- Oct 13, 2004
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... as creating 'excessive' or 'unrealistically high temperatures' that you will not experience in real gaming.
As far as I'm concerned, my GPU isn't stable unless it can manage an overnight furmark stability test.
If it can't, then it's unstable and as such any conclusions i draw as to the stability of my drivers or anything else are invalid. You have to have complete control all the variables except the one you are testing.
I will also beg to differ regarding the belief that furmark creates unrealistically high temperatures, on two levels.
1) Most people don't have dual monitors and as such can't monitor their temperatures in real time (GPU-Z does this, if you wish to). Unless you have done this, you don't actually know how hot your card gets while gaming. Temperatures drop increadibly quickly and alt-tabbing out will not give you a true understanding of this.
2) Games such as Farcry and Serious Sam 2 (using two examples that I am personally familar with, I am sure there are others) will cause my 4850 to attain the same temperatures as furmark.
I generally find that newer games, such as Crysis and COD4 to name two i am personally familar with and have tested, will not attain the same temperatures or power draw (monitored using a KillaWatt). I assume this is because they stress the core less evenly, being bottlenecked in a particular way (almost certainly memory for my 4850).
Anyway, I hope this invites some discussion on the matter. I am happy to provide further detail if any has any questions.