Anything from 30c to 120c is fine

[red1776]

Hi Folks,
First of all I would like to say thanks to captiancranky for the advice, and im going to have my wife come with and do the math for me when i go to buy memory next time.
At the risk of bieng impugned, admonished, and castigated, with Vahementi's semi permanant sticki a few inches above, Im going to ask anyway.
I recently purchased a graphics card, one of the variations of the Ati hd 3650 1gb. i noticed it idled @ 55c and up to 85c when playing crysis on maxed out settings. That seemed rather high temp so I tried getting some information on maximum Gpu temp and the only thing i could find was this in the help section of Catalyst.

CAUTION:
If a GPU is being used at or close to its maximum capabilities, or if the card is running close to 110 ºC, do not increase the GPU or memory clock speeds.

Im not sure if that means that 110c is okay, but i suspect not, as i believe that was roughly the temperature they achieved at chernobyl shortly before things went awry. I tried finding some threads addressing Maximum Gpu temps on here and i found varying opinions by a few TechSpot evangelist's that ranged from 'no more than 60c' to ' if its working at 100c, its fine'. and i havent been able to find this information even on the manufactures website. Its always been my understanding (probably in error) that although the arcitecture is different, a GPU is a dedicated CPU, and i dont know of a cpu out there that should be run at 80c-110c.

If someone more learned than myself knows this and would care to share, i would appreciate it immensely.

 

[CMH]

All chips have a different safe operating temp, depending on how they've been designed.

From memory, both ATI and nvidia don't release this information (for GPUs), unlike CPUs which the same information is readily available.

Therefore, it is true that some graphics cards may work at temps over 100C, some may only work at 60C (I'm quite skeptical, as 60C is pretty low temp).

(I'd say all, but I'm sure there are some oddball chips around, so) Most chips these days have a temp sensor, and would shut down if critical temps are reached, or even underclocked. Therefore, I'd say if you aren't running into any problems whatsoever with your graphics card, you should be fine.

However, if you are running into trouble, check if you have enough ventilation in your case. All graphics cards should come with adequate ventilation in terms of its heatsink and fan combo, and its up to you to provide enough case ventilation for it to work. So if you have enough fans on your case, and you're still having temperature problems with your graphics card, you probably have a faulty card.