Newly installed Sapphire 6870 = HOT?

Surly

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 26, 2003
Messages
366
So I've just installed a brand new Sapphire 6870 in my system (Quad core, Vista 64, 8gigs ram, Corsair 620HX power supply). Card seems to work, card fan is going. I try a couple of 'easier' games to push.... WoW, Borderlands. Seems to work fine for the most part. Then I try Crysis and after about 5 minutes my machine completely shuts down. Thats not good. Try again and same thing. Try Crysis Warhead and aafter about 5 minutes same result. Then I go back to Borderlands and after a few minutes of playing I alt-tab back to my desktop and check the Catalyst Control Centre and its reporting a Graphic card temp of 98 degrees(!!!). That strikes me as.... very high. So I'm playing around with the Catalyst control centre and try varying my fan speed from 20% to a max of 100% and honestly it looks to me like there is no change in the actual fan speed... no visible change that I can detect, no audible change (would expect the noise to increase) and putting my fingers to the back of the vent I cant detect an air output change either.

Anyone else have a new 6870 and able to tell me whether they can tell if fan changes using the control panel (going from min of 20% to max of 100%) seem to make a difference? Ie can you hear an audible difference/feel a difference in air output?

Very frustrating coming from a bulletproof 3year old 8800GT to having problems with this card immediately after installation. :(
 
Those temps are much higher than any review I've read. Most people are getting around 80-84 with Furmark running. 98 on borderlands would indicate a serious flaw.

RMA time!
 
Should have gone with the Asus or XFX. :(

lol. its a bum card. it happens no matter whos sticker is on it. just rma the card to sapphire. bummer though, see if you can get them to cover shipping both ways. worst they can say is no.
 
Funny you say you had no problems with the 8800, yet those cards ran hotter than hell with reference coolers. Maybe not as hot as the 4850's but they still ran pretty hot.
 
Lol, so I pulled down Furmark and ran it and both it and Catalyst Control Panel report a high temp of 102-105 degrees celsius. and then my machine shut down again.

<Sigh> Have to send it back to Newegg I guess. Now the question is do i roll the dice with another Sapphire card under the assumption I 'lucked' out and got an anomaly or should I see if I can go to an entirely different vendor....
 
you got lucky. ;) just get another sapphire unless you can get a good deal on an asus or xfx. if it costs anything to switch to a different brand then just stick with the sapphire. i have had a 3850, 4850x2, 4870x2, and now a 5850 all from sapphire and theyve been pretty good to me. definitely not a crappy brand you need to avoid.
 
You can ask them if it is any brand oriented problem with the "overheating" or you just got a bad card ?
 
I have a sapphire 6870 and mine has no trouble like that. The fan on the card is pretty strong and gets a little loud in my case at around 35-40% speed. The highest temp I have got so far was 77 but I also have my card running at 975/1140. I have had good luck with sapphire cards before that's why I chose them this time around as well, but every manufacturer has defects here and there. Newegg is good about defective returns so hopefully you have a new card in hand soon.
 
Why mess with a RMA. The card is only a few days old so send it back to the store you purchased it from and you should have a replacement within a week.
 
I've had the Sapphire 6870 for 6 days and no heat problems, don't forget to enable ATi Overdrive to enable manual fan control, even though you aren't changing clock speeds. When on 100% it's insanely loud.

A problem I've been having is that my windows cursor is very pale since installing the 6870, it affects games too. In WoW I can make the pointer look normal by disabling hardware cursor, it also looks normal in windows safe mode. Is this anything to worry about? I'm not sure if it's catalyst 10.10 or the card that's causing the issue.

IGTXx.jpg


The preview is on the left, and my actual cursor on the right. It doesn't look like much in that pic but looking at the screen the difference is night and day. So far I've tried reactivating ATI colour controls and restored factory defaults in CCC, neither had any effect.
 
That card is certainly defective. Probably bad thermal paste application.

Things like this make me appreciate my local pc shop even more. Dude that runs the place gets me gear at about the Egg prices and if I need to rma I just call him. He orders the replacement and when it is there I go swap the parts out. Easy.
 
Yea I've never had problems with mail order parts before, this is my first, and let me tell you its a pain in the butt... All it takes is one RMA and you've basically lost any savings you stood to make from going mail order in the first place. Although in this case the main reason I did it was for immediate availability (not price). Oh well the dice were bound to come up craps at some point I guess. Just hope the next one is fine.
 
