Hi,This is for those of you who have a third-party version of the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (like from ASUS) which has a temperature monitoring system in its software:Has anyone looked at the GPU temperature while flying in FS2004, particularly when flying third-party add-on aircraft like those from POSKY or PMDG and with add-on airport photorealistic scenery and/or with 38M terrain mesh?I want to know how much this card actually does heat up when really being pushed to its limits.Thanks for anyone with input on this matter.John

You can try feeling how hot the heatsink is yourself by touching it. It should be hot but if you get blisters you may want to add a slot cooler or something. Though if you don

Feeling the card is not an option for that does not in any way shape or form tell me how hot it really is...and in any case, there are good systems in place for measuring the exact temperature which come integrated with various third-party vendors like ASUS.I need to know how hot it can get when using default Microsoft scenery and planes versus using an add-on plane with high-resolution mesh and/or photo-realistic airports to compare. Assuming the "base" temperature would be under the default plane and scenery, I want to see what the difference is and then try to get ATI to tell me if this is an acceptable GPU temperature. I know that the 9800 Pro's limit is around 85 Celcius but WHAT IS AN OPTIMUM OR ACCEPTABLE OPERATING TEMPERATURE beyond which the system can become unstable? I do get the occasional Crash to Desktop (CTD) and blank blue and black screens but ONLY with add-on aircraft with high-res scenery but this happens fairly rarely. However, I've noticed that it DOES happen at least one flight per week (and I fly about 4 flights a week). ATI was no help - they just sent me links to an FAQ. In any case, being in computer tech support and knowing a LOT OF PEOPLE HAVE TEMPERATURE MONITORING for the ATI and NVIDIA cards, I was curious to know what their GPU temperatures are when flying add-on aircraft and high-res scenery compared to when they fly default stuff. Anyone with NVIDIA cards can also reply to this post for it would be a very good comparison to compare SIMILARLY POWERED ATI AND NVIDIA cards - like an NVidia 5950 or 6800 with ATI 9800 Pro.Thanks,John

But the problem is it won

Thanks for the reply. I see where you are coming from regarding feeling the heatsink. I haven't felt it recently but I did feel it once - it did not burn my fingers but I don't recall if FS2004 was running at the time. But if there are the kinds of problems you talk about, my GPU would be burned out a long time ago. I don't have strange pixels or triangles on my screen that people with video card overheating problems do. Also, touching the computer parts when it's on is not exactly something I like doing - any tiny electrostatic discharge from your fingers and a part will fail.I DID disable fast writes in the BIOS after looking at troubleshooting FAQ's from ATI and from Creative Labs (my sound card maker).My idea is to get some hard data under, if possible, controlled conditions. The more people post their video card temperatures under various conditions when flying, the clearer the picture will be. Also, being in compute tech support, I'd like to see what kind of temps these video cards can produce. You said the measurement systems are not that accurate - well, they're certainly better than checking the CPU temperature and trying to guess what happened AFTER the system completely freezes and I have reset it. I haven't run 3D Marks either but like I said, I am looking for hard data on temperatures...not just assuming overheating is not a problem. My guess is overheating may not be a problem until the rather inefficient FS2004 code is pushed beyond its limits, making the system (and of course the video card) work too hard when using third-party add-on planes and high-resolution scenery, possibly causing intermittent crashes to desktop (CTDs) and the resulting heat is wbat I'd like to measure.

Well onboard temperature probes Asus and other are having are often wrong by 10 degrees or more anyway. I would rather look at what ambient temps you have in your case then your video card temp ;). Because if you got decent ambient temps and you are running a 9800 PRO at stock speed you won