Quick Guide to getting your 4850/4870 up to and running

[PUN]

I have the Asus 4850 and it came with a auto fan control. This way when you play games, it'll crank up and stay quite when just browsing in 2D.

 

[Elcs]

Bump as the new Catalyst 8.7's are out and I can bug Taltamir to update his opening post with the new info.

Powerplay has not been fixed in this update. Fan speeds I cannot attest to as I have modded my card via 3rd party cooler.

Is there any way I could plug my AC Turbo Module into my motherboard and have it auto control the speed to respond to changes in temperature on my HD4870?

EDIT: What are the clock speed stages for Powerplay on a 4870? After actually reading the Sapphire "Modded" BIOS post, I think Powerplay has been active on my Powercolor (damn keep on putting a U in it) HD4870 since day 1 as it downlocke to 500/900 and ups to 750/900 as required. Was still darned hot at idel though.

 

[taltamir]

thanks for the info, I will update the post.

can anyone tell me if the sapphire 4870 bios changed something with their idle clock speeds?

 

[Bad Dude]

Originally posted by: PUN
I have the Asus 4850 and it came with a auto fan control. This way when you play games, it'll crank up and stay quite when just browsing in 2D.

Hello,
I have the Asus card too but it does not seem to have the auto fan control. Did you have to install extra software or does the BIOS do it automatically?

Thanks.

 

[taltamir]

do not install the asus software. I hear really really bad things about it. Just install AMDs drivers.

 

[Creig]

There are now photos out of the HIS ICEQ4 4850 with their dual slot heatpipe HSF. THIS is the cooler the 4850 should have come with.

http://forums.vr-zone.com/showthread.php?t=307694

 

[Kaleid]

Its an improvement but the fan needs to be larger and slower RPM to satisfy silence nuts such as myself.

 

[taltamir]

you can use an accelero S1 rev2 (which is better then s2) and get better thermals at passive cooling, or add some fans to it and make it even better.

 

[Kaleid]

I use the S1 rev1, but running it fanless, especially in the summer heat is impossible in my case (remember I'm trying to run things quiet) so atleast a minimum 120mm fan is needed. I had artifacts running my Nexus 120mm @ 7v so I have to run the fan at 12v full speed.

VRMs have properly applied Zalman RAM heatsinks and the fan is placed so that a lot of the air passes through the fins of the S1 on the VRMs keeping things cool.

The problem with effective coolers such as S1 is that all the heat that is produced is kept within the system, so what we need is ICE Q types of coolers that are more oversized both in surface area and fan size. So far I haven't seen one that is effective enough keeping temps down while at the same time getting the hot air out of the system.

The standard cooler on the 4850 is btw ridiculously poor.

 

[ccubed]

Anyone have the MSI R4850 with the copper heatpipe cooler? Looks somewhat similar to the Arctic Cooling solutions only it's shipped that way (so you don't have to do any mods yourself.) Just wondering how it compares heat/noise wise with the other dual slot cooling solutions out there.

I'm kind of waiting to see when the Arctic Cooling Twin Turbo that is specifically designed for the next gen cards comes out, but if it's running for the 39 bucks they have listed, the MSI solution might be cheaper. Of course the Twin Turbo might allow for bigger overclocks. Decisions, decisions...

 

[bryanW1995]

Originally posted by: Canai

Originally posted by: Grinja
Does anyone know what the defualt min and max speeds are for the radeon 4870?

I was considering the softmod but I want to be sure I don't fix the speed too low. Also what is a good temp monitoring software for these cards?

According to CCC, 500/810 and 790/1100 - the card is totally stable maxed in CCC. Using AMD's GPU Clock Tool, you can set it to whatever you want. As for temp monitoring, get the latest version of GPU-Z.

Originally posted by: idiotekniQues
is there a way to control the fan speed of the 4870 without a bios hack?

1. Make sure you have Overdrive enabled and MAKE sure your clock and memory settings are correct!!!!
2. Make a New Profile Name it something like fan. I made numerous profiles with different fan speeds so I started off by naming my first one (45 fan). This one is for the fan speed of 45%. Click save profile the activate&close button.
3. Now open up windows explorer and make sure you have the "show hidden files" enabled.
4. Now follow this and find this folder C:\Users\David\AppData\Local\ATI\ACE\45fan. XML. (the david will be your user name instead of my user name)
5. Now find the file 45 fan.xml
6. Right click and then edit.
7. For only one 4850 card (non crossfire):

<Feature name="FanSpeedAlgorithm_0">
<Property name="FanSpeedAlgorithm" value="Automatic" />
</Feature>
<Feature name="FanSpeedRPMTarget_0">
<Property name="Want" value="0" />
</Feature>
<Feature name="FanSpeedPercentTarget_0">
<Property name="Want" value="0" />

The Bold ones above. Change the Automatic to "Manual" and change the 0 to 45"
Then save the file.
Now go back to the CCC and go to profiles and activate the profile 45 Fan.

From http://www.visiontek.com/forum...4b7e15a351c14e3ab84bcf

Works perfectly for me. 50% fan speed gives perfect temps, all below 60ºC when overclocking.

this is really pissing me off. I've made the profile, I've enabled "show hidden files", and I can't find the damn file to edit it :| anybody have any suggestions?

never mind, found it. 50 % is very loud to me, but 40% is inaudible over my antec 900 with the fans on medium. temps are down to 72c at 99% load and 53c at idle

 

[ccubed]

Originally posted by: ccubed
Anyone have the MSI R4850 with the copper heatpipe cooler? Looks somewhat similar to the Arctic Cooling solutions only it's shipped that way (so you don't have to do any mods yourself.) Just wondering how it compares heat/noise wise with the other dual slot cooling solutions out there.

