Sapphire X850 XT...overheating defect?

I think the problem is it comes with fan at 5%. download atitools and change the fan to speed to 100% if you dont care about noise. And the core does get hot period.

Yeah, download ATI Tools and ajust the fan speed. You'll be fine then.

Cool, I am thinking of setting the fan to go to 100% when hitting 60C, this was recommended on another post. I will definetly increase fan speed and see if that works. If not, I will get an artic cooler fan and try that.

You could simply get an upgraded fan/HS for the GPU. That, and a dab of Arctic Silver in between should head-off any future issues with GPU overheating. Zalman makes some nice GPU coolers. And, at least in the past, Sapphire has had some really sh!tty cooling "solutions" on their cards.

Get yourself an ATI Silencer v. 5 from Arctic Cooling. It will lower your temps by at least 20 degrees (with arctic silver) and it is dead quiet. Check New Egg.

Just remember this: 95% of humans are idiots, and 25% of them review things they buy on newegg.

Remember, if you get an X850XT, you can easily buy an Arctic Cooling ATI Silencer 5 for the card, and that will solve any overheating issues with no sweat, and even leave some headroom for OCing if that's what you are into. AC are an excellent make of coolers, not to mention quiet as hell...

My friend bought a X850XT last year, Gecube make, and he also ran into high temps (90C+). So he read some forums and concluded that the fan speed ratios from the driver was wrong. He got ATiTool and voila, using custom settings he's running below 70C. It seems that ATi couldn't care less or they want the cards to run silent at 90C. I prefer a bit of noise above high temps - and I'm living by ATiTool. Got my 1900 series card to run below 80C on average.

My settings:
Above 0C : 27%
Above 70C : 45%
Above 75C : 50%
Above 80C : 64%
Above 85C : 68%
Above 88C : 73%
Above 90C : 86%
Above 95C : 100%

Jesus christ! Doesn't it overheat and restart computer??

You should talk to me, I'm much closer...

No, I ran a X800XT for 6 months at 95C in games - and it's still working (almost 2 years old). Seeing that no one knows what the thermal spec on an ATi chip is, no one can actually say that 90C is bad can they now?

Also, I'm from South Africa in the middle of summer. It's 26C ambient today, so temps are quite high. This adds to the card temps and I've noticed a 4-5C swing when ambient temps are between 21 and 26 on the GPU. My 9800XT was running 90C, my X800XT was in the high 80's and my X1800XL was also in the high 80's. The XL blew an IC on a non thermal area, and the other two cards are still churning away in my friend's PC. I'm starting to think that these GPU's can take alot of heat at stock frequencies and volts. But that's my view.

Lastly, have a warantee on my card, so if it goes boom, I replace it.

I guess you never tried overclocking, lol. I get scared when my card hits 60, but that's just because I'm a heat freak and have 6+ case fans and a vantec tornado  
however, I can understand the card running at a high temp normally. hot parts can run hotter, plain and simple. I remember a review of the 3.46EE Presler overclocked to 4.26 and it ran 80-90c during tests stable.
But, don't you worry about the parts dying and having to replace them often?

OMG! This stock fan is loud as hell!!!! I installed card and quickly found that temp at idle was 39c, within five min of WoW it jumped to 48-55. I downloaded atitool and adjusted fan speed, that kept temp around 50 but the fan noise is awful, even at 60% speed (doesnt help that my previous ATI card had no fan). Anyways I ordered Artic Cooler Silencer yesterday and will try to install that...hopefully there are no problems.

What card? Believe me, I've idled at 62 with stock cooler on my card lol.

Actually, no - I don't worry about the parts failing. My reasoning goes like this: If ATi can release a card and sell it, and it runs 80-90 stock without any additional help, plus throw in a warantee (I know it's only one year), then why should I worry? If my X800 could (and still does) run for 2 years at that temps, then I'm going to say - why worry?

I have yet to see an ATi card fail on this principle. Maybe I should care, maybe I shouldn't...  

You don't worry about after the 1 year? Does it void your warranty for an aftermarket cooler?

Does anyone have bench marks of overclocked ATI card vs. out the box setup? I wonder if the risk is worth it. The X850 XT is a great card, would it be wise to overclock it? This is a card that may be useable in most games for at least another 1 ½ years. You can also use it for Windows Vista. I am really looking for a side by side comparison as I have a X850 and want to see what I get by taking a risk. :twisted:

Risk? what risk? OMG IT WILL LIGHT ON FIRE WITH 7 MORE MEGAHERTZZZZ OMG OGGM11
Seriously, you'll be fine.

If you are going to change heatsinks, order some arctic silver to put on it. Just to give you an example my X850XT PE would idle at about 24c, and the highest I ever saw it go after a couple hours of marathon gaming was 42c. This was with the Silencer and arctic silver. One thing to look out for though, be careful not to strip the screws on your video card. Mine were very weak and I wore the last one out and almost could not get it off. Oh and by the way, those temps were with the card overclocked to 600 core 615 mem.

Mine OC'd just fine, although it was pointless at the time because it raped anything I threw at it. That didn't stop me though.

I also recently bought the Sapphire x850xt from newegg. Once I had the card installed, i downloaded ATITools and set the fan speeds to:

<43C - 14%
43C - 32%
48C - 45%
55C - 55%
60C - 68%
65C - 82%
68C - 90%
72C - 100%

I have the card OC'd to 545/580 (from the stock 520/540). I haved been playing Doom 3 and Farcry and I have never seen the GPU get over 70C.

BTW, yes the fan is quite loud. I went out and bought the Arctic 5 cooler and some thermal paste (I haven't installed it yet though).

Oh well, I rarely keep a graphics card for more than 1 year - so it doesn't bother me as much. It does however bother my bank manager!  

If you remove the stock cooler, warantee is void. Unless you can replace the stock cooler after use and you return the card to some dumb a**es!

Yeah, my temp's have been reasonable ( high 40's, low 50's) after a couple of hours running WoW at max settings. That is with fan speed at 60%. I have not attempted overclocking as I dont know much about that...I am not even going to attempt right now. Anyways, yeah I ordered the Artic Cooler mainly for the benefit of a quiet fan, it should def cool things down a bit which cant hurt! Thanks for all your responses.