New laptop is hot stuff... literally

[jednx01]

Well I recently bought a new laptop for school. It's an acer 7741g-5877. Here are the relavent specs
2.26 Ghz core i3
4 gigs ram (I don't know the speed)
320 gb hdd
ati mobility 5650
1600x900 monitor

I bought it off of newegg. I chose this laptop because it had a relatively good price given the specs. It cost $700. Most laptops in this price range that I looked at had graphics cards that are not as good as the one in this laptop. My question is this: can you recommend a program that would allow me to change the gpu fan speed? I tried rivatuner, evga precision, and msi afterburner and for all of them the fan control is greyed out. I guess it's possible that the laptop doesn't have a fan controller, but I don't know. When playing games (the only game I've tried out so far has been Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2) the gpu shows usage of 100% according to evga precision/msi afterburner and temps as high as mid 70's C. Is mid 70's too hot for this graphics card? Will it shorten the longevity of the laptop? Any hints you could give would be helpful. I was just worried because these temps seem much higher than the temps I've found on my desktop. On my sli gtx 260's, the temps rarely get past the low 60's... Any help is apprieciated. Thanks!

 

[Maziar]

Have you tried using ATI Catalyst Control Center ?
Open it,then go ti "ATI overdrive" tab,click on the "Key" icon to unlock,then select enable manual fan control.From there you can change the fan speed

 

[jednx01]

I looked in the control panel and couldn't find it. The overdrive isn't showing up as one of the tabs. I'm guessing it may be blocked. Do I even need to worry about it? I don't plan on overclocking. I just want to make sure that I am not going to do any damage to my laptop by overheating it. Is 75 unusual/dangerous for a laptop gpu?

 

[Maziar]

No it looks fine,notebook VGAs(especially the midrange+ models) tend to run hot under load.
Anyway are you using the drivers from Acer's site or its directly from AMD ?

 

[welshmousepk]

If you download MSI afterburner, you can set up manual fan profiles.

have the fan speed low when below a certain temp (web browsing etc), but have it ramp up when gaming.

 

[jay2tall]

Mobile GPU's get HOT. I am actually at my parents for the weekend and game on my mom's laptop at times. It has a mobility HD4650 and it gets over 80Call the time when gaming. The best thing you can do is get a nice laptop cooler when gaming.

 

[wiinippongamer]

75c at 100% load is absolutely fine for any graphics card, even more if its a laptop.

my laptop with 8600m used to get into the 90s after several hours of play, and there it is after almost 4 years.

 

[jednx01]

Alright. I guess I don't need to worry about the laptop temps. Thank you everybody for responding to my question. I was just worried because I couldn't find anything about maximum safe temps for my gpu. This is the first ati video card I have owned so I wasn't sure if the max safe temp was as high as my gtx 260's that that I have in my desktop.

Thanks!

 

[Maziar]

Desktop has more space + better cooling,therefore desktop cards tend to run cooler than mobile cards under full load.