8600 GTS running too hot?

Hi peeps, I'll keep this brief:

I got an EVGA 8600GTS 256mb GPU as a personal XMAS gift, I know it's not all that great a card, but it came out to about $15 after combo discount (from another item) and MIR. All I need it for is to play GW occasionally on my second desktop and to do light photo and video editing.

So the problem is that this puppy runs much hotter than I would like it to. I have a 4850 in my other PC and it stays at about 47-48 when idle in the summer (no AC either), and never goes above 63 when under stress (ie Oblivion for a couple hours). I set the fan speed at 50% in the CCC for that card btw.
Now the 8600gts runs at 56 when idle and the fan speed at 100% (which was a pain in the arse to get to stay there... eventually downloaded a new driver and it actually seemed to work with Riva after that). So, after that rambling post, my question is this:
Why does this card run so much hotter thatn the 4850, which is a far more powerful card? My case is dust free, as of 3 days ago, and has pretty good airflow, it's wintertime to in upstate NY, so you know it's cold. lol

*I used Everest Ultimate for all temp. readings*

Different cards will run at different temps, and it has nothing to do with the power of the card. Some companies put on good heatsinks and fans, others do not. Sometimes your MOSFETs and Memory will have heatsinks, sometimes they wont. Also, onboard sensors aren't exactly the most accurate either, so don't worry about it too much. My 3870 Toxic (OC'd) peaks at 57c, and my slower 3850 (not OC'd) peaks at 72c! Both cards are from Saphire, but it just goes to show you it's all in the heatsink.

http://www.overclock.net/air-cooling...r-cooling.html

The temps of it aren't that bad. My old, and overclocked, 8600gt idled only about 2-3° C cooler and was fine, even under heavy loads. So that gts should be fine too.

As for why the 4850 runs cooler... well it could be more than one reason really. For starters the 4850 most likely has a cooler that's far better than the crappy ones they put on 8600's. Secondly would be the fact that the 4850 is made with a much smaller process(55nm vs 80nm). Even without a significantly better cooler the smaller process alone could make it run cooler.

well, my worry is that it's doing ok at 56 while idel/surfing the web - but within 5 minutes of playing a game the fan switches off and it soon hits 76 under load. I really don't want it to be that hot, for the sake of the motherboard and other components if nothing else...

GPU temp sensors aren't all that great, and it's typically a combo of your memory and MOSFET temps as well. You don't need to worry about your temps, they are normal, and will not harm other components or your motherboard. There isn't much you can do either, outside of watercooling, which might only drop your temps 10 degrees, if that. Lets put it this way, if you look at my link above, you'll note that by putting my entire computer outside, my hot GPU only dropped about 20c. And putting your computer outside is a lot better then a water cooling rig. A fun fact you probably didn't know, but parts of your motherboard will heat up to well over 125c during common use of your system, especially near the CPU and MOSFET's/Caps near your CPU:

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/FileList/...-cool.htm#uc-2

PCB's and your motherboard are actually very well designed to take that kind of heat and energy, so you don't need to worry at all about a 75c graphics card. A lot of people worry about it, but it is a 100% unwarrented thing to worry about, nothing bad will happen from it. 75c for a GPU is average, normal, common.

I've had the 8600GTS for quite a while now, for GW and other gaming purposes, and while it does run on the hotter side it has never malfunctioned in any way, and I love it.

I've seen my 8600GT get up to 72C or so tops in the summer, right now it's 55C under load, 45C was it's lowest, probably sometime at idle, and 65C was it's hottest recently, probably some time during the day.

It's about 9C outside though right now and gets up to 15~ or so in the morning, but yeah the temps are nothing to worry about.

The 8600 core is engineered with unilateral drain DiEL gate switches in shader core MOS. These gates cause power to surge into the high density Cobalt oxide doped pMOS on the upper side of chip. This electron surge causes heat levels to be drastically higher than many other GPUs.

In short and layman: Chip outputs excess energy into a small space that can take the heat. Don't worry.

well, I guess I won't worry about it, but it still makes me wonder.... I put the exact same GPU into a PC for my in-laws about 6 weeks ago, and it ran 10-12 degrees cooler when I was testing it for 2-3 days prior to delivering it to them. I'm still going to see if I can figure out how to get the fan to stay running at a constant speed while I'm gaming (which is all too rare these days), but I won't get my boxers in a bunch over the mid 70s temps. lol

thanks as always