[Stardrone]

My specs are in my signature. Before having this GTS430, I had a nVidia 8500GT which got overheated or something while I was playing GTA IV. The game was loading when suddenly a black screen appeared and I had to reset the PC, and after the boot screen, everything was on 800x600 and 8-bit colours. The PC stopped recognizing my video card and has only used the onboard one. Anyway, I bought this new video card, which I KNOW it's not a gaming-designed card, but I can get 28 FPS on a 1280x1024 resolution (native resolution for my monitor). My concern is that this card may also overheat unexpectedly and I don't want to burn another card again. I have no program to monitor GPU temperature in-game, so I want to know if it's okay to continue playing GTA IV or I might risk burning the card again?

[illegal_luggage]

You should be able play GTA IV ok on that computer. If you have the game still just re-install it and try it. You mentioned overheating with your old card. This could be caused by bad air flow but a lot of old lower end cards have bad cooling. Download HWMonitor to check your graphics card temperatures. It's a very small program and just requires an unzip to install

http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html

[PrometheusX]

How are the temps? Download RealTempGT and check the GPU temp there.

nvm. Use i_l's one.

[Stardrone]

I don't have IV installed yet, but I'll do it tomorrow and I'll let you guys know about the temperature before and after gameplay. Thanks for the links

[mkey82]

Use furmark and see what kind of temps you hit under heavy load

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/10035...mark.html?ltr=V

Anything below 80°C is ok, anything below 70°C is great.

[unc13bud]

original poster, post a picture of your computer and its insides.

[Stardrone]

I ran the game for 3 hours and then I checked HW Monitor, and I got 58 Celsius, so I guess that's ok, isn't it? CPU usage in benchmarks is 98%, but idk if that's good or not. I get 29 average FPS, ranging from 40 during the day and 22 during the night (even with night shadows off). Thanks for your replies!