x850xt agp overheating?

[AlphaSingularity]

Hi,

I have a question about ati warranty. I just bought a ATI x850xt agp and I think the thing is overheating. it idles at about 38-42 degrees celcius and flies up to 100 very fast when launching 3d apps. I used ati-tool and watched the temp jump to 110 at which point the card clocked down. This thing has it's stock heatsink and is not overclocked. I emailed ati and they said there is something wrong with the heatsink and I should return it. The problem is that the place I bought it is out of them (I bought the last one), so an exchange will be a big ordeal. I don't want to return it because I got a good deal on it. I think the problem is that the heatsink needs to be reseated or some thermal paste might be missing. How touchy would ati get with the warranty if i tried to do a reseate with AS5. The card is set to 520/520(stock). I'm on an Abit IC7max3 w/ 2.4c@3.1. w/ 480w Antec trueblue, and I'm running the case open, the card is not obstructed.

thanks

 

[possessed]

yes, they heat up very fast, mine used to go up to 70º C (and it's freezin cold) changed to a zalman vf700-cu with as5 and now it does only about 40-42º full load , and it's quiet... (one this is that the fan speed controler isn't working properly, or the fan itself)

in either cases I recommend changing the cooler since the one that comes with it is completely crap

 

[Poisonsnak]

If you don't want to buy the new cooler (although I would highly recommend it) I would definitely try the re-seat. I have sent back a card for warranty that I put an aftermarket cooler on, I just put the original back before sending it back and they didn't look twice.

 

[McDee]

even 70c is too high.

I've got an ATI x850xt agp with stock cooling and my case cover is off, it idles at 33c and the max I've ever seen using ATItools log file is 52c, with the cover on it went up to 36c idle, 65c max (average under load was 59c with the cover on).

what did you pay for yours? I payed $299 canadian

BTW forgot to mention, all my temps were with the card running at 570/600. stock it idlea at 28c and maxes at 40c.

 

[AlphaSingularity]

I got mine for $299@FS.

I haven't taken it appart yet but with a flashlight, I can see the paste around the gpu. When I squeeze a bit on the heatsink and card where the gpu is it looks like it's squeezing together. The paste looks like it's tacky (like grease between two fingers when you pull them appart). I tried to tighten down the screws a bit but only the outer ones turned, not the two directly over the gpu. So anyway cutting to the chase, it would appear the HS isn't making contact. Right now it's idling at 40, and its only about 20 in the room.

 

[McDee]

yep

remove it and apply the AS5 and replace the cooler for sure.

I'm interested in seeing what temsp you get with the stock cooler and AS5.

 

[AlphaSingularity]

Just heated the thing up again... the back plates are really hot to the touch, while the little bit of exposed fins are cold in comparison, and overall not much heat coming through the plastic. The exhaust is warm at best. My only concern to reseating the thing is, if I can't screw it down anymore so it makes better contact, how will taking it appart and reseating help....? One more thing the plate with the two screws right behind the gpu how much flex should it have? I know on my 9500pro the Icberq5 i put on has lots of spring, but the x850xt looks like its compressed all the way to the 2 little pegs. No more room to squeeze tighter. Is this how it's suppose to look? My card must have been made by a trainee! It's such a dillema, should I be the one fixing a card that should work? But I don't want to go the long way of RMA.

Off to bed I'll play with it later.

 

[McDee]

the plate with the two screws right behind the gpu how much flex should it have?

well I don't have a camera so I tried paint!

it looks a little less bowed that this on mine

a very slight bow on both sides of the center pin, and a copper post inbetween the card and the metal rod on each end, and a plastic bumper in the middle.


and there are a couple pics here that will give you a good idea:

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showpost.php?p=20177&postcount=218

and

http://forums.techpowerup.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=897&d=1130109601

but the x850xt looks like its compressed all the way to the 2 little pegs.

what do you mean by that? can you upload a pic maybe?

