Video Card Temperature

[greddy23]

Hi everyone, here I am again seeking some help from the helpful community

This time I want to see if I could get some help regarding my video card's temperature.

So my video card is a MSI MSI R6950 Twin Frozr III PE/OC Radeon HD 6950 Video Card - 2GB, GDDR5
Here is the link to it : http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-details.asp?Edpno=357296

My set up is the following :
Case : Antec 1200 Full tower case ( 3 front 120mm fans at low setting, 2 rear exhaust 120mm fans at low setting, 1 top 200mm fan at low setting and I also have 2 Cooler Master 120mm sickle flow side fan and one in the middle bracket the case has,these 2 are running off molex so I can not know what rpms they are running at but they do their job I put my hand in front of them and they move a lot of cool air.)

CPU : AMD Phenom II Deneb 945 3.0GHz
Mobo : ASUS Crosshair V Formula AM3+

Ok so finally, I did some research before posting here, and I found that according to an article of benchmarks I found this card is supposed to work at 64C at load, my card idles at 42C and goes up to 82C while playing Battlefield 3 in low settings. Also I am playing at low settings, AA off, all that junk off and 1680x1050 resolution and it still jumps to 82C in one round of playing.The fan I have it set up at 50% manual setting, because If i do auto it jumps to 100% and it sounds like there's an jet next to me, its annoying.

Things I have tried : Cleaning the video card, I have cleaned it really good, no dust on the fans or heatsink at all, I have tried putting the side fan as exhaust to maybe get rid of hot air, nothing, I have put both exhaust fans on med nothing.

The card settings are at default, GPU clock 850Mhz, Memory Clock 1300 mhz, these are default as this card comes overclocked already.

Anyways I believe from 42C idle to 82C is a big difference and I do not think this should be happening, and I wanted to see if someone else had this experience or could suggest something such as replacing the thermal paste on the GPU although I do not know if this voids the warranty, I bought the card when BF3 came out in October of last year.
While 82C might seem ok I read that close to 90-95 might damage the card if its exposed to those temperatures for a long period of time.

If more details are needed I would gladly provide them, I do not wanna make a wall of text I'm sure i am leaving some details out that could help the community give me help. Sorry for the wall of text and Thanks a lot in advanced and I hope this card is not dying on me as I do not plan on buying a new one I want an SSD thanks again

 

[drums101]

the difference between load and idle temps is perfectly normal....42c is not a bad idle temp and for 50% fan speed 82c is not that bad for a load temp either...you could use a program like sapphire trixx or something to adjust the fan profile you can set it so that the fan gets even higher than 50% once the gpu goes over 80c or something...if you want some more advice on the fan profile let me know...its not too hard to figure out. but all in all your temps seem very normal to me...nothing to be concerned about

 

[Deemo13]

My reference 6950 went up higher than that in my Antec Sonata, but that was because of a lack of airflow and it was pretty much just sucking up all of the hot air from the hard drives. I swapped to my older GTX460 and it runs fine.

Get MSI Afterburner, and set a fan speed setting so it spools up as the temperature rises.

 

[Sunius]

Side fan should be intake not exhaust!!! Also, lowering settings does not lower cards temperature .

A picture of inside your case would be nice. We might be able to advice where/what to move.

 

[manofchalk]

That is pretty hot. The idle temps are pretty normal (if a bit high), but that load temp is way too high (especially considering it isn't even full load, low settings below 1080p is nothing for that card).

The card itself has a good cooler, so that leaves case airflow. The Antec Twelve Hundred is a good case, so that cant be problem. Maybe your cable management (or lack of it really) is impeding good airflow and causing overall temps to rise. A pic of the inside of the case will help here.

Also side panel fans should be intakes, not exhausts.

 

[amuffin]

Side fan should be intake not exhaust!!! Also, lowering settings does not lower cards temperature .

A picture of inside your case would be nice. We might be able to advice where/what to move.

Technically it should be......but it doesn't have to be

 

[greddy23]

Hello thanks to all for the help on this topic, my side fan is intake right now,always has, but i tried exhaust because i thought there was hot air trapped between the video card and the power supply, anyways i dont have good cable management since my power supply is not modular and the cables are not very long,for example my 8pin cpu cable doesnt go through the back,its too short, i would have to buy an extension.

I will take a picture however, to see if it can help.

And i thought the higher the settings the more temperature since your stressing the gpu more? thats what i thought,anyways ill post a picture

 

[manofchalk]

Also, whats your idle/load CPU temps? If that is within normal ranges, that may indicate its not an overall problem, may just be something wrong with the GPU.

5min of Prime95 will get us a good idea of max CPU temp.

 

[greddy23]

cpu temp is 93F, while gaming tops i have seen it at 110F, I could do prime95 for 5 mins and tell you the temperature,anyways i took a pic with my crappy webcam, it looks bad but as long as you can see the horrible cable management lol next to the power supply, anyways do i have to upload it to a site or can i post it here in the thread?

 

[greddy23]

http://s211.photobucket.com/albums/bb177/entelix/?action=view&current=Picture1.jpg

Here is a picture, horrible i know but i took it with a crappy 30 dollar logitech webcam lol, i dunno where i put my digital camera,anyways, from there you can kinda see something,and the video card is in the second pcie slot, because on top is my sound card and its a x1 interface card,and the x1 slot is under the top pcie slot, and i didnt wanna put the card on the third or last slot because it would be too close to the psu and that would make the psu blow hot air to the video card.

