Kitty - 7800

Smooth*{MEOW}*

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Kitty - 7800

« on: April 23, 2006, 03:26:06 AM »

Hey Kitty, since we have virtually the same graphics cards, have you noticed your temps rising higher than usual lately or any instability issues? I noticed mine getting up there lately so I did some checking around. Turns out the fan on it was only running at 43% in both 2d and 3d modes. It should spin up higher in 3d. On the EVGA forums it's a known issue in the GPU's BIOS, which mine is using version 13.7B. Your card is probably running the same version since we ordered around the same time. Anyhow I fixed it using Rivatuner and set it to spin up to 75% in 3d and 50% in 2d. Temps went down by a few degrees C. I don't know if you're familiar with Rivatuner, but I can show you how to do it if you like. No big deal, just thought I'd mention it since summer is here and heating up.


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Felix*{MEOW}*

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Re: Kitty - 7800

« Reply #1 on: April 23, 2006, 06:27:14 AM »

Smooth can ya post a link to this. I think anyone that has a card with a cooling fan might want to have a look.


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Smooth*{MEOW}*

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Re: Kitty - 7800

« Reply #2 on: April 23, 2006, 09:54:42 AM »

Yeah I will find a link for Rivatuner Fe. But it's for the advanced user, as it is an overclocking utility. You don't have to use the overclock tools in it though. It has some pretty neat monitoring capabilities, such as clock frequency monitoring, fan rpm percentage, gpu temp, etc. It does require some tweaking to get it to display the info you want though.

I'm not certain if the fan issue is limited to certain cards or not, however it is a reported problem with some EVGA brand 7800's. The card's onboard BIOS is set up to drop the fan down to 43% of it's maximum capable RPM when it's in 2D mode, i.e. desktop, web surfing, word processing, etc. This is in order to cut down on noise and power consumption, and that speed will do just fine if you're doing any of those activities. It's supposed to spool up higher than that when you're running a 3D app, such as a game. However I've found my card stays at 43% no matter what. Not a problem if you're just playing for a hour, but after a few hours it could become an issue with the buildup of heat. I touched my card's heatsink after running it through a couple hours of play and it was hot to the touch, so I investigated and found it was topping out at 43% RPM.