So recently I got a new computer, and after spending many annoying hours building an expensive investment, I get quickly paranoid on whether it's healthy, so it didn't take me long to notice the GPU's temperature spike mid-game.

The problem is that the internet has some very different opinions on what's acceptable. The card idles at 32c with Firefox open, but jumps to 75-80 while playing. To be fair, since it's brand new I've only played one thing; STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl, with maxed settings, + STALKER Complete mod, which I'm sure isn't a gentle combination for any card. Looking it up, I've seen opinions range from "anything over 70 is unacceptable", to "85-90 under load is normal". I could use Precision X to force the fan to stay at high speed, but I'm not sure if that has any risks, other than just being plain noisy. I've never over/underclocked and am not familiar with the related dangers.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130787 is the card in question. As I understand physical damage to the GPU doesn't start until around 100+ degrees celsius, so it doesn't seem to be in immediate danger, but the little flame icon in Speedfan has me worried.

those are perfectly fine temperatures. The people saying anything over 70 is unacceptable are the people who go all out with aftermarket coolers and generally overclock too. For stock, 75-80^oC is perfectly acceptable. Heck, my GPU idles around 40^oC due to how hot my room is.

Alright, good to know. I figured the 70 max was excessive, but 85-90 seemed awful close to the danger zone, so I wasn't sure what was good. I'm in California in a relatively small room that faces the sun pretty much all day, so I'm quite familiar with hot rooms. There's no relief quite like spending hours building a computer and seeing it turn on successfully, so I get antsy about there maybe being a problem after all.

Due to having 3 monitors my GPU idles at a higher clock rate then it does with a single monitor.

A single monitor it idles at about 300Mhz core which keeps it about 36-40C. Maxed it hits about 65C.

With 3 screens it idles at 500Mhz core, or about 50C and maxes at about 65-70C.
That being said, there have been extreme long gaming sessions (greater than 6 hours of Civilization) that have gotten it as high as 90C.

When using stock everything, things'll often get closer to the max temperatures when under max load, especially in a hot room with the case having some air flow limitations (such as being put in one of those computer desk drawer thingies or up against a wall under a desk).

It's mostly stock everything; I do have a heatsink I got for the CPU instead of the one it was boxed with, but until I started looking this up I didn't even know taking apart a GPU to install a better cooling system was even an option. The case is one of http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811163173, sitting on the floor next to the desk. It's sitting on a firm, flat surface to make sure the bottom isn't blocked at all, so air flow shouldn't be a concern.

Yup...California and a warm room here, too. I use a room AC in summer...partly for me (I hate being too hot), and partly because my GPU (and pc in general) heats up the room even more after a few hours. I can game for a while mid-afternoon, and hubs will come in and say "dang it's hot in here." I swear it raises the overall room temp by about 10 degrees. That heat's gotta go somewhere.

But yeah, for stock stuff, and in summer, that's fairly normal. 70-75C isn't dangerous and I'd consider that normal for summer (60C tends to be "average" for me in the CA winter). I discovered that sometimes, high fps in games causes the GPU to heat up even more, so if you're playing a newer game that gets very high fps even with settings up high, try a frame rate limiter to keep it to 60 or 120 and it might help. And of course, turn that GPU fan speed up higher. It's noiser, but it keeps the temps down. Nvidia cards at least, often seem to come with their GPU fan/software set to default at "40" speed...probably because that's quieter and makes better "quiet GPU!" advertising....but 60 works better for cooling.

My card gets awfully loud if I'm playing Skyrim at 1080p with maxed graphics and it bothers me so much I cut down on the resolution/settings. I still haven't found any feasible way to monitor GPU temperature with an ingame overlay.

Sounds like it's doing what it's supposed to do - perhaps you can use some sort of dampening material inside your case to reduce the sound of the fans?

Over 9,000! Er, the temperatures you're getting look about typical for the last few cards I've had, so probably nothing to worry about.

Game Booster 3 reports my video card temperature as 60500 degrees Celsius. Do you think it's alright?