 

[AlphaSingularity]

I don't have a digi cam either, Great diagram!! Thats what mine looks like. To answer your lat question. What I meant is that there doesn't appear to be anymore room for the screws to pull the heatsink closer to the gpu... the plate you drew is laying prety flat ontop of the plastic peg and 2 copper sleaves. Oh well I guess I'll just have to get it appart and see what happens.

 

[trog100]

u should really send it back..but.. it could be as simple as your fan not coming up to speed at those temps it should be running flat out.. it could be your temp sensor isnt reading correctly..

it could be a voltage problem on the card.. if so it wont live very long.. i dont think its as simple as the heatsink not touching to be honest.. i did read of one similar card (not agp thow) with a silent passive type heatsink running over 90c under load.. this was said to be within specs so the core will get pretty hot without dying..

that plate on the back should be bent.. it kind of applies a "spring" pressure so as u can fully tighten the screws without wrecking things and allows for a little variation in core heights.. they are not exact"..

still i would probably do the same as u.. fiddle with it.. he he he

trog

 

[AlphaSingularity]

OK, I'm back with some results.

1. When I took the heatsink off, there was about 10 kilos of thermal paste gooped around and on the gpu. Really there was a lot, it took me forever to clean up, I should have saved it and put it in a tube!

2. I inspected the interface for contact. I'd say only about 40% looked like it was making "sufficient" contact.

3. After cleanup and application of AS5, I put the HS on pressed and took appart to see, 95% contact just with finger pressure.

4. Reassembled card and pluged it in.

Open case results: 29 C idle and 67 C load using ATI Tool for a few min. (remeber it would hit 110 C)

Closed Case results: 37 C idle and 74 C Load using ATI Tool in same manner.

The fan doesn't even spin up anymore.... this is much better!

Thanks for the input!

One more question: In the CCC that "unlock key" is very tempting, does it modify anthing on the card so ATI knows you overclocked? What if you use a different overclock utility will messing with the speed in those "unlock" it too? or is this just a software unlock in CCC and no one will know?

 

[AlphaSingularity]

Ran some benchies... The card stays cool!!!

Here's some 3Dmarks (stock) using cat 5.12

'01 = 20501
'03 = 12486
'05 = 5943

 

[Dillinger]

get an after market cooling system unit I use ATI Silencer 4 (Rev. 2)
from http://www.arctic-cooling.com/vga2.php?idx=5

 

[trog100]

u should be able to get another 700 or so 2005 marks if u use atitool and clock the card.. what sort of volts do u have on your cpu to get it up there.. ???

no one will know if u clock your card by the way.. the artic vga cooler mentioned by dillinger is good idea as well being as u seem to have lot of heat in your case it will exhaust the card heat out the back and and also knock about 10c of your card temps..

seems i was wrong about the heatsink not touching.. he he

troh

 

[McDee]

nice stuff, but your temps are still a little high. not dangerous but it will lessen the lifespan of your card a bit. What are your case temps?

after my new mods I'm getting :

CASE OPEN:
CPU IDLE 24c
CPU MAX 34c
MOBO IDLE 21c
MOBO MAX 26c
GPU IDLE 29c
GPU MAX 55c

havent tested with case closed, still some mods for intake fans yet to do.

 

[trog100]

McDee.. with cpu idle temps at 24c and mobo idle temps at 21c with case side off.. i cant help but ask what are the ambient temps in the room your computer is in.. cos my room temps are higher than your cpu and mobo ones.. u another eskimo.. live in an igloo praps..????

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm05=1590273

trog

 

[McDee]

well, almost. I'm Canadian

I'm running an A64 E6 venice +3000 at 2.4G and 1.55v with the retail cooler.

my room temps range from 20c (way too hot for me in the winter) to 15c (just about right).
the temps I posted were while the room was 19c. The mods I did to my aircooling system droped my cpu temps for both idle and 100% load by 10c.
I recent learned about "volume VS flow" for air cooling and the difference is HUGE.

all I did was put a cardboard duct directing the airflow properly so the fans are all working together.
(well, it was a pretty complicated duct, but still. easy stuff.)

