O/C X800XT Safe temps and ATI Tool

[Seeruk]

I was using ATI Tool to try and determine my max overclocks (great tool btw!) but was also monitoring my GPU temp using the Overdrive panel of the ATI CP. The temps were rocketing up and when it hit 70 degrees (at 520 core) I aborted before I found my self spilling tears on my scorched £300 silicon

So a few questions

How accurate is that temp gage?
What is max temp I should be looking at before cacking my pants and aborting like above? (I read 75 degrees is toast somewhere I think. )

Yes I am gonna get a seperate PCI cooler to go into the slot next to it and dont want to OC THAT high but would maybe be nice to hit the PE speeds - Has anyone managed this and if so, at what temp under load does it run?

THX Folks!

 

[biofear]

Before I changed to gpu cooler out I was getting 73C temps on my card under load. I put a VGA Silencer 4 on and now my temps are around 55 - 60C under load. I heard people getting 85C on their card but I never saw those temps and I'm running mine at 555/560. Get a silencer 4 you won't regret it.

 

[OMG1Penguin]

70 is fine, GPUs can withstand higher heat than cpus... check the fan stepping, the fan doesnt spin 100% until 100c. I think that's assurance enough that they have a pretty high max temp.

Silencer is nice for noise, and does keep the temps down, but its not THAT great.

 

[biofear]

It might not be for some people. But I'm sure happy with it. It runs idle at 32C (89.6F) to me thats great.

 

[Seeruk]

Thx for the advice folks its much appreciated! - feel a bit more confident now My choice of cooler will be determined by the noise cos I already got 4 case fans, 1 noisy stock amd fan, and the fan on the gpu creating a howl and I dont wanna add to it!!!

So basically something with a large diameter and low speed

 

[Seeruk]

Hmmm - I take back everything I said about ATI tool being great!!

I cant get the card stable at all using it after much effort over several days. It determines the max core at around 521mhz (without extra cooling) and when running the artifact test it reset the PC after about 2 minutes :/ So of course I kept clocking down and trying again until I actually got back down to the stock speed and it crashed the vga system even then. I have actually clocked the card at 515/1030 and run all kinds of other stuff such as 3dmark's and run doom3 benchmarks looping for several hours with no issues so am perfectly happy. But the ATI Tool artifact test seems to cause problems that nothing else does :/ The temp never goes over 70 so its a pretty good clock for stock cooling, Ill try pushing things further when I get my card cooler this weekend.