Well, not all people have gotten that. I remember reading in one of the first threads on a hardware forum that told how to do the fan fix, several posters said they used to get 70- to 80-something idling, 90- to 100-something on load with their 4870's. Anandtech's review of the 4850 showed it at 80C idle, 97 load (edit: actually, it wasn't Anandtech that said that, let me search for who it was; edit 2: hmm, can't find it, but it was on one of the review sites), and their review of the 4870 said it got "hugely hot" (right after describing the 4850 as "toasty," suggesting their 4870 actually got even hotter).
JP_Russell
If you're getting 100C with a HD4870 at full load, then you've got a case ventilation problem.
Even then, it's practically impossible to get 100C, as the card's fan kicks the fan speed to 80% (aka jet engine mode) once you go past 85C, IIRC.
I'd like to see what review sites says that the card gets that hot.
Yeah, well, I'd rather have a louder case than an overly hot one, and I tend to think most would agree. On the same hardware forum I mentioned, people were reporting load temps on their 4850/70's of 60 and lower by increasing the fan to just 65%. ATI would have been better off increasing fan speeds on both load and idle by just a little bit. Or at the very least, they should have had Rivatuner support from launch if they knew these cards had the potential to get pretty hot at default speeds. They should have thought less about "What kind of temps can our cards handle?" and more in terms of "What are acceptable temps to be circulating through a case all the time?"
JP
I understand that the HD4850 would increase case temps (as it's single slotted), but the HD4870 shouldn't have a profound effect on case temps as it's a dual slot solution. At least, I don't run into heat troubles with my HD4870 (even without the fanfix).
Also, do you know how loud the HD4870 fan is once you go above 40%? It moves a lot of air (even at more modest settings like 35%), but it's damn noisy once you go beyond 40%.
Also, 80C load temps for GPU's is nothing alarming. There have been much hotter cards like Nvidia's G80 line of cards and ATI's R600.
Also, I don't think it should be ATI's responsibility to make sure RV770 is supported by RivaTuner. Isn't that a community driven program?
Well, I stand by what I said. The cards should not have shipped with neither Rivatuner support nor properly working PowerPlay, if that is indeed the case. They're great cards, but a smudge like this on such a masterpiece of hardware is just dumb. It shouldn't happen, ever, plain and simple. And drivers, released well after the cards are launched, still not fixing the situation definitely shouldn't ever happen. It's very unprofessional, and I don't like it.
JP
Well, like I said, there isn't 100% confirmation if PowerPlay is at fault here.
But the temps are not causing card failures and the fan profiles have been certified for retail release. It runs hotter then most cards during idle, yes, but they're not showing any heat related errors or failures are they?
But it is a bit sloppy, IMO, if ATI/AMD knew that PowerPlay wasn't working in the driver set.
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