 

[AlphaSingularity]

Trog100 - My cpu volt are set to 1.6. I can boot in to windows @3.2 but it's not stable. Lot's of cooling with my Arctic Freezer4 but the cpu's stuck at 3.1 no amount of voltage will get it stable any higher.

McDee - My open case temps are about 24-25 regardless of load. And cpu is 39 idle to 57 load. (this is what the ic7max3 reports, so they should all be lower by about 5 degrees in reality) I also have a chilly room about 18-19. I'm using an old PII full tower case so it's not that great for airflow, plus having 4 HD's, 2 CD's a floppy a couple of filled pci slots and lots of wires makes for a hot case. It's a messy setup but she's still pretty fast for being almost 3yrs old. The x850xt will give me at least another year out of this setup.

 

[trog100]

okay better post what my temps are at the moment.. athlon 3.700 at 2.4 gig.. core voltage 1.4 default.. in fact all voltages at default..

room temp 24.5c.. case temp (measured near the top) 25.5c.. case temp only just over room tempt so its pretty good cooling wise

cpu temp in windows doing nothing (except typeing.. he he) 36c.. i have a very efficient zalman cooler but my cpu temps are still about 11c over case or 12c over room ambient..

under load my cpu tempts go up to the low fifties about say 52c at this clock speed.. this is 27c over case.. or 28.5c over room ambient..

my x850 cards is fitted with an artic vga cooler.. this exhausts heat out of the back of the case and helps keep case temps down.. my cards runs 35c at idle and about 52c under load..

with the stock amd cooler the cpu ran about 9c hotter than with the zalman.. my card with the stock cooler also ran about 9c hotter than with the artic jobby..

i really would have to live in an igloo to get the same temps as u do with stock cooling McDee.. he he.. something is well wrong here isnt it.. i can only conclude that the built in devices we use to give us these temps mean bugger all except as up and down yardsticks..

i think we need to ignore these things as real temps cos they just cant be correct.. my cpu and card cooling really is about as good as air will give.. yet (according to our temp sensors) u still seem to be running well cooler with just the stock stuff.. now i know this cant be possible so it has to be down to these inbuilt temperature devices being totally away with the fairies.. he he he

either yours is wrong McDee or mine is.. cos no way can they both be right.. more likley they are both wrong.. he he..

just gonna have a look in my bios to see what temps it shows at idle.. if it shows any..??

trog

ps.. just looked at my bios cpu temps.. assuming the cpu is idling in the bios it cant be doing that much can it..??? it reads 46c.. not a great deal of sense in that one either.. 10c over what it reads in windows.. he he he.. the other thing that makes me think these temps (at least the idle ones) are total garbage is that by simply swtching my external USB drive on my idle temps go up by 6 or 7 c.. no way is that loading anything just sat there spinning but the cpu temps go up regardless.. took me a while to figure what was causing the big variation at idle but thats exactly what it was.. he he

 

[McDee]

good point, unless we had the same motherboard our temp monitoring software is not a benchmark. MSI K8N Neo2 Plat. btw.

I think we can still compare our gpu temps since its the same pcb and sensor, could be wrong though, I'm very tired right now.

but I need to point out that while my heatsinks and fans are stock, they are now "ducted" which makes a massive difference in the performance. I'm borrowing my GF's cam and I'll post some pics of my ghetto cooler

 

[WunWingLo]

X850XT PE Overheating Problem

Hi All,

Just thought I'd post my 2 cents worth.
I'm running an X850XT PE, and recently had some rather alarming problems with the card overheating. When running just about any 3d app, the core temp would jump from idle of about 40c to 91 or 92 c within 2-3 minutes of starting the app. I noticed that the fan wasn't throttling properly like it does on my other machine which runs an x800. Several times the core reached 92c and the thermal protection would kick me out to desktop.

