I have an ATI 3870 HD based video card. With the old cooler, it ran as high as 63C under full load (and the coller was burning hot to the touch). I thought this was too hot, so I put a much better, much larger cooler on...now it runs 61C under full load (but the cooler does not get burning hot to the touch). This seems extremely hot, and I am thinking I might have gotten a bad batch of thermal grease...or do these cards always run super-hot? [edit] I have found several posts from users running over 70C under load with this card, only a few seem to crash at these temperatures...Still don't know if it is normal to run this hot...my CPU uses more watts than the video card, and it never gets over 40C under load (default cpu temp alarm setting for my hardware monitor is 60c) [edit2] Just looked at my settings, I had backed it down to 400mhz from 800mhz in order to make it stable enough to run games...Those temps were at 400mhz, so I tested at 800mhz. Got over 80c in under 5 seconds! I know that's not normal.
63C is fine for an HD3870, they usually run in the 80s, as do most graphics cards. An HD3870 typically needs to reach about 90C to crash, only because it is a fundamentally unstable card. More stable cards like the 8800GTX can run well over 100C without issue, not that it's advisable for lengthy periods of time. Which third party cooler are you using?
HP Orb - the orriginal; designed for cooling Alpha CPUs. I have one on my last card (Radeon x1600), it keeps the core temp below 50C under full load (and that is the small version of the HP orb, I used the big version for the 3870) I have the best ($50) cooler I could find for the card coming sometime today, maybee that will lower the temperature enough to keep it from crashing.
The X1600 uses nowhere near as much power as the HD3870. Orb coolers are usually a lot less powerful than HR-03 or Zalman VF coolers.
I got a Zalman cooler, cut some fins off to get it to fit, and my temps went way down! Now 51C under full load @ 875mhz! ~42C Full Load @ 800mhz I guess the HP orb is finally obsolite for video.
It was never powerful to begin with - the X1600 isn't especially old, it's just midrange and simple. The 3870 is a high-end powerful card and as such produces a lot of heat. The old X1800 produced even more heat than the 3870 does.
