Egg delivered a day ahead as usual but got my 6800 replacement for a 5900XT a day or so ago. I figured this to be a reasonable upgrade since I'm not ready to go PCI-E as yet.
Any way - - - installed the provided driver and seemed to be perking along but with GPU core temperatures of 76C at idle and as much as 82C under load (Microsoft Flight Simulator). This bothered me as I could forsee a shortened GPU life span at these temperatures. I checked to make sure the fan/heatsink was properly seated (not tilted as can happen), fired things up again and still had high temps.
The card came with the NVIDIA 61.72 driver so I had 69.93 (I think that's right) on my C Drive left over form the 5900XT andr replaced the 61.72 with it: same high core temperatures.
Went to NVIDIA driver page and downloaded 77.72. Core temperature dropped 20 DEGREES! What's up with that? Are these drastic effects on core temperature NVIDIA's problem or the video card makers problem (XFX/Pine Technology)?
Now, temperature down to somewhat cozy 50's, but vidoe looks like it is washed out. Now what? Reverted to old driver (and high temps), and video is fine. Puirged system files of everything MSI, XFX, or NIVIDIA, reloaded the 77 driver and - washed out video. Perplexed, I jumnped on this forum and what-do-you-know? I found a fix for the video problem.
Everything seems O.K. now ( I read the XFX horror stories that's why I was so concerned about the GPU temps. I wouldn't have bought an XFX but the $30 rebate on NewEgg was too much to pass up). I've ordered a Zalman GPU fan/heatsink to get another improvement on temps over the ragtag stock system. Is that really going to void my warranty?
Any way - - - installed the provided driver and seemed to be perking along but with GPU core temperatures of 76C at idle and as much as 82C under load (Microsoft Flight Simulator). This bothered me as I could forsee a shortened GPU life span at these temperatures. I checked to make sure the fan/heatsink was properly seated (not tilted as can happen), fired things up again and still had high temps.
The card came with the NVIDIA 61.72 driver so I had 69.93 (I think that's right) on my C Drive left over form the 5900XT andr replaced the 61.72 with it: same high core temperatures.
Went to NVIDIA driver page and downloaded 77.72. Core temperature dropped 20 DEGREES! What's up with that? Are these drastic effects on core temperature NVIDIA's problem or the video card makers problem (XFX/Pine Technology)?
Now, temperature down to somewhat cozy 50's, but vidoe looks like it is washed out. Now what? Reverted to old driver (and high temps), and video is fine. Puirged system files of everything MSI, XFX, or NIVIDIA, reloaded the 77 driver and - washed out video. Perplexed, I jumnped on this forum and what-do-you-know? I found a fix for the video problem.
Everything seems O.K. now ( I read the XFX horror stories that's why I was so concerned about the GPU temps. I wouldn't have bought an XFX but the $30 rebate on NewEgg was too much to pass up). I've ordered a Zalman GPU fan/heatsink to get another improvement on temps over the ragtag stock system. Is that really going to void my warranty?
