Yes it's completely safe, as you said, unless you do anything really stupid. As for the other problems, try going to the NVIDIA drivers page here. Then download the latest drivers for Vista. Mine works fine on Vista 64-bit, so I don't see why it shouldn't work on your 32-bit version.

That's the thing. I already DO have the latest drivers for Vista. That's why I can't understand what the problem is.

Well, I found another program (eVGAPrecision) that lets you do the fan control on Vista with no problems. It seems to read the temperatures right, unlike RivaTuner.

I've discovered an unpleasant suprise. Playing a game such as Crysis... Actually, it's ONLY Crysis so far... Makes the GPU temperature go up to about 82C. Ok, so that's not high enough to make it explode, but with 100 percent fan speed, that's... well, worrying. I know Crysis has a reputation for being the game that no system can actually play on full settings yet, but with the fans in my case you'd think it would be a little cooler...

EDIT: Hm. I got a program that lets you read your GPU bios.
Using it I found out that apparantly my GPU can get to 110C before it reaches the critical threshold temperature and mostly shuts itself down. Seems 80C isn't anything to worry about.

What's weird is, I looked up the fan settings with the same utility, and according to the readout, the FAN on the GPU thinks the critical temperature at which it should turn itself on at 100 percent speed is 220 degrees!?
It doesn't give a unit, but I shouldn't think it meant Farhenheit.

What the hell is that all about? The fan only goes into panic mode long after the GPU core itself has! In fact, the threshold for the fan seems to be about 110 degrees after the GPU has either shut down or caught fire!

This message was edited by DG on Jul 05 2009.

Well, the temperature control built in to the 8800 is obviously not very good, because there seem to be loads of people trying to use RivaTuner instead. I'll report back with load temperatures in a bit.

Not very good? You can say that again. It seems to only have a critical threshold, no milder thresholds...

Then again maybe the card uses a seperate fan speed controller unit instead of letting the card's drivers/bios do it. I'm pretty sure the fans do get faster, though the bios says they don't. Weird, really.

Oh well, the main thing is how hot it gets, maximum. Crysis appears to be the most straining game in existance for graphics cards. It's not going past 85C so I think it's probably fine.

Wow. I have a pretty cool system. Playing the Crysis demo at 1680 X 1050 with AA off and all settings on high got a maximum temperature of 69C and average of about 65C. That's with fan @ 100%.

@DG - convert 110 degrees C = 230 degrees F
So if you card is rated at 110C, then your card can handle up to 230F. BUt if you are worried, then spend a little extra money and get a GPU cooler (unless you already have one).

I'm... not sure I understand why you're telling me to convert into Fahrenheit.

In the UK we always use Centigrade. Well, I do anyway. Did you say that because of what I said back in my other post about the fan speed threshold in the GPU bios? It didn't actually say anything about a unit at all. I just noticed that if it was in Centigrade, then that means the fan only starts to go really fast much later than the GPU shutting itself down. Which is... pretty dumb.

What exactly do you mean by GPU cooler? The 8800GTX comes with a great big cooling unit by default. It's a heatsink on the processor, linked to a really BIG heatsink by a heatpipe. There's a fan that blows air over the heatsinks.

Did you have something more than that in mind? I know you can get some truly huge cooling units, but to be honest I have bugger all space in my case already. The GPU is nearly touching my Hard drive cage thing. (If I ever need a bigger GPU I'm going to have to move my hard drives into Caddies and somehow remove the cage with a power tool...)

Also I'm not sure how much extra cooling one of those things would really get me. What would you suggest I did get to mount on an 8800GTX, and what kind of improvement would I get?

Oh, and dangerman200k... Try running Crysis in that resolution with AA off and all settings on VERY HIGH. That's what I played (Past tense because I finally completed it last night. Time for Warhead.) it on. I'm curious as to how your system handles it.

quote

What exactly do you mean by GPU cooler? The 8800GTX comes with a great big cooling unit by default. It's a heatsink on the processor, linked to a really BIG heatsink by a heatpipe. There's a fan that blows air over the heatsinks.

what comes with the GPU is its stock cooler, which is usually more than enough. however, you can, if you want, get a better GPU cooler. Here are neweggs video card coolers.

I played Crysis with the settings you recommended, and it was definitely more than just playable. It lagged a bit at certain parts, but for the most part it was certainly fine. I still prefer to play it on high though. With the auto settings on, my graphics card heated up to about 80C, then the fan stepped up a gear and took the temperature right down to about 60C-70C.

Meanwhile mine is at 80... Did you replace your stock cooler with something else then? If so, which?

Oh, just wondering by the way, but why do you prefer to play Crysis on High? Very High surely looks better?
Just turn down the resolution a bit and it won't lag.

i havent played crysis, but my point stands for every game really - im more than happy with 800x600 in FPS games. maybe on some id go as high as 1024x768, but thats about it. i dont really see much of a point in going for higher resolutions unless you have large screens.

800x600!? Good grief, I've not played anything in THAT resolution since Diablo 2!
1024x768 is the minimum I use. I go for the highest resolution I can without getting lag. Crysis looked like CRAP when I tried it in 1024X768 on this screen.
(22 inch HDTV. Max resolution is 1680x1050)
On a high resolution, Crysis looks BEAUTIFUL. No doubt that's why it nearly makes graphics cards explode in flames.

Anyway, am I being an idiot? I'm looking at that newegg coolers page. I can't see how you'd actually fit any of those products TO the graphics card. Some seem to just be fans. The card already has a fan built in. Removing that would mean removing the whole stock cooling unit, surely? But that would mean there was no heatsink. There doesn't seem to be a giant heatsink with the fans on the newegg page.

And does a GPU cooler need to be specially made for that specific card, or not?

well there doesnt seem to be a giant heatsink on most cards using stock coolers anyway. i think its just different material, different shapes, and more powerful (and larger) fans.

id assume there are categories for what coolers are compatible with what, but for the most part, they should be compatible with a wide range of cards. i guess youd need to look at each product.

Hmm. Well, I found a couple on there for the 9800 and 8800 series cards.

There's one huge massive drawback with said cooling units. They both take up an enormous amount of space. Apparantly they make one card take up the space of 3 PCI slots.

There's another interesting one there though, the Aerocool FANLESS cooling unit, on page 3 of the newegg devices. I can't really understand how it could work all that well. It seems to just be a really big heatsink on its own.
I wonder, though, is there a way to use it AS WELL as the normal heatsink? That could work...

uhhhh, probably with some welding, but i wouldnt be too sure on that...besides, youre going on about space issues with a heatsink and fan, but a massive heatsink on another heatsink is no problem for you?

by the way, i think those massive heatsinks are called passive coolers.