Strange Overheating Issue HD 7870

[RevOne]

MSI, HIS, or Sapphire for AMD cards. EVGA or Sparkle for nVidia cards. You will not have cooling issues anymore!

Thanks Good advice. Years ago I had a Sparkle 7600GS and that thing pretty much fried itself to death (it was passive cooled). Looks like they've gotten their stuff together after all these years. It seriously put me off buying anything Sparkle-made after that card. Good to know some things change.

This makes my fourth XFX card in a row (9800GTX - which was hot too, then an HD 4890 - which was also very hot and eventually died, RMA'd the 4890 and got a 6850, which was pretty cool running actually; then onto this card). I thought they were a decent company. I liked them mostly because of their lifetime warranties, which I still think are fantastic. But with this experience, I think I'm done unless I hear from enough peeople that a specific card made by them has proven to be a good product all around, with good performance, features, and cooling. Time to try someone else. Perhaps even go (team) green again...

 

[Deleted member 24505]

MSI, HIS, or Sapphire for AMD cards. EVGA or Sparkle for nVidia cards. You will not have cooling issues anymore!

The MSI Twin Frozr Nvidia cards are fine too.

 

[RevOne]

The MSI Twin Frozr Nvidia cards are fine too.

It's funny you should mention that. The other strong contender that I was considering next to this card was a Twin Frozr GTX 660 :/

EDIT: Thought about getting this for it: ARCTIC Accelero Hybrid Extreme VGA Cooler ARCTIC Accelero Hybrid VGA Cooler - Newegg.com

... but then I really thought it and if I wanted to (or rather, could afford to) drop close to another hundred bucks on my graphics card, I would of just gotten a more powerful card, hopefully with a better cooler. Plus, I don't know
where I'd put that second rad that comes with that thing (mounted on the bottom, maybe). I've already got the rad for the Antec 620 in the rear fan spot.

Also, Crossfire already is out of the question with just the stock coolers, and it would also definitely but that out of the picture with those coolers on both cards. Hell no. Not worth it at all. That's close to an extra 200 bucks for both cards.... again it all comes back to just spending that money on a better single card solution that will likely still offer me better performance than CF 7870's, with less heat, power consumption, and headaches.

 

[Deleted member 24505]

It's funny you should mention that. The other strong contender that I was considering next this card was a Twin Frozr 660 :/

I like the Twin Frozr cooler, reminds me of the arctic cooling ones.

 

[silkstone]

I stopped using Furmark because of this very issue. It overstresses cards all the time. On mine, it will send the GPU up to 90 C and the VRMs over 110 C.
There are lots of reports around the place of Furmark killing cards and both Nvidia and AMD say not to use it.

Use Heaven or something else and you will see more realistic temps.

 

[shovenose]

Yeah include MSI on the nVidia side there too lol...



I'm super duper impressed with all aspects of my Sparkle Calibre GTX 670 2GB...

Other than a minor QC issue that required adjusting it's a genius and unique cooler design.

 

[AsRock]

It's funny you should mention that. The other strong contender that I was considering next to this card was a Twin Frozr GTX 660 :/

EDIT: Thought about getting this for it: ARCTIC Accelero Hybrid Extreme VGA Cooler ARCTIC Accelero Hybrid VGA Cooler - Newegg.com

... but then I really thought it and if I wanted to (or rather, could afford to) drop close to another hundred bucks on my graphics card, I would of just gotten a more powerful card, hopefully with a better cooler. Plus, I don't know
where I'd put that second rad that comes with that thing (mounted on the bottom, maybe). I've already got the rad for the Antec 620 in the rear fan spot.

Also, Crossfire already is out of the question with just the stock coolers, and it would also definitely but that out of the picture with those coolers on both cards. Hell no. Not worth it at all. That's close to an extra 200 bucks for both cards.... again it all comes back to just spending that money on a better single card solution that will likely still offer me better performance than CF 7870's, with less heat, power consumption, and headaches.

The VRM's on the 6950\70 were not just a better they are a lot better and believe they started to use cheaper ones on the 7k range.

 

[Deleted member 24505]

I think the only brand I will not buy is Sapphire, because of some jerk called Greengecko on their support forum. Not a great idea for some company to have a person like him representing them.

 

[RevOne]

So, I ditched Furmark altogether since that was the only program giving me those ridiculously high temp readings. I did manage to hit 84°C after about an hour or two of Batman: Arkham City. In Battlefield 3 (Conquest Large MP, Ultra Preset, 1920 x 1080), the most I hit was 78° after about three hours.

Other than that, the card hasn't really been giving me any problems. No artifacts, crashes, BSOD's... nothing so far (knock on wood ). I tried 3DMark and the temp topped out at 71°C. The Heaven Benchmark gave me 74°C tops, and I even cranked up the settings beyond that of what my card is capable of running smoothly (like Extreme tessellation, for instance); so that puppy was working hard in there.

I ended up registering the card and contacting XFX Support who had this to say regarding the matter:

"The temperatures can get as high as 90-91'c.... but a new card fresh out of the box shouldnt be breaking 85'C unless you've overclocked it. I would recommend inspecting the fans, try to figure out what is causing the heat loss. maybe it is the factory thermal paste, or the gpu simply isnt tightened well enough. Warranty void stickers do not apply to North American cards. If you cant resolve it, you would want to request a new cooler from us (free), or send it back for a replacement from the retailer. Thank you"

Just as was suggested in earlier posts in the thread by other users, I'm going to remove the cooler and check out the thermal paste. If that doesn't work, I'll ask them about sending a replacement cooler and hopefully that should help matters out.

Thanks to everyone who jumped in to lend a hand. Your help and guidance is very much appreciated