Crap. Just looked in on the box. GPU temps in the upper 80s, fan on low.

Afterburner was running minimized the whole time. Looks like the "leave afterburner running" solution is not going to work.

You can try Nvidia System Tools:

[url]http://www.nvidia.com/object/nvidia-system-tools-6.08-driver.html[/url]

I used that with by GTX 460. It adds "Profile policies" menu item in Nvidia Control panel where you can setup profiles with fan settings in them and then add rules like "When windows starts load fans 60% profile", "When GPU temperature > 70 degrees (celcius) load 80% profile" and so on.

[QUOTE=Prime95;379980]Crap. Just looked in on the box. GPU temps in the upper 80s, fan on low.[/QUOTE]
Hm... it may need some oil then? :blush: The engine oil you use for your car is quite good, I explained here in a post some time ago, how the "oiling" procedure goes :razz:

[QUOTE=Prime95;379980]Crap. Just looked in on the box. GPU temps in the upper 80s, fan on low.

Afterburner was running minimized the whole time. Looks like the "leave afterburner running" solution is not going to work.[/QUOTE]

Do you have the colored "User define" box around the fan slider? "Auto" is checked in the fan box? "Apply overclocking at system startup", just below?

[QUOTE=kladner;379986]Do you have the colored "User define" box around the fan slider? "Auto" is checked in the fan box? "Apply overclocking at system startup", just below?[/QUOTE]

Yeah, did all that. Trying ATH's NVidia tools. Looks promising thusfar.

Just be a bit careful with the rules you setup. I had 3 temperature ranges with 3 fans speed setup, but I managed to hit a spot where it warmed up to the high fan setting and then cooled down to the lower one quickly, so it changed the fan speed every 5-10min which is probably not good for the fan.

But my GTX 460 fan was crappy anyway. I tried to have the fan high at 80% to 100% 24/7 but it did not like that.

[QUOTE]
The inadequate fan issue first came up with a particular nvidia driver release a year or so back. However, I think it must be BIOS related as well. I have an Asus 580 and a Gigabyte 570. The Asus card has a real problem with running slow fans and hot GPU (as in hitting the throttling temp.) The Gigabyte does not do this.[/quote]

With Fermi cards (4xx and 5xx) it can be a bit of a lottery, since each chip is tested for leakage and gets assigned a stock voltage. 925mV being low (low leakage chips), all the way up to 1087mV on some factory OC cards. The 5xx series tend to have lower leakage/voltage and as a result run a little cooler than the 4xx series. Nvidia went quite aggressive with the memory clocks on both series, I've seen numerous posts with people complaining their cards don't produce reliable results at stock settings.

[QUOTE]]
Of course, its hard to say definitively which card is cooling better when both are in the same case and feeding heat to each other.[/QUOTE]
This makes a HUGE difference, it is not unusual for the top card to be 10-15C hotter.