acer aspire 1694wlmi mobility radeon x700 fan is always on

hello

laptop
acer aspire 1694wlmi
intel pentium m 760 2.0ghz, 533mhz fsb, 2mb l2 chache
ati mobility radeon x700 pci express 128mb vram
1gb ddr2

im having a really hard time with my laptop... i got it in two days and until now im trying to fix this problem. first i was thinking that fan working noise was from a cpu or other fan but it's from the graphic card.
after turning the system on i can work for a few minutes but after some time the radeon fan will start working at full speed as if i was playing a game or something but i just open firefox and visit some normal websites, the fan turns on and NEVER stops.
i have this problem in microsoft windows and linux, so it can't be a software/driver problem. im starting to think this is a hardware problem, maybe the fan or card is broken...

the only solution i have found is to use the ati control panel and use the "balanced" settings this way the fan will work normally and only start working at full speed when it is needed to, but those settings are used when the laptop is running with battery, i always use my laptop connected to power, so runing in balanced mode will only make me loose graphic power, the card runs slower!

i tried to use atitools for tweaking/overcloacking and it says that my default clock speeds are core-357 and memory-344

i really don't know what to do... i think im going to send the computer back get the money and buy another laptop (maybe a AMD one with radeon x800)

what do you guys think?

thanks!!!
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Well, I would suggest doing as you said, putting it on balanced. Then, when you play games, just turn it up to max. The fans are going to come on when you play games anyway, because everything is running at 100%.

 

but i work most of my time in linux, theres no balances or whatever

 

Simple fact is Acer do not support linux.

 

anyway it just isn't normal for a graphic card to have the fan always working! even if i just view text files

 

Are you sure that the GPU is causing the heat? How many fans (not exhaust ports) do you have in your notebook? If there's only one, then it could be the CPU causing the heat.

 

it's not the cpu because if i lower the graphic card speed it stops, but of course im not going to lower speed, i mean, i didnt overclock it! i want to use it at the NORMAL speed but the fan is stupid

 

I have the same machine and had the same problem. The acer aspire 1694 makes a lot of noise because of the fan on the ATI card, not the CPU. It is necessary to lower the speed of the ATI card to get rid of the noise. This can be done in the advanced settings for the graphics card, but ofcourse, this necessarily lowers performance.

However, you may want to play around with ATItools from http://www.techpowerup.com/atitool/ This tool has hotkeys and ability to detect OpenGL / Direct3D use. That way, the ATI power is cranked up only when you need it, during games for instance.

For reference, the ATI RADEON X700 at the powerplay setting "optimal battery life" will have a core speed of 104.63 and memory speed of 119.81