Artifacting, GPU Temperatures

[Aeliana]

I recently purchased a new computer, an Alienware Aurora. Some specs:

Processor: AMD® Athlon™ X2 6400+ 3.2GHz Dual Core 2 x 1MB L2 Cache
Power Supply: Alienware® 750 Watt Multi-GPU Approved Power Supply
Graphics Processor: Single Graphics Card - 512MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 9800 GT
Memory: 2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz - 2 x 1024MB
Motherboard: Alienware® Approved AMD® 790FX Motherboard
Operating System: Windows XP Professional SP2

I'm running FFXI 1680 x 1050 and turned on anisotropic filtering and antialiasing on the card itself, which has done a fairly good job smoothing out the jaggies.

For the 3 weeks I've been using it, it has run FFXI very nicely compared to my old system - 8389-H, 10414-L on the Vana'diel Benchmark 3. I love it. But this morning, I had my first encounter with some artifacting on good ol' Hediva Isle. It was practically identical to that shown in the thread http://www.bluegartr.com/forum/showthread.php?t=60865 so I won't bother posting my own screenshots.

I read that this problem is frequently due to overheating, so I downloaded RivaTuner and parked my ass outside the Whitegate MH for a few hours to monitor the GPU temperature. It seems that the card idles around 55-58 C in Windows, and cranks up to 75-78 C in intense situations in FFXI. Are these temperatures abnormal?

I'm far from computer "illiterate" but not extremely well-versed in these kinds of problems. So, I'd like to request some advice. Any suggestions on how to test/fix this problem?

[DionyShiva]

My card reaches around that temp when I'm playing Crysis, that's too hot for just FFXI (8800gt). Try downloading nTune and bumping the fanspeeds on your card to 100%, or I think rivatuner might have a fan speed control too. My card's fan speed is 30% by default.

[Cephius]

That artifacting is probably due to driver issues and not due to overheating. Those temperatures are well within operating limits of that card. FFXI is a terrible way to test your video card, try downloading a true video card benchmark program like 3dMark06 and see if your card still artifacts when it's under extreme use.

[Amele]

My card reaches around that temp when I'm playing Crysis, that's too hot for just FFXI (8800gt). Try downloading nTune and bumping the fanspeeds on your card to 100%, or I think rivatuner might have a fan speed control too. My card's fan speed is 30% by default.

9800's run pretty hot; I'm trying to find the whitepaper but iirc nVidia has stated that design load is around ~80C. (safety max is 105C)

that said, if you hadn't had artificating before and do now, that's a tell-tale sign that something has gone wrong with your card. I would consider RMA.

[Aeliana]

Thanks for the feedback. I increased my fan speed from 35% to 50% and the temperature dropped from 78 C to a much more comfortable 68 C.

It appears that 175.19 isn't compatible with the 9800GT, so I'm gonna install 177.79 and cross my fingers that random artifacts don't pop up again.