Maximum PC

What's the approximate maximum temperature that an ATI RADEON HD4870 can run (not overclocked, at stock speeds) and not cause damage. My video card idles about 50 degrees C, and yes it's hot around here this time of year. I know that GPUs can take a little more heat than CPUS, but probably not by much.

Opinions? I'm still using the OEM heatsink and fan, which isn't too bad (noise-wise).

Don't be shocked to see it in the mid 80s Celsius.

At 90 I know there are parameters in the firmware to start clocking it down or it will turn off if it gets hotter.

Yes, but I'd like to not get to the point where it's going to turn off, because sometimes I'm doing rather important work (video / picture work) and I'd like to not lose what I'm working on (even if it's just 5 min of work) because it's pretty much just annoying.

I figured most GPUs can handle 80 degrees C, and that after that is potential for it to lock up is greater. Maybe I should just get a different cooler (I know the OEM cooler are not very good to begin with). But I was more or less concerned with 55-52 degrees at idle being normal.

Don't bother while a cooler. Unless you know what you're doing and you've done GPU cooler swaps before, it's very likely that you will run into a great deal of issues.

Even if the card is hitting up to 88c, parameters within the firmware will stop it from clocking higher or drawing more power if it's not at max. At that point should you need more performance, and it has no cooling headroom, you just won't get said performance.

Don't be upset by it. The 4800 series is a hot design and it's ok for it to be that hot. If you're getting system shut downs and the sort, then you should be worried. But until you start getting system shutdowns, you're overreacting. Just clean it regularly, and if you're REALLY REALLY worried, then under clock it a few Mhz, you probably won't even notice a performance hit.

Keep an eye out for 6870 or 5850 cards, they are well priced at around $200. Look for them this summer and maybe you can find a nice price drop sale or general price drop and pick it up for $150-$200. But no reason to start spending money on cooling a GPU that's 3 generations old at this point.

Well, let's put it this way, so far I've had probably about 3 games crashes. All different titles. Sometimes after 5 minutes.... sometimes after a few hours... And these are all games that were said to run on Vista (with Admin privilages). So, I did that with Win7 (although I hate using the computer as an admin, even to just play games). So, one of the games kept crashing. Mainly during intense scenes in the game where a lot of stuff is going on. And I know it's not my PSU, because I have a PC Power & Cooling 750 Watt, so I highly doubt it's that. Haven't had a reboot yet, just crashes to the desktop or errors popping up during game play, or the game just flat out locking up....

My first try is to use my student copy of WinXP and try that on the computer and see if the crashes are related to Win7 (all of the games I have issues with came out before Win7, but after Vista was released).

User an app called RIVA Tuner. Use it to manually set the clock rates and fan speeds. Try locking in the fan speed at 100% before you game for starters. If that works, it's a heat issue. That's probably all you'll need to do.

Yes I do that already using the ATI overclocking utility in the control center. I don't over clock the card, I just use it to set the fan speed to 100% all the time, which actually isn't much different than about 20%. Not much of a noise increase... but not much of a temp decrease either. Keeps it around 50 degrees at 100%.

Heres my issue with my 4870 maybe this will change your mind also any help will be much appreciated

http://www.maximumpc.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=121057&p=1169641&e=1169641

There was nothing wrong with your temps to begin with. If anything they reflect a normal, healthy operating range. If you are having issues with a particular game, the issue would more likely be addressed by a driver update, or a game patch.

Based on the temps you provided, it is HIGHLY unlikely that your software crash has anything to do with overheating. There are a lot of other factors that affect stability. Hyperthreading, overclocking, IRQ conflict, driver conflict, hardware incompatibility, firmware revisions, BIOS revisions, OS corruption, malware, etc. I could go on and on. I would start looking at this from the software perspective. What game are we talking about here, and have you researched any issues concerning stability reported by other users?

Oh, and don't use RivaTuner. It's hopelessly dated. You're better off using CCC, AMD Overdrive, or MSI's Afterburner utility.