Idiotic Nvidia drivers?

[snyderm]

I am rather frustrated with my Nvidia drivers for my 8800gt. I started monitoring my 8800gt's temperature to see if I wanted to overclock it. I saw some temperatures that looked alarmingly high. Playing titan quest on high I saw my temperature approach 93c after an hour of play. (interestingly enough, crysis only gets to about 78 after the same amount of time) My fan seems to rev up and then rev down over and over again (quite annoying). Still, the temperature continues to climb.

I downloaded Ntune for monitoring my temperature, and it has the feature of setting the fan speed at a constant rate. I chose to try the game with the 65% fan direct fan speed settingy, and I found that my temperature never got above about 76c. Setting a constant fan speed lowered the maximum temperature dramatically. I am forced to conclude that the default automatic fan speed control for my 8800gt as set by the driver is completely broken.

could it be that a temperature of 90c+ is not hot enough for the fan speed to be increased according to the default automatic fan speed? That sounds very hot to me.

I could simply leave the fan speed at 65%, but unfortunetly that fan speed is set at that speed even in 2D applications (which contradicts Ntunes description of the direct fan speed control, by the way. It should only go to 65% in a 3d application).

Has anyone else noticed wackiness with the 8800gt drivers? I have the newest drivers.

 

[cleeve]

How's the airflow in your case? Bad airflow might cause this sort of thing.

I'd also check how well the cooler is seated on your 8800 GT; reseat it with some good thermal paste, too.

 

[Anoobis]

The only strange thing I've noticed lately with nV's drivers is with the beta drivers. They don't seem to like Oblivion on my system and would lock up after about 30 minutes of gameplay. Switched to the WHQL drivers and haven't had a problem since.

 

[snyderm]

Well, I have a suspicion that my case is not good in terms of airflow, despite my 2 80mm case fans and 1 120mm case fan. I don't really have another case to compare temperatures with. Maybe I should buy a different one to compare it to.

I guess its time for a closer inspection of my VGA cooler. I am loathe to take it off, though.