[DeadlyNinja]

I just updated my driver for my 8800GS for god knows how long, and ever since I updated my drivers, my GPU fan has been going off every few minutes... while I'm browsing the internet! Before updating my drivers, this never happened. So I downloaded GPUZ and I see my sensors detecting 99 degrees on GPU and 73 degrees on the PCB. I never used this program before my fan started acting up in this update. Now I'm worried. I'm BROWSING THE INTERNET at such temps! That can't be right, can it? Is it time to retire the card, or do you think using old drivers from before can fix this? I'm waiting for Nvidia's upcoming cards before I decide on what to get next.

[Grall]

Maybe you should roll back to your previous driver set and see if the behavior persists or not...

99C does sound rather excessive for sure.

[DeadlyNinja]

Well, sending that sucker in for an RMA. Not sure why new drivers would do that, but the card will be 4 years old in a few months. I got a lot of mileage out of it.

[Blazkowicz]

did you touch the card?, heatsink or the back of the card behind the GPU should be excruciatlingly hot.

if not then maybe your sensor readings are borked.
might be worth updating the BIOS of the card.

edit: there were indeed drivers who made cards overheat
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Lates...s-136701.shtml
similar issue there
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=200990

you may take control of fans with rivatuner or something else, or even install new cooling and have it run at same speed constantly.

[Grall]

It's not unheard of for Nvidia drivers to mess with the fan. Try rolling back the drivers before you bother with sending in the card. Deliberately RMAing a fully functional piece of hardware is rather selfish IMO as you'll dump the costs you cause on other customers...

[Davros]

Ive got a gtx 260 10 year warranty and if it breaks I will sit on it until 2019 by then they will have no 260's in stock to replace it with so imagine the card they will send me it should be 20x faster
If I rma'd it right now and they couldnt replace it with another 260 i'd be expecting at least a gtx 570 2gb

[Bludd]

New drivers enabled GPU accelerated rendering in your browser?

[DeadlyNinja]

Yeah, I rolled my drivers back and everything was fine. Not gonna waste my time to RMA it if it still works. Besides, I'm considering switching the a 7770 once the price drops for lower power draw.

[Davros]

Plus you need to be certain the company would have no 8800gs's in stock and its a bit too early for that
afaik they retailed for $165 thats gtx 550ti 1gb money (If thats what you paid for it)

[Dooby]

This exact same thing has happened to me this weekend on AMD hardware, I was just coming to post about it. I have a 4870x2, and I installed Catalyst 12.3s for Diablo3, as I was running 11.10 (the Rage driver) prior to this. I've just tried the 12.4s too, and they are similar.

My GPU(s) is/are running at 88-90C and my fan is on 45%. Previously this was <60C and < 30%. If I uninstall these drivers and get it to the exact same state, fan is hardly blowing (therefore I presume lower temps).

I have no programs open (OK, I've now opened a browser to type this, but the browser was opened a long time after the restart). What have AMD and NVidia done?!

[Davros]

possibly related I have a 6950 and on 12.3's ive been getting bsod's with atikmpag.sys these have happened only when my pc is doing very little (eg: reading b3d) and never in a game.
and also many "your graphics driver has recovered" messages.

[smw]

I may be completely off target but if the problem for all of you occurs when the browser is opened it may be related to the hardware acceleration of flash.

[Davros]

I will give it a try

had flash hardware accell disabled the only web page open was the b3d forum I was typing a reply and bsod

[Grall]

Mate of mine had to disable flash hardware acceleration or else he gets a green screen instead of video. He has a NV 560 card in his PC.

Flash = pure evil... Simple truth.

[CarstenS]

Strange. Never had a problem on more trustworthy sites with any kind of flash: ads, games or vids with neither Radeon nor Geforce.

[Davros]

sure but theres reasons beyond graphical problems as to why flash is evil, especially adobe's damm pdf plugin for browsers. thats how I last nearly got caught out by a vunreability in pdf embedded in a web page that my browser tried to open
(i got a something has produced an error in some adobe dll. Then my firewall popped up with C:\Users\Davros\AppData\Local\Temp\randomnumbers.e xe is trying to access the internet)
I managed to clean it myself and work out how it got on my pc now my browser is set to ask save pdf to disk instead of open it in a browser and i got rid of acrobat reader and replaced it with something else.

[Blazkowicz]

hardware acceleration is something is disable because my PC is so damn powerful it can plays the videos, so I'd better avoid another layer that can lead to bugs.
I would think differently on a windows laptop, but I don't intend to own a windows laptop.

now the adobe pdf plugin, is something I stopped forever when I experienced the ubuntu 7.04 way, you clicked on the pdf link and had "open with" and "save" option. the "open with" option even worked, and opened evince (which I now install if using windows).

no more browser slowdowns (when opening a pdf, as other slowdowns are still there ), no more need to hunt for that slow tab with the pdf in it etc.
for flash I've used flashblock (for mozilla browsers). when the world gets a viral infection of html5 ads and "content" I will have to find solutions, such as a fake user agent with a whitelist for using the real user agent, using a crappy browser such as dillo on purpose, etc.

flash is not something I hate, it replaced "automatic downloading of codec has failed" pop-up boxes with actual video playback

[Grall]

I haven't used adobe acrobat for like a million years for the very reason you mention Davros; driveby downloads. Besides, last time I used it, it used a HELL of a lot of memory, insisted on loading for no reason on every bootup and was so ludicrously slow-running it was an obvious and blatant act of criminal negligence to program such a truly rotten piece of crap.

[Blazkowicz]

Grall, but it's high end software

[DeadlyNinja]

Nah, I wasn't viewing flash on anything. I think I was just on Nvidia's site while the drivers were installing. The fan suddenly just sped up to a very noticeably loud speed. Next thing I knew, things were just going crazy.

[Dooby]

This is on my desktop, nothing open, the fan is noticably louder with the 12.x drivers than the 11.x drivers.

Checking CCC, the fan is 12% faster (45% vs 33%). Setting the fan at 33% causes the GPU to hit 100+C. It's *insane*.

[Grall]

That sounds really weird. (And very wrong!)

What's the GPU load when you're just idling? Voltages?

I assume there's no background task sitting and doing something behind your back (check task manager)?

[Dooby]

It's literally when the computer boots, there's nothing running. The card isn't overclocked and is in its idle clocks of 507/500 (full 3D is 750/900). Activity reported by CCC is 0%. Voltages haven't ever been changed by me, Afterburner reports them as 1262mV.

11.11 drivers = 90C @ 507/500 & 34% fan speed.
12.3/4 drivers = 90C @ 507/500 & 45% fan speed.

The difference in noise level is very very noticeable. Something very wrong is going on in 12.x drivers.

[swaaye]

I remember a NVIDIA driver years ago that they recalled because it would cause fans to stop. But I haven't heard anything like that since then.

[Grall]

If the GPU suddenly idles at 90C at the fan speed it ran fine at previously, idle volts must have gone up - or else your vidcard heatsink became instantly clogged with dust when you upgraded the driver...

Are you sure the volts are the same for both drivers?