Radeon 4850...It's Toasty!

G

gr!m

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 24, 2006
Messages
333
Well anyways, I just finished my build a couple of days ago. I got the VisionTek Radeon 4850 and it's been performing amazingly. I am able to run Age of Conan at 1680x1050 8xAA with all settings maxed and FPS are very smooth. Anyways, I run Vista ultimate x64 and I've had this happen twice--PC freezes and all of a sudden my GPU fan whirls to max speed and sounds like a leaf blower. Temps on this hting I already know are high, someitmes they hit 80C load :eek:.

Should I?

A. Rip off that heatsink and liberally apply Arctic Silver 5, therefore voiding my warranty.

B. Wait for a nice 3rd party cooler, or is there one already?

C. Let it ride, if it breaks, VT has a lifetime warranty.

Where the 4850 fails me right now is, where the f**k is the fan controller ATI? COME ON!

Anyways, other than that this card...well...is amazing. My last card was a 7900gs and it is like comparing a BMW to a Geo Metro...
 
Not sure where the thinking came from exactly, but I'm 99% sure it's perfectly acceptable to run a GPU between 80c and 90c. They're designed to operate there. The only reason most people use different cooling or ramp up the fan speeds is because they don't want thier rig to be a space heater in the room.

My 3870x2's hit 80-90 regularly during high load. But I have the fan set to 40% constant using rivatuner and I idle around 45, low load [TF2] hits about 65-70, high load [crysis] hits about 80-90.
 
-=PESTILENCE=- said:
The only reason most people use different cooling or ramp up the fan speeds is because they don't want thier rig to be a space heater in the room.
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not sure i agree with this reasoning. your card is going to produce the same amount of heat regardless of fan speed. increasing fan speed raises the rate of heat transfer from your card to your room. I would say most people increase fan speed to allow for higher overclocks because your card has a stability threshold based on temperature. raising clock frequencies is what increases heat generation.

OP: have you tried manually overriding the stock fan profile and forcing your your fan to run @ 100%? i used to do this with my X1800XT. loud as hell but effective.
 
Indeed. Heat is not temperature.

There's a new bios out that supposedly clocks the idle down to 160MHz instead of 500MHz. The difference is supposed to be phenomenal.
 
My Zalman-cooled 8800GT regularily hits 85C without problems.. In Furmark on a hot summers day it can reach 95C.

You can't be sure that the freezes are because of the temperature. It could be related to the PSU or to some driver or other software error. The fan rev'ing up to full speed may be a normal reaction when the card looses contact with the driver and PC. You should be able to plug the GPU fan into a normal 12V connector using an adapter. Your mobo may have a 4-pin connector for case fans. That should cause the GPU fan to run at 100% all the time, decreasing the temps. It's not a permanent solution, but if it still crashes, you know heat is not to blame.
 
In a matter of days/weeks, ATITool and other utilities will allow fan speed control on any 4800-series card ;)
 
Porter_ said:
not sure i agree with this reasoning. your card is going to produce the same amount of heat regardless of fan speed.
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Well, having central air in my room, I'd rather have to only worry about cooling 45c air coming out of my case, rather than 80-90c air.

Then again, I don't really know the physics of it all and you may be right, hehe.

To the OP though, like others suggested, try using a utility first. RivaTuner seems to work great for me, don't know if it supports the new cards yet, but it can't hurt to try.
 
not sure i agree with this reasoning. your card is going to produce the same amount of heat regardless of fan speed.
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Something tells me this is correct.. The GPU will put out 110W worth of heat no matter what.. Power consumption (and as a result, amount of heat generated) does not go down just because you put a bigger heatsink on it, does it?

Now the cooler on the 4870 is a different story, because it exhausts the hot air from the GPU out of the case so the card won't heat up other components as much.
 
I'm still going to look into watercooling my 4850s when I get them because I want the heat out of the case. At least my 8800GTX blows it out the back.
 
-=PESTILENCE=- said:
Well, having central air in my room, I'd rather have to only worry about cooling 45c air coming out of my case, rather than 80-90c air.

Then again, I don't really know the physics of it all and you may be right, hehe.

To the OP though, like others suggested, try using a utility first. RivaTuner seems to work great for me, don't know if it supports the new cards yet, but it can't hurt to try.
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As someone already pointed out heat != temp. Whether your card is running at 50c or 90c it's still putting out the same amount of heat and your AC is still going to have to work just as hard to keep the room at a certain temp. Increasing the fan speed increases the rate that you're moving heat away from the card, not the amount of heat that you move.
 
When the INQ started leaking info about the 4800 they got it just about right save the heat. 4800's aren't any cooler than GTX 280/260's which is a little odd considering the 55nm process and 1/3 fewer transistors. Considering the low overclocks they seem to be getting on stock cooling the 4800's must be running close to the edge.
 
Itchyeyes said:
As someone already pointed out heat != temp. Whether your card is running at 50c or 90c it's still putting out the same amount of heat and your AC is still going to have to work just as hard to keep the room at a certain temp. Increasing the fan speed increases the rate that you're moving heat away from the card, not the amount of heat that you move.
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To be precise, it's the rate at a particular temperature. This is because as you increase in temperature (because of low heat dissipation) heat dissipation rate increases as well until there's an equilibrium.

