It cools awesome. I can get a serious OC, and my gaming results temps are a nowhere near what furmark gives me (well at least on the settings I was using), or even the temps I get using ati gpu tool for stability testing.

Now, running furmark at your settings, barely pushes my temps. I was running it at 1900x1200, MSAAA at 2X, and PostFX on. Post FX really pushes the temps, getting my GPU around 70C, and my mem near 80C with an OC from 725/1000 to 925/1200, with volts increased from 1.08 to 1.2

Running at your settings, and my temps are like 48C, and 65C.

Thats a big difference

So you can see why i was confused by what settings people were using, and how it effects temps.