I've just downloaded RivaTuner. (rather than nTune since nTune has a pisstakingly huge file size and I have a completely crap 56k internet connection)
I took a look at the readme file, and was immediately feeling lost and confused. It doesn't make much sense, and seems to be written for only experts to understand. It also tells people to look at the HELP before doing things. It doesn't tell you that you can only do that by right-clicking on various things. I only just realised that.
So... basically I was trying to improve my GPU's temperature. I have an 8800GTX. It has the standard fan and heatsink unit that ASUS provides with their GTX cards.
I get about 80-85 centigrade under load. 70 idle.
What I want to know is basically... I found the utility in RivaTuner to change my GPU fan speed. But I'm not sure how safe it is to use. I told it to detect my default fan settings, or whatever RivaTuner calls that. Now it gives me a slider which lets me change the fan speed. But rather than RPM it seems to be a percentage.
Is 100 percent the maximum SAFE speed for the fan to run at? Or if I set it to higher than normal, does it cause huge wear and tear and/or burn out the fan?
Is it some kind of stupid bug that makes the card never seem to run its fan faster even when it's over 80 degrees centigrade? I know the card can take much higher temperatures, but you'd think the speed would at least increase slightly.
Anyway, could someone tell me if it's perfectly safe to make my fan run faster? I noticed the temperature dropping like a stone when I put it on 100 percent speed for about 30 seconds, so it would be nice if it's ok to keep it running extra fast.
Also, has anyone overclocked using Rivatuner? I'm not sure my GPU needs overclocking, but I'd like to know how safe the utility is for that purpose too. My understanding is that it's meant to somehow test automatically how far you can go safely. Is that right?
RivaTuner doesn't seem to be up to date for the latest Nvidia drivers, so I get an error message about that. It does seem to run fine though, so I'm not sure what to make of the complaint. Could it cause a problem?
EDIT: Also, my new PC case has a fan speed controller on the front panel. I didn't have the right connector to make it control the GPU, which is why I'm using RivaTuner. But I can control the case fans and the CPU fan. But what speeds should I be using? Can a fan speed controller set the fans to run TOO fast? For example, my CPU fan is an 120mm fan. What kind of RPM should that be using? The speed controller seems to say it's normally at 1600RPM. Just ONE touch of the "increase speed" button causes it to increase to 2300RPM. Is that speed safe? it seems a bit high. ;; It certainly improves the system temperatures though... What setting should I be using? Or how do I find out?
(Weird... it seems that after it went up to 2300 it then slowly decreased back to the original 1600RPM. Maybe there's meant to be something you press to lock it at the higher speed...)
Sorry for being a complete noob at this stuff. I never had a speed controller before. Can anyone help?
ARGH! It's suddenly on 2300RPM again. I don't understand this! The bloody thing didn't come with proper instructions!
Thread Recap (last 10 posts from newest to oldest)
Jul 09, 09 06:08AMDG
The heat gets up to about 83C during the artifact scanning in ATI tool, but I think it does that anyway even without overclocking it. That scanning of the spinning cube heats the card up insanely for some reason.
Hmm. Strange. I tried taking the clock higher. I got the Core to 650Mhz with no problems. But I can't use the core at 650Mhz AND the memory at 1000Mhz. It starts freezing up the system during the ATI tool test.
I don't really understand that... Every guide to overclocking I've read says that you're meant to test out the core and the memory independantly, but that doesn't make sense. If I do that, I can get both to insanely high levels with no problem. Then when I put those values together, I get big problems.
Any idea why?
Wait, maybe I was wrong. It freezes up after a while with 640Mhz, no matter what the memory is set to, even though the heat isn't any worse. I think it's something to with the shader clock being too high since it's connected to the core by default. Can change that, but not in ATI tool.
OK...
I set the clock in RivaTuner and TESTED it in ATI tool this time.
Oddly, it found no artifacts, didn't get insanely hot, and yet it froze up for a few seconds.
Somehow I think I'll be sticking with my tried and tested overclock.
This message was edited by DG on Jul 09 2009.
Jul 09, 09 05:43AMhiigaran
well thats a good enough improvement. you got more frames per second, even if they were only 3 or 4, and overall, its a good improvement. if your heat is holding out fine, then id say you did a good job.
Jul 09, 09 05:40AMDG
Ok, I got some 3dmark results. It seems to get a few more FPS but I'm not sure how much better it really is. I could try clocking it higher, but I can't find a program to test stability... ATI tool is meant to do it, but the bloody thing crashes even WITHOUT overclocking.
AFTER overclocking to 620Mhz core, I got: 3DMark Score 10107 3DMarks SM2.0 Score 4859 HDR/SM3.0 Score 4410 CPU Score 2345 Game Score N/A N/A GT1 - Return To Proxycon 39.542 FPS GT2 - Firefly Forest 41.442 FPS CPU1 - Red Valley 0.738 FPS CPU2 - Red Valley 1.193 FPS HDR1 - Canyon Flight 44.855 FPS HDR2 - Deep Freeze 43.343 FPS Fill Rate - Single-Texturing 3724.880 MTexels/s Fill Rate - Multi-Texturing 18567.752 MTexels/s Pixel Shader 365.190 FPS Vertex Shader - Simple 221.905 MVertices/s Vertex Shader - Complex 150.439 MVertices/s Shader Particles (SM3.0) 145.858 FPS Perlin Noise (SM3.0) 124.840 FPS 8 Triangles 22.156 MTriangles/s 32 Triangles 87.956 MTriangles/s 128 Triangles 273.728 MTriangles/s 512 Triangles 276.980 MTriangles/s 2048 Triangles 271.634 MTriangles/s 32768 Triangles 270.850 MTriangles/s
Jul 09, 09 03:29AMDG
The futuremark/3Dmark 2006 benchmark software.
Jul 09, 09 03:27AMhiigaran
what was already on the pc? the game or the benchmarking software you were talking about?
Jul 09, 09 03:23AMDG
Now that you mention it, I've got an outdated version of Futuremark around here somewhere... Must find it...
WTF. It was on the pc already! Stupid Windows Vista just refused to find it when I searched.
.... And Vista refuses to run it, giving a BS excuse about a missing dll file. I'll have to try in XP.
Jul 09, 09 03:21AMhiigaran
would be easier if you had some kind of benchmarking software. do you know of any, or should i suggest some for you?
Jul 09, 09 03:17AMDG
Hard to say, really, whether it made a difference. I think I'll see how Warhead runs without the overclock.
Unfortunately I uninstalled the original Crysis, so I can't test that WITH it.
Hmm... I wonder if there's a "show FPS" setting.
Jul 09, 09 03:13AMhiigaran
that is a significant overclock on the core speed. however, im confused with what you aid there, and then what you said in the next paragraph...did the overclock work or not? because with those numbers, it should have had a noticeable change.
Jul 08, 09 03:30PMDG
Well, I left the shader clock linked to the core clock.
My original clock speeds were:
Core: 576Mhz Ram: 900Mhz.
I overclocked to Core: 620Mhz Ram: 1000Mhz
In comparison to the overclock I've seen which had a core speed of over 750Mhz, that's nothing.
I just had Crysis Warhead playing on 1680 by 1050 Resolution, on full settings for everything apart from Anti-aliasing, which the game doesn't even need. NO LAG. I got a bit of lag just now on a mission where I'm riding a speeding train at insane velocities while blasting everything in sight, but I think that was pushing it.
That was using the overclocked settings. I'd not tried Warhead without overclocking. Maybe I should test it.
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