These problems weren't helped by installation of the 5.13 Catalyst package from ATI. When i installed ATItool to check on the fan throttling settings, i got something that looked like this. (see attached picture)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this must be the default throttling curve specified by the Catalyst drivers. In this setup, the fan really doesn't begin to spin up until the chip is far too hot in my opinion. This matches what i was seeing while monitoring temps in game on a second display.

Long story short, i just tweaked the fan control curve down to run at 50% at 70c, 40% above 60c and my in game temps at the same game settings dropped from 91-92c to average about 65c (never above 67) so I would suggest that ATI has screwed up the fan throttling in at least the latest version of its driver.

Hope this helps anyone experiencing this frustrating little problem.

Big thx and kudos to whoever made that little ATItool utility!!!

 

[trog100]

looks like complete balls up that one.. fan doing nothing much till the temps hit the nineties..

ticking that little box thats say try and keep gpu temps at 70c is probably worth doing.. or dropping it to 60 and ticking it.. ticking that box will over-ride the other settings..

i have my artic cooler fan set to come in at higher speeds round about 55c.. its common for the default settings to not bring the fan in at higher speeds till the 70s thow.. they do this to keep fan noise down while folks are just browsing and the card isnt doing much.. in my case this is most of the time.. it clear they dont try very hard to to keep the cards much below 70c when under load the way the default settings are.. the ones u posted just seem way wrong thow..

heat isnt really the problem.. Noise is the problem.. lots of folks dont like it.. its pretty easy to cool anything as long as u dont mind your rig sounding like an air-con machine.. he he.. not so easy if u dont.. the priority for the default fan setting isnt to keep things as cool as possible.. its to keep things cool enough whilst not making too much fan racket doing it..

trog

ps.. a couple of year back a certain nvidia card earned the nickname "The Dus Buster".. it got panned for makig such a racket compared to the ati 9700 competitor.. i recon they have learned their lesson since then.. dont make any more noise than u really have to.. which probably translates to dont cool the card any more than u really have to..

 

[tepabajo]

Worked for me too, what a difference!

After struggling for quite awhile with heat problems I finally decided to take the heatsink off and investigate. After reading many posts about low temps using the stock fan I realized that it wasn't a fan problem, and that the stock fan would work just fine. That could only mean that the connection between the heatsink and the processer was bad. The fan was cooling the heatsink but the chilling affect was not making it to the processer.

After removing the heatsink I didn't see anything out of the ordinary. I cleaned the two surfaces like Artic Silver suggested and applied a new coating of thermal compound thin and smooth as recommended and put everything back together. Reinstalled the card, booted up the PC and right away I'm seeing temps starting at 50c and then climb to 104c playing Battlefield 1942 and then it locks up. I took the card out again and removed the heatsink and this is when I found the problem. Only about 10% of the heatsink was making contact with the processer! The thermal compound told me everything I needed to know in a heartbeat. Man was I pissed and releaved at the same time, and that ain't easy to do!

So, all this time when we thought that ATI was putting too much TC on these boards it was intentional, they were actually doing it to cover up a bad design. Is "cover up" too strong a language? How about "work around", does that sound better? Well anyway, I recleaned the surface and applied a liberal amount of TC, enough that would fill in the gap. Reinstalled the heatsink and card and fired up the PC. Unbelievable results!!!!!!! My idle temps as I write this today at 4:30am is 32c and max load temp is 59c playing FarCry on VeryHigh settings and before I could barely get FC started before it locked up.

Conclusion: For all of you guys/gals having heat issues with your Radeon X850XT PE if you do what I did you will be amazed. With temps like this I doubt I even need to consider replacing the heatsink with a Artic Cooler, leave well enough alone.

Happy gaming.
Tepabajo