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Asus EAH6850 - lowering idle fan speed

StrikeEage

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Hi everyone!

I got this EAH6850 DirectCU thanks to the good reviews, including here at techPowerUp. Thinking about modding its BIOS with RBE to lower the idle/desktop fan speed from stock 22% to 14%. So I saved the current BIOS using the GPU-Z and loaded it in RBE. Left Info and Clock tabs as-is and just modified the Fan tab. What confuses me is the last tab called "Additional features". I don't want to change the overdrive limits or the like, but it forces me to choose between Method 1 Hash and Method 2 No hash (defaulted to this). Below is the screenshot:



Should I proceed creating the modified BIOS with Method 2? Or it will be safer if I track down some signature file to be used with Method 1? All I want is to lower the fan speed.

Sorry for noob questions! :)
 

Over50

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1) Since all you're changing is Fan Speed.(be making Fan Setting only)
2) Add no other info.
3) Leave Method 1 checked ( when Idle will have lower Freq, when load applied will have Upper Freq,) going to Load and Save not making any Increase Values.
4) Ignore Additional Feature.
5) Enable Riva Tuner.

Since I have a MSI card I use MSI Afterburner.
 
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Why not use smartdoctor it's on the cd that came with the card, it will let you set fan speed.

Fan speed is currently controlled by drivers so changing the bios may have no effect.
That last page "Additional features" is for changing the overdrive limit in catalyst control center changing it may result in a black screen at windows boot.
 
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StrikeEage

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1) Since all you're changing is Fan Speed.(be making Fan Setting only)
2) Add no other info.
3) Leave Method 1 checked ( when Idle will have lower Freq, when load applied will have Upper Freq,) going to Load and Save not making any Increase Values.
4) Ignore Additional Feature.
5) Enable Riva Tuner.

So method 1 with default settings is safe in my case? RBE defaults to method 2 with my card, so I want to make sure that by switching to method 1 is the correct way to do this.

Why not use smartdoctor it's on the cd that came with the card, it will let you set fan speed.

Fan speed is currently controlled by drivers so changing the bios may have no effect.
That last page "Additional features" is for changing the overdrive limit in catalyst control center changing it may result in a black screen at windows boot.

I would but SmartDoctor cannot set fan speed below 22% (~1800RPM) and I want it to be more like 14% (1100RPM). I believe both drivers and BIOS affect fan speeds, hence why RBE has that Fan tab settings.
 

GreyGhost

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(of course: TRY AT YOUR OWN RISK)

I tried changing the lower PMW fan setting from 22% to 15% (Duty cycle min %) using RBE version 1.27 (this was the only change)

Then flashed the card by booting to dos and using atiflash version 3.84:

- First:

atiflash -unlockrom 0

(0 = the number of my card, this is followed by the reply "ok")

- Second

atiflash -f -p 0 6850m15.bin

(followed by a successful flash)

Then reboot, according to RBE the value was changed, but the lower fan limit is still 22% (also using MSI afterburner and a custom fan profile)

Now back on the original BIOS, left rom unlocked.

Any idea about the reason? Override by the ATI driver? (Catalyst 11.1a, jan26 release)
 
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