I'm kind of waiting to see when the Arctic Cooling Twin Turbo that is specifically designed for the next gen cards comes out, but if it's running for the 39 bucks they have listed, the MSI solution might be cheaper. Of course the Twin Turbo might allow for bigger overclocks. Decisions, decisions...

Why yes, Firing Squad has done a review of the MSI R4850. I'm a little disappointed to hear about the relatively poor overclocking results, however.

 

[Aberforth]

Where can I download the recent Bios for Radeon 4870? Is it really needed if I have latest drivers?...Can I use any Bios? my card is a Engineering Sample not branded.

 

[Super King]

This thread is absolutely awesome. A few weeks ago, I was so concerned for my Sapphire 4870 I was considering water cooling. Then, after reading about the HR-03 and Accelero coolers, I thought maybe I can get away with air. Then, after seeing how easy it is to edit the stock fan profiles, I thought, what the hell, let me see how much difference it makes. Set to 35%, the stock cooler keeps my card idling at 31C-32C! Under load (Ok, so it's only the Witcher, so nothing spectacular, but still) it hits 40C-41C. Amazing. So stoked.

Thanks again.

 

[TheNiceGuy]

I just wanted to mention the normal ASUS 4850s appear to be unchanged. I had mine shipped direct from Taiwan last week of July. It has the original HS/fan, and the driver is dated from May, V. 8.5. The BIOS is 113-B50 102-105.
Hope this helps someone.

 

[Aikouka]

My 4870 idles at 65 and goes to 81 under full load... haven't gone about to do the fan speed thing yet. One thing I did was actually turning the side fan around as Lian Li has it pushing air out by default, so I have it now pulling air in as the air will go right to where the 4870's fan thingy is. The only problem... the fricken case fan is noisy as hell now .

I'll have to try doing the fan speed changes and if that makes more of a change than turning the fan around (that dropped it about 7C), I may just put the fan back to normal or find some things to go between the screws... I'll go bonkers if I don't quiet that case up soon!

EDIT:

Although one interesting thing... since I installed this card, I keep getting an error from Ventrilo whenever I start it. It's something relating to audio devices, I assume, because the HD 4870 seems to have installed an audio device. Ventrilo still seems to work just fine, so I've pretty much ignored it and I just close that error (it only comes up when I join a server).

 

[Zillatech]

Originally posted by: Aberforth
Where can I download the recent Bios for Radeon 4870? Is it really needed if I have latest drivers?...Can I use any Bios? my card is a Engineering Sample not branded.

You can find almost all the 4870 BIOS files Here

As for editing the profiles, I recently found a post where you only edit one *.xml file to change the fan speed & with only one line changed. I haven't tried it but the directions are below:


One thing i noticed is you dont need to create or run a profile.. there is a file just called
C:\Users\%USERID%\AppData\Local\ATI\ACE\Profiles.XML

This appears to be the default profile... ??..

All i did was goto the bottom and change

<Feature name="FanSpeedPercentTarget_0">
<Property name="Want" value="45" />

The FanSpeedPercentTarget "want" value... i changed nothing else.. Rebooted.. and my "default" fan speed increased to the 45%.. changed it again to something else.. and rebooted... it again changed to my setting.. no need to load a profile..etc... FYI.. i DID create a user profile.. but i did NOT change that profiles XML values.

Taken from this thread:
http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=68183

 

[Elcs]

Do we have any decent program that can create an acceptable fan speed profile yet?

Im doing a little bit of splicing and hooking up a 120mm Scythe Kama 1200rpm to the mini 4-pin PWM port on my HD4870. Power draw is fine and Ive tested it, it is working. I need a little bit of modification to make sure that the pins are secured in the header etc.

I want to run the fan at a certain level then ramp up through the scales of temperature. Doesnt look like the CCC or its profiles provide me with that kind of flexibility.

 

[Alex C]

I was going to get the new MSI card with the new fan/heatsink but they sold out. Anybody know how quickly newegg restocks things like that? I need it soon, but I know I'll place the order for the ASUS card instead, and then have those come back in stock.

 

[Andrewcc]

Alex, I had the same thing happen to me on Thursday. So, friday I basically checked the egg every 2 hours or so, and manged to grab one when it came back in stock, but within the next 2 or 3 hours it was sold out again. Before I managed to get my hands on one, I emailed Newegg, and the response said that if there's no ETA on the page, they don't know, but I'm guessing for something like this card, they'll get a shipment as soon as they can. So, keep checking, it should be back soon.

 

[Alex C]

Thanks, Andrew. I'll keep checking.

 

[Unit1Evangelion]

I just got done building my computer 2 weeks ago with the Asus HD4870. Read this thread before and after purchasing the parts, messing around with the bios, fan speeds and installing 8.7, I am still getting flickering as stated for the 8.6 hotfix.

I can sorta understand when I first boot and start up Crysis before it gets time to warm up but it happens periodically throughout the game. Not enough to stop playing but enough to get annoyed. Is this happening to everyone or just me? Fan speed at 55% with a idle of 40c and full Crysis load at 49-51c depending on my room temp.

 

[Alex C]

I think I'm having some issues with my MSI 4850, The opening (and any other) video sequences of Witcher have a bunch of horizontal lines flickering through them whenever the action picks up a little. I tried using Catalyst 8.8 to fix it, but they're still there. I've tried various setting from low to high, and it didn't help. I downloaded the patch, and the hotfix that the game requires, and still no luck. Anybody know what might be wrong?

So far Witcher is the only game I've got newer than Age of Empires II, so I can't try it out with anything else, just yet. The gameplay is okay so far, but I haven't played for more than ten minutes so it might go downhill later on when things start happening.

Also, when I installed the 8.8 drivers the device manager says it's driver version 8.522.0.0, is this correct or did it not install properly?