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Help with Underclocking 4870X2

M

MaXXimus

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 8, 2008
Messages
312
How can I underclock my vid card? My card is overheating bigtime and need to RMA but cannot right now, due to being out of work and not having the $$$ to send it out (plus its my only form of communication... phone, email etc etc).

I figured if I could underclock it, that would put less stress and thus less heat to it and make it more stable. Right now if I go into any COD game and some of the custom maps have a lot of shrubs, trees and stuff like that... my card starts flickering and when I look at temps its right around 104C and thats with the fan speed at 100% and the side of the computer open with a floor fan on high blowing against the card. So if I can underclock to keep those temps lower on the denser maps I wouldnt have any issues.

Can anyone help me with this? The card is at default 3D settings... 750MHz / 900MHz ... any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
Are you sure the issue isn't just dust buildup? The double-heatsink configuration of the cards collects dust in a very bad way and it's going to take more than a puff or two with a compressed-air can to get rid of it. If it's really bad you should consider temporarily removing the shroud around the heatsinks to properly remove all of the dust. I have to dust my cards out about once a month to avoid overheating.

If you still want to give underclocking a shot my recommendation would be to use MSI Afterburner. It works with all cards, not just MSI cards, and it makes it easy to change the clocks on all the GPUs at the same time and it even allows you to set custom fan curves, etc.
 
Yea its not that its not clean... so could you explain how to go about using this MSI AfterBurner?
 
Are you trying to do this for the idle clocks, or the 3D load clocks? It sounds like you just want to reduce the stress during 3D games - that seems to be your only problem, correct?
 
Yes 3D loads... though I guess idle clocks wouldnt be a bad thing either because it would help lessen the overall power consumption.
 
Well, you can adjust your clocks by editing the BIOS, but that can be tricky. I've never used MSI Afterburner - you should probably just download it and try it out for yourself.

These guys actually used it to overclock a 4870 x2 here:

http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=1702

The problem you might run into is that overclocking routines may have a minimum speed that's just too high for what you want. And if that's the case, you're going to have to edit your BIOS. But give Afterburner a try first.
 
Try lowering your settings too. I took mine apart, cleaned it, new thermal past and strapped some 80mm fans on it. Worked great.
 
You can use the ATI catalyst control panel to just underclock it. Put it in advanced mode and then just lower to 702/845 and you'll be perfect.
 
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