Graphic card cooling

[Athena]

How do you know whether or not you need extra cooling for a graphic card? I frequently see messages in which people refer to temperature; how do they know that?

I'm thinking of getting an XFX GeForce 6800 XTREME for my 4-year old machine to use for some heavy-duty business graphics and I'm wondering whether I need to be concerned about some sort of auxilary cooling.

 

[Raider1284]

Unless your planning on overclocking or want a quiet cooler then you don't have to worry about 3rd party coolers. The stock cooler will keep your card running just fine at stock speeds.

As far as temp reading goes, most newer video cards have a temp sensor that can be read by most program like ATITool, or in the actual nvidia control panel

 

[Athena]

Originally posted by: Raider1284
As far as temp reading goes, most newer video cards have a temp sensor that can be read by most program like ATITool, or in the actual nvidia control panel

Unfortunately, the nVidia control panel (1.2.1.31) crashes on me here on WinXPSP2 so I've never seen what's there.

My machine does seem loud to me but if nothing is actually being hurt, I can live with it. I guess I'll try this card and see what happens.

Thank you for the information.