Geforce 9800 idles at 78C

So my Nvidia Geforce 9800 GT idles at 78 degrees C.. which seems just crazy. It overheats very easily if I do alot of gaming. I tried increasing its fan speed, as it stick to 40% speed regardless of what I'm doing on the computer, but after half a minute or less, the fan reverts back to 40% speed. At 100% speed the gpu drops down to the 60s pretty quick which is great.. good enough for me. But the problem is I can't keep the fan at 100%. I've tried using speed fan, but to no avail. Anyone ever heard of such a fan issue?

Use a different program, the Nvidia one works pretty well.

Though I havn't tried dusting off my video card, I downloaded Ntune (the nvidia application you suggested), and set the fun up to run under "direct control" in terms of fan speed, rather than "auto", and set the speed to 100%, max speed. After 1 minute, the fan speed readjusted itself to 21%... It seems that the fan just doesn't want to stay at the defined %speed value I set it at. Any clue as to why it is doing this?

you REALLY need to clean the card, about every 6 month. it sounds ALOT like you have it clogged up with dust.

In regards to the dust, I blew as much of it as I could off. It still idles at 77/78, and the fans are still being very stubborn. They won't stay at 100% like I tell them too. On one hand, however, I noticed that it says under the speed modifier meter "Changing your 3D speed fan changes the rate at which your GPU fan operates while in 3D mode" I don't understand this statement. I suppose I'm not in 3D mode? In any case, my % setting will revert it self to a lower % regardless, almost like its set on auto even though I'm choosing the "Direct control" option.

In regards to the fan change suggestion.. Perhaps. Maybe I should just ditch the video card all togother?

EDIT: OOhh, you said modify the heat sink, not fan..

You might want to replace the heatsink with a VF900 great cooler make sure to enough ramsinks for memory and mosfets.Hekynn

I've tried both Rivatuner and EVGA in the past, and the same fan problemoccurred. Going to download them again and retry it however. Can't hurt.

I just tried both. Both had the same results as Ntune. Unless I'm doing it wrong, which I doubt.. as the programs seem pretty selfexplanatorywhen it comes to such a basic manipulation of hardware, being fan control. I've of course googled this problem on the internet beforehand and have found that people with the same card have had the same issue and have not found a solution... though I figured I'd ask you guys and see if I couldn't by chance find a way! xD