48xx problems exist or?

[curtisbouvier]

4gb on buddies new computer, 2gb on my computer, 1 gb on the r9800 computer

all same thing.

basically windows shows up instantly when you hit the windows key

but you cant move your mouse or do anything until after the flicker which is a second later. (2-3 if CCC is installed)

winamp is fine on the computers that have sound blaster audigies.

but Ventrilo skips on all the setups no matter what. (only if some one is talking while the flicker happens, a small piece of whatever they said is repeated) that's the part that's really annoying because were constantly alt tabbing out of WoW, checking thottbot.com and what not while chatting on vent.

there's quite a few other people with brand new Ati cards having the same problem as seen here:

http://forums.amd.com/game/mes...tid=245&threadid=98660

 

[AmberClad]

Yeah, I have CCC installed, so I don't know why it's causing a problem in your case.

 

[StarvinMarvin22]

Originally posted by: insurgent
Hi guys, I've been searching this forum for 4850/4870 related problems because I'm planning on getting one. I prefer ATI (for this generation atleast) but I've been reading issues from supposed 48xx owners about problems related to heat, noise and drivers, these claims seem to be FUD but I want to be sure anyway. So, any owners here have issues with their new ATI cards or are the majority of the problems I read user error/ignorance/bs?

I've had a 4850 for about 3 weeks now and its running great with no problems.

With fan speed set to 41% my idle temps are 42c. At that speed I cant hear the video card fan over my case fans.

I've run both the 8.5 catalyst drivers it came with and the new 8.7 drivers. No problems on either - I generally play either Oblivion or Crysis @ 16x10 resolutions.

As someone else said - people generally don't comment when everything works fine, but when something you buy is fubar you'll tell everyone you know.

 

[insurgent]

Thanks for the input guys, really appreciated.

 

[CKent]

I've had a 4850 for a few weeks and had no issues. The only thing that needs to be addressed is the temperatures - out of the box, mine was idling at 79c and loading at 83c despite fantastic airflow in my case. I soft-modded the fan (as explained in another thread in this forum) to 50% without a perceptible increase in noise, and now I idle at 46c, load 55c. Stock speeds.

 

[udneekgnim]

regarding alt+tab, I went from a 7950 GT to a HD 4870, and can confirm the 4870 delay when alt tabbing in WoW. The 7950 GT is instantaneous. The 4870 is a couple second delay.

it doesn't really bother me though because if I'm planning on alt+tabbing a lot, then I just play in Windowed instead of full screen so I don't need to Alt+tab at all.

 

[phantom404]

I had the 4850 for a couple weeks or so then moved to a 4870 because of the resolution i was playing at and both of them have worked great. The "free" AA that ati has has let me run Crysis at 4xAA with all settings on high at 1900x1200, haven't tried ultra high yet. I did move the fan speed from 23%(my default in profile) to 35% and get about 52 on idle and upper 60s on load, and thats with max oc that ccc will let me do on gpu.

 

[Mem]

I don't alt tab a lot but have had no issues with my Gigabyte 4870,I even leave the fan at its default speed,temps are not an issue as far as I'm concerned since it passes FURMARK stress test and shows no artifacts on screen plus all the games I've thrown at it run fine.


I guess some people are more paronoid then others with regards to temps,obviously serious overclockers would want to put a better heatsink/fan on the card.

 

[Krynj]

I've had zero problems alt tabbing in and out of Grid and Crysis.

 

[Fattysharp]

Originally posted by: mancunian

Originally posted by: Fattysharp
The heat issue you hear about is not so much an issue but a preference. People want low numbers, but these cards are rated for a very high heat threshhold, and most people do not like to see a temp hitting in the low 80s which *was* common on load for the 4850 and the 4870 at launch. Changing the default fan profile brings these temp's down for those who do not like seeing the high temps. Also heats up you room rather quickly.