Smiffy, about the discolored cursor, funny I noticed the exact same thing in World of Warcraft. The little gold cursor looked faded/washed out.... didnt really notice anything on the regular windows desktop but I wasnt paying close attention there.
 
I will look at the cursor in games to see if I notice a difference, but since it hasn't caught my eye yet I am going to say it probably did not happen to me. Maybe it is just a WoW thing? Are you using the 10.10a and MLAA?
 
I will look at the cursor in games to see if I notice a difference, but since it hasn't caught my eye yet I am going to say it probably did not happen to me. Maybe it is just a WoW thing? Are you using the 10.10a and MLAA?

It's very noticeable in WoW, it also affects Starcraft 2. It's present in 10.10, plus the 'a' and 'c' hotfixes. I'm not using MLAA.
 
Yea I've never had problems with mail order parts before, this is my first, and let me tell you its a pain in the butt... All it takes is one RMA and you've basically lost any savings you stood to make from going mail order in the first place. Although in this case the main reason I did it was for immediate availability (not price). Oh well the dice were bound to come up craps at some point I guess. Just hope the next one is fine.

That's why I switched to Amazon for my electronics purchases. No hassle returns including reimbursement of shipping costs.
 
Funny you say you had no problems with the 8800, yet those cards ran hotter than hell with reference coolers. Maybe not as hot as the 4850's but they still ran pretty hot.

8800GTs rarely failing quickly to heat issues, even though some people were hitting over 100C with the stock coolers :eek:
 
There is a cursor issue with the 6800 series, I have a HIS and it does the same thing. Its not from a defective card. I would send it back to where you got it from being it hasnt been 30 days and just have them send out another one. Thats the safest way to go to prevent future issues.
 
Tried ffxiv, crysis, arma 2, dirt 2, Stalker CoP, Dragon Age Origins, and MW2. Cursor looks normal to me :confused: maybe I just don't remember what I had before or I don't have the discoloration. Sorry I couldn't help more.
 
Is there any info on the mouse cursor issue?
Driver problem, or hardware problem? Didn't find anything on google.
 
I just found or experiencing the same bug as other users with the 6800 series running hot.

The issue happens when my OC fails and crashes/freeze. When I reset the PC the idle clock are stuck at 300/1050 or more without any load. The temps gradually goes from 40c to 70c when idle, if you're playing a game I can see 90C+ temps!!!
The fan doesn't react to the temp increase either. Which the OP is also reporting.

This is clearly a driver or BIOS problem but most likely a driver issue. I tried this with 10.10c and 10.10a/b, both gave me the same results when my OC fails. I have to reset several times or shut it down until the driver and idle clocks reset back to 100/300.
I'm going to try the original 10.10 drivers to see if I will get the same problem.

When the driver is working properly, my temps don't go above 58c at stock clocks.
 
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I just found or experiencing the same bug as other users with the 6800 series running hot.

The issue happens when my OC fails and crashes/freeze. When I reset the PC the idle clock are stuck at 300/1050 or more without any load. The temps gradually goes from 40c to 70c when idle, if you're playing a game I can see 90C+ temps!!!
The fan doesn't react to the temp increase either. Which the OP is also reporting.

This is clearly a driver or BIOS problem but most likely a driver issue. I tried this with 10.10c and 10.10a/b, both gave me the same results when my OC fails. I have to reset several times or shut it down until the driver and idle clocks reset back to 100/300.
I'm going to try the original 10.10 drivers to see if I will get the same problem.

When the driver is working properly, my temps don't go above 58c at stock clocks.

Couldnt possibly be that overclocking in this case is bad, could it?
 
Couldnt possibly be that overclocking in this case is bad, could it?

You're mising the point. We are trying to figure out why the card is running hot and why the fan is not ramping up. I already know the OC is bad but it's giving me the same issue as the OP until I reset the drivers. We're only trying to offer solutions. If the OP looks at his idle clocks, it's a good chance that the card is not down clocking to 2D clocks.
 
The card is unfortunately already in transit back to Newegg. I had installed the 10.10a drivers at the time I believe. Let the thread know if using the original drivers resolves your issue.
 
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