Therefore, the heat dissipation on a 100W GPU is ALWAYS 100W. The difference from a better cooling system is the temperature it settles down at.


heatlesssun said:
When the INQ started leaking info about the 4800 they got it just about right save the heat. 4800's aren't any cooler than GTX 280/260's which is a little odd considering the 55nm process and 1/3 fewer transistors. Considering the low overclocks they seem to be getting on stock cooling the 4800's must be running close to the edge.
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They're not wrong. It's just that PowerPlay isn't working right now. On the cards with a newer bios, the chip idles at 160MHz instead of 500MHz and consequently runs a lot cooler.

Incidentally, IMO, the 4850's are somewhat undervolted right now. They're the same chips as the 4870's so running at 625 is quite a bit lower.
 
SnowBeast said:
Or you could send it back and buy the ASUS version that comes with Fan control on the utility cd and crank the fan up to 60%.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121253 ;)

or try and find the asus fan control program on the web....
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The software you mention only works with Asus card bios. So you either need an Asus card to you will have to get a copy of the bios and flash your none-Asus card with that bios. It is probably a better idea to wait until the GPU apps like others have mentioned have support for the new cards, which shouldn't be very long I wouldn't image.

I just went with a Accelero S1 rev2 to keep the gpu temp down. I keep the case open so it dumps the heat into my computer room but I live in Texas so I have to keep the AC cranking anyway.
 
JimmiG said:
In a matter of days/weeks, ATITool and other utilities will allow fan speed control on any 4800-series card ;)
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I'd be suprised, last time I checked W1zzard (ATITool developer) had practically dropped off the face of the planet, and hasn't released a new build of ATITool in ... well shoot.... I think it's almost been a year now.
 
ChronoReverse said:
To be precise, it's the rate at a particular temperature. This is because as you increase in temperature (because of low heat dissipation) heat dissipation rate increases as well until there's an equilibrium.

Therefore, the heat dissipation on a 100W GPU is ALWAYS 100W. The difference from a better cooling system is the temperature it settles down at.




They're not wrong. It's just that PowerPlay isn't working right now. On the cards with a newer bios, the chip idles at 160MHz instead of 500MHz and consequently runs a lot cooler.

Incidentally, IMO, the 4850's are somewhat undervolted right now. They're the same chips as the 4870's so running at 625 is quite a bit lower.
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But then it will still hit 80C+ under load if this is the case.

Changing to AS5 from the default crap didn't affect my temperatures nor the temperatures of a friend of mine who did it as well, which tells me that the problem is the shitty fan speed and small heatsink. The issue isn't heat transfer off of the GPU core, it's what happens to the heat after that.
 
Isn't that what I said? The heat dissipation of the HSF is insufficient so that's why it's so hot.

In any case, it looks like newer bios's are coming out with PowerPlay working with much better temperatures.
 
Hmm, ATI could always release new Catalyst drivers like how they fix the 3800 series powerplay bugs. Trying to update video card BIOS isn't the best thing to do.
 
Blue Falcon said:
I'd be suprised, last time I checked W1zzard (ATITool developer) had practically dropped off the face of the planet, and hasn't released a new build of ATITool in ... well shoot.... I think it's almost been a year now.
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I'm not keeping track of the ATI tweaking tools since I own a Geforce ATM.. But I bet some ATI tweaking tool will allow for fan speed adjustment on the 4800 series soon :)
 
heatlesssun said:
When the INQ started leaking info about the 4800 they got it just about right save the heat. 4800's aren't any cooler than GTX 280/260's which is a little odd considering the 55nm process and 1/3 fewer transistors. Considering the low overclocks they seem to be getting on stock cooling the 4800's must be running close to the edge.
Click to expand...

Well, G80 had a TDP of 185W, Radeon 4850 is 110W and Radeon 4870 is 160W I believe. So the 4850 puts out alot less heat than either the first generation Geforce 8 cards or the GTX series, but it also has a smaller heatsink and lower fan speeds.

ATI seems to have decided that a full load temp of about 80 - 85C is safe. This is how hot the 4850 gets, and it's also how hot the 4870 gets, despite its bigger heatsink and fan. They seem to have scaled back the fan speed on both cards so that the GPU reaches about 85C full load. If you put the card in a well ventilated case, the fan will likely spin slowly, and the GPU will reach 83C full load. If you put it in a toasty, poorly ventilated case, the fan will spin faster to maintain ~83C full load.
[H] published a very informative table along with their 4800 review:
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTUyNCw4LCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

Only the 9800GTX runs cooler than the 4850.. Not surprising since it has a huge dual-slot cooler similar to the one on the GTX series, while not producing nearly the same amount of heat.
 
I'm going to assume it's a shoddy BIOS or vista itself. The cards temps seem normal now in comparison and my case is really well ventilated (Thermaltake Kandalf with 2 120mm intake 3 out)
 
I wouldn't say "shoddy" BIOS, they just aren't tweaked to "performance" levels that we [H] users want. Right now it's keeping the card within specs, which is all they are obligated to do. I'm sure either a bios fix, or one of the utilities will be able to change the fan speeds pretty soon.
 
don't worry about it.its normal to work like that.my 8600GT is going up to 80*C under load.
 
ChronoReverse said:
Isn't that what I said? The heat dissipation of the HSF is insufficient so that's why it's so hot.

In any case, it looks like newer bios's are coming out with PowerPlay working with much better temperatures.
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My point was that the dropping the 2D clocks to extremely low levels (and presumably the voltages as well) would significantly reduce the idle temperatures, but the BIOS update wouldn't change a thing in load conditions..
 
Yes but load conditions aren't really unusual. Getting to the 80's and even 90's on stock cooling is about par.
 
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