No custom res with Dell 8800GT?

[rbanzai]

I bought a Dell XPS 420 with an 8800GT for my father for his 70th birthday. In the Nvidia driver properties I don't see an entry for custom resolutions, like I do on my own machine with a 6600GT and no entry for the temperature of the card. I downloaded the latest nvidia drivers with the same result.

Is this something that is no longer available with Nvidia drivers, or the newer cards, or just not necessary? Do I need to use a 3rd party utility for the resolution and temperature functions?

Thanks

 

[squeezee]

I haven't checked recently with the XP drivers, but for vista this is yet another feature not yet implemented in their new drivers/control panel, so you'll have to use a 3rd party app.

Temperature and overclocking is now part of the nTune package and not the drivers.

 

[rbanzai]

Thanks.

I did some digging and found that Rivatuner would work fine for this, with the beta version of AtiTool for simple temp monitoring.

Turns out this was one of those 8800GT that always run at 29% until the chip is practically melting. I redid the low level dynamic fan settings and now the card doesn't get over 70 degrees even when it's working pretty hard, and the fan noise is reasonable.

I will test it with Crysis tonight but I don't think I'll have to add an additional cooler. Whew!