Out of Pod Experience

When I play EVE with max settings, the temperature has gotten as high as 75 C a few times and I was concerned that it was running too hot so I turned down all the settings. After that the temp went to about 45 C.
Here is my gfx card http://www.geforce.com/Hardware/GPUs/geforce-gtx-560/specifications

It says that the max GPU temp for the card is 99 C, but I didn't know whether or not temperatures around 75 C were starting to push it or not. Could someone tell me whether or not this is too hot or not? And if it is, then what ways are there for me to lower the temp without turning down settings?

First thing to take into account is that thermal damage is not linear with temperature, but rather almost exponential.

The temperature at which the card is in immediate danger of failure is actually well over 100C, but constant use near the top-spec temperature will lead to a shorter card life. Usually the specifications mention a temperature for which the failure rate during the warranty period given a reasonable number of hours of use would be relatively low.

That being said, as long as you don't go much over 80C for an extended period of time each day, your card could very well live to see the day when it becomes completely morally obsolete.

It is actually a brand new card that I put in my desktop a few weeks ago. It hasn't reached that temperature again though. The only time that it was 75 C was when I had CQ loaded. After I disabled it, it dropped the temperature noticeably.

And I'd probably have to clean it more often than that because my place tends to get dusty very quickly.



I've never seen it hit above 80C once, even when CQ was loaded. 70C seems to be the highest it gets (now that I have disabled CQ). I'll just keep monitoring the temperature and making sure it doesn't get too hot.

I'm using Speed Fan right now to monitor the fans and temperatures. Is that a decent program?

Does it display the data you want displayed ? If yes, it's as good as any other. They just report what the card/system tells them.
I personally use RealTemp (no fan monitoring, just temperatures), but that's a matter of taste.


If.

On the other hand, others most likely have just that one they're using now to read this and don't even have a clue where to buy compressed air cans.

My card (Nvidia) is jammed into a crappy-airflow Dell case and can hit 85°C on occasion.

But I have a thermal hardener installed on my box (it sits in front of an air-conditioner duct) so I just activate that when needed.

VSYNC ON both ingame and outside of game has always been a lifecard saver.

Up to this day I never quite understood people saying it impacts their visual enjoyment of a game, when practically everything looks TOTALLY the same. The FPS craze of some people is sometimes pretty much hot air.

Not on a typical LCD monitor with the normal 60Hz refresh rate, and not in games like EVE where stuff doesn't really move all that fast (and the server-client communication is only once per second).
And tearing sucks anyway, so vsynch on is something I'd never ever want to give up.

But with a 120Hz monitor playing a single-player shooter with vsynch on (or multiplayer with a <5ms server ping), you certainly can "FEEL" the difference between 60 FPS and 120 FPS.
I can certainly tell the difference between 60 FPS and 85 FPS (I use a 85Hz CRT).

It's not VITAL, and I can even live with 30 FPS just fine, but you DO feel the difference even for 60 to 85... only when moving fast and looking around spastically, of course, but still.
If all you do is run in a mostly straight line and barely look around, it's not going to matter either way.

P.S. And if the game has even some rudimentary form of motion blur, the benefit becomes negligible even at higher FPS differences.
Also, if you're running a 2-card SLI, micro-stutter sucks, so you actually want a FPS that's nearly double of whatever you're comfortable with (for a single card) to avoid any mood-breaking micro-stuttering whenever a "worst case scenario" gets encountered (rarely, but still).

P.P.S. And you also have input lag to consider, BOTH for the monitor and for the controls. If you have an inexpensive LCD monitor chances are your monitor video input lag is significant (sometimes up to 2 frame's worth, but usually just 1 frame's worth), and if you're using both triple buffering and vsynch on, in a bad case scenario with "max CPU pre-rendered frames" set to 3 or above you can get slightly over 2 additional frame's worth of controller input lag on top of that... so when you already have a combined lag of let's say 4 frames (although it could even be above 5 if you're really unlucky), OF COURSE you're not going to feel much of a difference between 60 FPS and 120 FPS, as in both cases your experience is still kind of "meh".
For best results, you want a fast CRT monitor, for which video input lag is negligible, and you also want to TURN OFF triple buffering and also reduce the mac CPU pre-rendered frames to 1 or even 0.

I used to have a pasively-cooled Nvidia 8500 GT.
I never bothered to add a fan even if it would have probably really needed one in my case.

Under full load during the summer (my room used to be hell-like in the afternoon, since I used to smoke regular cigarettes heavily - so no AC and window constantly open - and my window is facing south-west) it easily went close to or even past 100C, with 105C not that uncommon on some extra-hot days. 70+C at *idle*.

It died with very little warning. After nearly 2 years of use under those exact conditions.
Not unexpectedly, given the conditions I was using it in, but still, there were no artifacts or anything to warn me before it failed.
2D kept working (sort of, during night-time) for a couple of days, then I got a replacement (a very cheap one since I was about to change my entire machine soon anyway).

CCP don't know how to code that well. they confuse themselves all the time.