Certain users of the new Catalyst 3.8 drivers from ATi reporting of heat problems. According to Guru3D following cards are affected : Radeon 9800 Pro's, XT and Non-Pro's, Radeon 9700 Pro's soft-modded to 9800, Radeon 9700 Non-Pro's soft-modded to 9800, Radeon 9500's soft modded to 9800. I'm just like the news poster over at Guru3D not sure whether this is true or not.
Running looping 3DMark2003 for 30 minutes and utilizing a temperature probe on my GPU (regular cooling), the following temperatures were recorded:
ATi his comments on this issue :
Overheating: We have spent a great deal of time analyzing the temperatures due to the CATALYST 3.8 drivers. We do not under any circumstance see anything near a 10 degree Celsius increase in temperature (but we don’t overclock our test cards either). We do see a slight increase in temperature in certain cases (3Dmark2003 Nature Scene for example). However any temperature increase is well within our safety range. Investigation continues and we are trying to determine why this change in temperature exits.
Some more information regarding these problems can be found over at Guru3D