While what you say is correct, most around here would agree that electronics operate less efficiently at higher temperatures and that heat is ultimately not good for such circuitry.

So you are correct, it is a preference. But it's a preference borne out of knowing that heat is generally a bad thing. The preference is to run your equipment at as low temps as possible. When I reduced my load and idle temps on my card by 50C, it was a good thing to do.


It was a case of install cooler, clock up card, monitor temps for a week or so, and forget about it.

I think you read my post as I was editing my post to explain what i meant there. After rereading what i had posted, I put the edit in shortly after i posted.

It was more of a post for the op to understnad that the heat issue, is not exactly a problem with the cards, but more of a concern for the techies here who like to keep their systems in the best shape they can.

I also prefer lower Temps, hence why I flashed my card to a different bios. I am one of the people who do think the original temps are a concern, and that is also a reason I went with a 4870, and not a 4850. i did not want that heat in my case.

 

[videogames101]

Originally posted by: curtisbouvier
I know one thing for sure, there's a bunch of nit pick issues that some people get annoyed by with ATI.

Alt tabbing is incredibly slow with a screen flicker, dragging videos around on your screen leave trails. CCC causes problems with people using G15 keyboards, macros are slow and delayed and don't always work in games.

With nvidia, the second you smash your windows key, windows is there ready to rock with no delay. Ati can be as much as 3 seconds before you can actually use yourdesk top after alt tabbing. depending on whether or not you have CCC installed. without CCC it's more like 1.2 seconds.

and when you alt tab with ATI, ventrillo / winamp will repeat once or twice which can get annoying if you alt tab regularly.

still a great card with killer performance for the buck. but me and my buddy both stuck with nvidia over that alt tab issue.

I've never had a problem alt-tabbing with my 4870. Or with the windows key. Maybe your proc?

 

[unr3al]

I'm using an X1250 IGP atm and I don't even have trouble with alt-tab. Pressing the Windows key gets me from GTAVC to the Start menu in a second at most. Unless of course I'm playing a memory-hungry game like Crysis. Try disabling your page file? Thats what I did. Playing UT2004 and GTAVC on 1GB RAM with my IGP and Firefox running in the background. No problems. Of course I wouldn't suggest disabling your page file if you have a graphics card more capable than mine; I quit playing Crysis. At 10fps rofl

 

[Aikouka]

I actually experienced an interesting issue with mine last night with ALT+TAB. I was playing two instances of WoW last night doing some AoE farming on my Paladin (with my priest healing). Both of these are being displayed at once on two monitors. This also showed me something interesting... I believe when I have an nVidia card, it usually split the framerate (gpu power) pretty evenly across the two WoW instances. But on the ATi card, it's pretty easy to see that the WoW instance that has focus (i.e. that I'm "clicked in") will receive the majority of the GPU power as it usually had 20 FPS over the other instance.

But to talk about what I saw. I think the issue I found was hitting the upper bound of the GPU's memory and it trying to pass data between the RAM and the VRAM, which caused a huge hiccup. This occured when I ALT+TAB'd while doing that AoE tanking (tons of numbers flying on the screen from blocks, damage dealt, damage received, etc) which causes the Vista visual task switcher to come up... I selected Trillian (to my knowledge, it uses DX9 to create its windows) and once that came up, the computer just crawled. Both WoW instances dropped to 3 FPS and the Trillian window acted like a computer from yesteryear with how slow it displayed typed characters. After about 10-20 seconds it corrected itself and everything went back to normal.

A little later I looked at my task manager and saw that the WoW instances were using more RAM than they did on my previous card (about 256MB more! ) So this kind of confirms my idea that I may just be filling my card's RAM. But now I wonder what's better... a X2 or just a 1GB model. If the X2 is smart and can divide up the two instances of WoW "evenly" (of course other things need processing time too), then I may look into that as I do quite a bit of "single dual boxing," but I don't think I have GPU issues... just RAM issues.

Any insight on the topic would be appreciated.