Anyways i dunno if i can get rid of that ball of wires at the bottom,my friend built the pc in 09 and i never touched it since,i didnt know anything,now that i went to school on pc support and repair i can do it but i been lazy lol

Ran prime95 for 10 minutes, idle cpu temp was 37C/98F and with prime it went to 45C/113F.

 

[manofchalk]

The PSU is actually drawing air from the case and exhausting it out the back, not intaking air to the case. If there is a grill down there, try flipping the PSU so it draws from under the case, then exhausts out the back.

Moving the graphics card to the top PCI-E slot might help. That sound card will fit in any slot, even a PCI-e slot.

Cable management is fun in its own methodical way, and definetly worth it. I'v easily sunk 5hrs into it over my builds life (its essential when you just keep finding HDD's to shove in). This tutorial will show you how to cable manage quite well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERhxmzQR6xA&feature=plcp

An extension for the 8pin and any other short cables may be helpful. Bitfenix Alchemy is a pretty good series for extensions, have no issue with the 24pin one iv got (great LED strips as well).

EDIT
That is very good temps on the CPU. That indicates to me that overall airflow isnt the problem, may just be an issue with the card. Though still manage those cables and see if that helps, it does look like that cluster of cables is blocking any air intake from the front to the GPU.

 

[greddy23]

thanks thanks for your time and help once again

and no theres no filter or hole at the bottom of the case to flip the psu, and really the card will work in a x16 slot? this is the card : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829102041

look at the picture,see how it is x1? will that also work on a regular pcie slot? if so i will move the card to the top and the card at the bottom. and thanks for the tutorial i will def check it out and install everything from scratch my next day off to see if i can improve the cable management. thanks again for your time and help.

 

[amuffin]

Is the card dusty?

 

[manofchalk]

Yep, a PCI card will work in a PCI-e slot. You will be wasting the PCI-e slots potential, but you don't have anything else to put there so it isn't an issue.

Performance from the graphics card may actually improve, as the top slot is always 16x, while lower PCI-e slots would be 8 or 4x depending on the mobo (some more expensive ones do have dual 16x). If the machine was made in '09, even more so as its running PCI Gen 2, which has only half the bandwidth of Gen 3 (Gen3 4x slot has same bandwidth as a Gen2 8x slot).

 

[greddy23]

Is the card dusty?

no its not,i took it out,it was clean and i still blew some air to the fans and the heatsink,its super clean

 

[greddy23]

Yep, a PCI card will work in a PCI-e slot. You will be wasting the PCI-e slots potential, but you don't have anything else to put there so it isn't an issue.

Performance from the graphics card may actually improve, as the top slot is always 16x, while lower PCI-e slots would be 8 or 4x depending on the mobo (some more expensive ones do have dual 16x). If the machine was made in '09, even more so as its running PCI Gen 2, which has only half the bandwidth of Gen 3 (Gen3 4x slot has same bandwidth as a Gen2 8x slot).

thanks i will go ahead and try that,and the build was in 09 but i recently changed the motherboard a month ago,its a crosshair formula v, i used to own a msi 790fx-gd70 i will try that and the cable management when im off next week,again thanks for all the help, great community I am glad i joined it

ok i moved the card to the first slot and the sound card to the third slot i think card is 44c-46c idle, i will still try the cable management to see if that helps, i really hope the card doesnt have any problems, because i replaced a xfx 4870 because it was overheating too much. thanks again

 

[ojas]

Yeah i think the PSU was competing with the graphics card for air...

 

[greddy23]

UPDATE : So I did my best to do cable management, I can't do much because its a non modular psu but I untangled the cables and separated them as best as I could, but still I see high temperatures.

While playing bf3, I left the amd vision engine control center and minimized ramdonly to see the same results as always, 82C with only 64% of GPU activity according to the program. Also when i boot up BF3 and I spawn I see a lot of choppiness and it lasts for about a minute,then it goes away, and its choppy here and there, FPS goes from like 80-40 to 30 and so on, is there a program that runs and measures your avg fps?

I also used MSI afterburner and it shows you a graph and I checked the temperatures and it got up to a 94C high.

I ran a 3DMark11 test and these are the results : http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/4451328

When you go to detailed scores and you see test # 1 - 4 , isn't that FPS too low? Anyways I am starting to think my video card is dying, I could be wrong, but other components such as mobo and hdd have good temperatures, so I think airflow shouldn't be the issue, I was thinking of contacting MSI since this card is only 1 year old and see what they tell me,anyways more input would be great. Thanks

So I played today, BF3 Close Quarters, auto settings, so it has some stuff on ultra etc and resolution is 1680x 1050 so not even 1080p,checked the fps in game by using the command, and I checked that it goes, 80,40,30,60 rinse and repeat, I notice obviously when it hits 30 the game gets choppy, so every time the game felt choppy I looked up to the corner, 30 fps, then it goes back up, I also tried without the side panel on see if the temperatures would decrease, still no avail 84C tops, I don't know what else to try now I bought Close quarters and now i cant play it cuz of the choppyness