Windows 7: Radeon 6850 40 Idle

Is this normal? Seems kind of hot at idle. Also, what is the highest the 6850 safely goes?

for idle that's normal and a bit on the cooler side for idle.I'm almost sure your comparing your temps to what is normal and hot on cpus on graphic cards this is totally acceptable. According to the chart you should idle around 45c and your at 40c which means your card is fine and not overheating. My 6870 idles at 45c and at load goes from 55-60c even though those charts say my load temp is around 85 but i'm sure that's when under hours and hours of stress since i've never seen it go above 70c under load yet and i hit that when i played crysis 2 for around 3-4 hours playing the campaign so its fine . So to answer your question yes 40c is perfectly normal for a gpu like yours or any gpu
source:AMD Radeon 6870 and 6850 Graphics Card Review - Temps / Noise / Power / Overclocking.

Agreed. My 6870 is sitting at 52 right now and rarely goes much lower. I'd like to have your temp.

These are my Idle temps and i am running CF HD6870 's im supposed to be in the upper 60's according to that chart and my cards are quiet as well

Hmm, now I am getting 57 on average; not getting that nice temp anymore. Fan is on auto which is 54% right now (and is the loudest fan in my computer now). Card is and has never been overclocked.

Still any worries?

When is the last time you cleaned
the fan?

It's actually a pretty new card and doesn't really have any dust it it.

Make sure any other fans in your case is not full of dust bunnies and the psu isn't full of dust also and that you have enough ventilation in the case because that can cause heat inside the case which would lead to other components getting hotter like the graphic card,cpu,ram,hdd,mobo and so on. So make sure your case is properly vented and cleaned. That is the major culprit of heat in components in a case unless the part is faulty.

All fans are clean; I clean them quite often as I am kind of OCD about dust.

I am guessing that the thermal paste on the GPU dried up a little after some use (since it was new when I first posted). I think that this is the temp I will be seeing from now on.

I have the XFX 6870 black edition. It's basically the 6870 double fan overlocked version.

Run 50-55 idle. I can manually increase the fan if I want lower temp, but honestly the card is stable enough at that temp. Nothing to worry about.

40 celcius idle for a 6850 is awesome. (if it's a single fan version,, your case must be really well cooled !!!)