Sapphire V64 Nitro+ SR, can't gain control over fans

LigTasm

LigTasm

Supreme [H]ardness
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Jul 29, 2011
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So I did a lot of reading, it seems like the higher end LE model of this card had an issue where the fans never turned on at all. My issue is different, and is mentioned a few times in newegg reviews, etc.

I can't manually control the fans at all. This is a problem because it idles with the fans off, but because its a big bastard of a card with a 300W profile it gets hot fast, so the result is every 8-10 second the fans ramp up and then shut right back off creating this never ending cycle of fans going up and down. The fans DO work fine in gaming and keep the card very cool.

All I want to do is run the damn fans at like 20% at idle, but no software seems to do it. I tried Trixx 6.4 and even dug up the since-removed from their site version 6.5. No go. Afterburner won't do it. Wattman, nada.

Anyone know more about this than I do? Am I going to have to mod the vBIOS to get the stupid fans to turn? I contacted Sapphire and they told me to use Trixx, it doesn't fucking work and I'm sure pursuing that angle will be about as fun as going to a rock fight.
 
LigTasm said:
This tool does not work on this particular card unfortunately (it seems to work on the V56 Nitros though).
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Its pretty universal. I find it odd that it doesn't work. Are you getting an error? What settings have you tried to change? You can only change P6 and P7 states. And all of the other values have to be within normal parameters. So for instance, you can only set Power Target to 50%, not 51.
 
THUMPer said:
Its pretty universal. I find it odd that it doesn't work. Are you getting an error? What settings have you tried to change? You can only change P6 and P7 states. And all of the other values have to be within normal parameters. So for instance, you can only set Power Target to 50%, not 51.
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I didn't mess with any of the power states, only the fan control and it simply has no effect. I read in the mining forums that this tool does not work on the Nitro cards with outboard fan headers.
 
I just go there for what I need, and try to stay out of other things. hah
 
Well I can't seem to get any info on this and Sapphire wants me to RMA it. I really don't want to because the fans work fine and probably exactly as designed. Not sure if I should just deal with it or not.
 
THUMPer said:
Send it to me let me see if I have the same issue.
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lol

Going to put it in my 2600X rig this weekend and do a fresh Windows install and see if it persists, but from what I can tell this is the expected behavior.
 
How about aiming a hair dryer at it to ensure it's always in the fan-on range? :whistle:
 
Algrim said:
How about aiming a hair dryer at it to ensure it's always in the fan-on range? :whistle:
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If it were possible to use unsigned BIOS with these cards I wouldn't be surprised if a few bits could be changed to add an temp offset that tricks it into thinking it's 10°C hotter. 390X and Fiji/Fury are the last AMD series that allowed full BIOS tinkering as far as I know.
 
Well I tried it in the other PC and it acts the same way. I'm just going to live with it and hope they'll revise the software later.

As a side note, I checked the performance in the game I currently play the most which is Warframe, the V64 is on average 24% faster on my 8700k (stock, 3600mhz CAS17 RAM) vs my 2600X (stock, 3200mhz CAS14 RAM). I was hoping they were closer but the gap would get even bigger if I overclocked the 8700k because the AMD chip already hits 4250mhz consistently while the i7 has 500mhz of headroom.
 
DedEmbryonicCe11 said:
If it were possible to use unsigned BIOS with these cards I wouldn't be surprised if a few bits could be changed to add an temp offset that tricks it into thinking it's 10°C hotter. 390X and Fiji/Fury are the last AMD series that allowed full BIOS tinkering as far as I know.
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You can do a fair amount of BIOS modding with Polaris, but AMD doesn't allow it with VEGA. Something to do with some kinda copyright certification IIRC.
 
Sapphire is still insisting the card is bad and I should return it since its within the 30 day window. Maybe I will just do that. After the complete ignorance and condescending attitude shown by the tech support I can safely say I won't be buying another Sapphire card, I'll stick to XFX and other brands that haven't let me down.
 
Can't you set the fan speed in the driver control panel? Or did they do away with that on Vega?
 
gtrguy said:
Can't you set the fan speed in the driver control panel? Or did they do away with that on Vega?
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You can set whatever you want, the card won't do it. Hence this thread. The 0 RPM vBIOS overrides everything else.
 
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