A Dell XPS Tech experience. GPU temps - Page 2

I'm foolish?!? I don't see you contributing to how to resolve his problem.
All I was saying to him was to try it stock and see what happens from there. I garauntee you that if he had just taken it out of the box and tried FryCry again, it would probably be working fine.

Like I said, I have an XPS2 that runs FRYCRY and I have NO PROBLEMS with MAX settings. I also stated that I did not do anything different from stock other than uninstall / disable some apps that came with the system that I do not need.

So, Autochton why don't you CONTRIBUTE for once? :P N00B

What driver are you using? Version? Is it from Dell's site? etc...details please

Sorry dude, but opinion does carry weight..if you only knew...

78.11? That may be the problem. As reported by other forums, the 78.11 is THROTTLED down because that particular version causes a 5-10 degree INCREASE as compared to the 77.24 prior.

the cure for the dell syndrome: sager/pctorque/clevo

i would try some as5

Something doesn't sound right...

Not trying to be rude, but... Are you doublely sure you got all the options within "I8KfanGUI" that control the fan speeds? I've run into a similiar problem where the fans "read" 4k in one tab, but in another they are set to off or slow and that setting overides them! At 4krpms you should clearly hear both rear fans on the XPS Gen 2 headphones or not.

I just now measured my system under full graphics load with 3dmark... it does not go higher than 57c for the GPU.

If that wasn't it, have you tried forcing both fans to full speed?

Idle temps, at stock: GPU=50c CPU=35c
Load temps, at stock: GPU=57c CPU=44c

Pentium M 2.13ghz
Nvidia Go 6800 Ultra clock 450/1064 stock.

I bet that Dell tech thought you meant 90F to 95F!


So despite both fans being on high, your GPU temps still reach 90C under load? Those fan rpms look normal, so do the temps. My DDR2 ram runs at the same temp as the GPU when idling, does yours?

I would take the laptop apart (using the Dell instruction guides for exactly this, link was posted around this sub-forum somewhere) and clean the GPU heatsink, then use Arctic Silver 5 or some other good thermal compound before putting it all back together... At this point, I'm guessing it's just a shoddy connection that becomes apparent under load. (Might try carefully inspecting for any evidence of past leakage from the GPU heatpipe while you're at it. An empty pipe might explain things as it wouldn't work under that kind of load and overheat like that.)

If the above doesn't cut those temps measurably... then logically it has to be 1) A bad card? (Does it run fine before it throttles?) or 2) A problem with that part of the cooling system. 3) Something else. That's the best I can do, maybe someone can suggest some other possible causes.

wow, thats high temps, mine runs idle at around 44C and the highest it goes its only 65C even highly overclocked and running Far Cry at 1920x1200.

I had my problems with overheating and the reason wasn't drivers, broken GPU or fans, it was DUST. Fans simply had so much **** on them it caused system to reach 95C. You can either take your lappy apart and remove the dust physically or blow some air into the cooler holes, you can use a vacuum cleaner or just your mouth, dust will come out, probably lots of it, after this procedure my temps went down to max 89C while playing BF2 (it was a very hot day) at max possible GPU load, no more throtteling so far.

I wanted to follow up on this post since I know abit about I9kfangui

First, you can mess up your system if you turn your fans off using the application, yes it allows you to do that.

No default settings will turn off any fans on your laptop.

If you have a 9300/xps2 you have 2 fans in your laptop, I9kfangui can control both.
If you have a 9100/xps you have 3 fans, I9kfangui can control all three, but it takes some tweaking and is very specific to the bios version you have on your laptop. By default it only controls 2 of the fans in the 9100/xps laptops, leaving the 3rd fan under bios control. Also note, your temps will be listed as 5c higher on the GPU (only the GPU) since I had to adjust this for the 9300/xps2 laptops incorrect readings.

If you enable direct fan control, think about just what your doing. Your taking control of the fans, if you leave them at low, they will run at low speed, if you turn them off, they are off.

By default the app settings for temp control are very relaxed, I did that for a reason. The fans kick into high gear at safe temps.

If you want to remove the I9kfangui registry keys, it's quite simple.
Delete the following key and the associated entries.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\CD\I9KFAN

If you don't want I9kfangui to control anything, set it to observer mode, it's only watching at that point. This will be the default setting when development of the application continues (no ETA yet).

If your running I9kfangui (or I8kfangui) and want to revert back to bios control, press FN + z (at the same time), this will return control to the bios.

Fan 1 (CPU) is larger and louder then Fan2 (GPU), from the information you posted (in the quoted text above), everything seems in order. The XPS2 run's alot hotter then the 9300 with the 6800go.

I used XPS2fangui to make fans run at full speed, it does make them run at full speed (4200+rpm) but only for a short period of time, after a while they rotate slower and slower until they reach the speed I start with (~3800rpm), in the end bios seems to take over fan control after all no matter how many times i set fans to max they crowl back down again.

Autochthon: If you are not overclocking, and you have had this problem with several cards... then have Dell replace the heatpipes/heatsinks and maybe even the fans. I find it highly unlikely the core would reach that temp on standard clocks, let alone twice.

Icy1007: That would be the reading of the GPU card Temp.

I'm pretty sure Auto is referring to the GPU CORE temp, which you can get only through ATI-Tool or through the nvidia temp display page on the display panel.

I've been trying my card at different overclocks, and even at a minimum 487/1150 settings the GPU core reaches 90c after 15 mintues of running ATI-Tool's burn in program, despite overriding the fans and setting them at 4k RPM. The GPU card temp never went above 65c even so. These cards throttle at 95c, or mine happens to throttle at 101c FOR THE CORE temp.

Autochton, I really sympathize with you because I am in the exact same boat. My card went into throttling during BF2 exactly as yours is in Farcry. I had dell replace the video card and it still did it. I tried As5, and it would still slowly crawl up to throttle temp. I bought a laptop cooler and that did help extend it further, but no matter what, unless I was in a VERY cold room, the laptop would creep up and throttle back. I simply gave up. Short of returning the laptop, which I couldn't do because it was outside of the 30 days, i am stuck. Games that don't fully stress the GPU wont overheat, such as WoW, but heavy games will. I'm hoping the 7800 upgrade will resolve this huge shortcoming. In the meantime, I built a desktop box with an AMD 4800+ X2 and dual 7800 GTX's in SLI. I now only use my laptop on the road since using it as a true desktop replacement failed miserably.

Sigh.