[mythtv-users] Why is OpenGL video renderer overheating my GPU?

[Gabe Rubin]

On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 9:49 AM, Eric Sharkey <eric at lisaneric.org> wrote:
> On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 12:19 PM, Gabe Rubin <gaberubin at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 5:59 AM, David Watkins <watkinshome at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Yes, the heatsink is hot.  Very much so.  I think I gave myself a
>> small blister taking it out of the case a minute or two after I shut
>> it down.  Could this mean that the heat sink itself it damaged?  I am
>> still going to try the thermal paste either tonight or early next
>> week.  Hopefully that will work.
>
> Probably not.  The paste is to move heat from the chip into the sink.
> If the sink is hot, better paste won't help.
>
> The heat sink itself is not likely damaged, but if there's a fan on
> it, it may be.  Are you sure the fan is working correctly?
>

I am not sure.  I know the fan is spinning because I clipped my finger
on it last night when I was doing a visual inspection of it.  That
said, for some strange reason, nvidia-smi reports that it is at 0%
even when it is spinning.  I wonder if that is an issue or if the card
does not know to make the fan spin faster.  FYI, here is an example of
my nvidia-smi output (this is with myth just at the main menu, no
video playing, and I am away from the computer so I can't visually
inspect the fan, but this is what the output looks like always with
the exception of temperature difference and memory usage):

[mythtv at localhost ~]$ nvidia-smi
Wed May  9 09:52:13 2012
+------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 3.295.40   Driver Version: 295.40         |
|-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
| Nb.  Name                     | Bus Id        Disp.  | Volatile ECC SB / DB |
| Fan   Temp   Power Usage /Cap | Memory Usage         | GPU Util. Compute M. |
|===============================+======================+======================|
| 0.  GeForce GT 220            | 0000:01:00.0  N/A    |       N/A        N/A |
|   0%   58 C  N/A   N/A /  N/A |  23%  238MB / 1023MB |  N/A      Default    |
|-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------|
| Compute processes:                                               GPU Memory |
|  GPU  PID     Process name                                       Usage      |
|=============================================================================|
|  0.           Not Supported                                                 |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+