Hi all,
I'm new to this forum so I just want to introduce myself a bit and ask you a question about my new video card. First of all, I'm a French canadian from Quebec. I'm sorry if my English isn't perfect.
I actually have a Q9550 (3.6 GHz w/ Corsair H50) on a P5Q-E, 4GB of G.Skill DDR2-1066. I have a Lian-Li PC-B25F computer case, a ST-85F power supply and a lot of SSDs/HDDs.
I just changed my HD5770 Vapor-X for a HD6870. I'm running a tri-22" Eyefinity setup and the 5770 wasn't enough to play DiRT2 at full settings (5040x1050px resolution). Now, with the 6870, I'm really happy with the performance, but I have a new problem: temperatures.
In fact, the card idles at ~55C (no O/C) and go up to ~75C when in load (which is in fact really great). I modded the PWM fan curve a little bit with MSI Afterburner, so that the fan hits 100% at 80C instead of 102C. It keeps my GPU cool enough when playing games or running some GPGPU application. I don't really care at the noise when I'm playing, but I really like it to be silent when the PC is idle. At 20-22%, we don't hear the fan, which is okay.
My main problem is the idle temperature, I need to raise the fan speed up to 40% (which is way too much noise for me when the PC is idle) if I want to achieve a ~42-44C temperature. I know my PC-B25F for having a great airflow (not the best, but still good). I looked at a few benchmarks and saw an interesting point: idle frequencies downclocking.
When the GPU is idle, it downclocks its frequencies. Instead of 900/1050, it's 300/1050. While it allows the GPU for lower temperature, some HD6870 downclocks to 100/300 when idling, but not the Sapphire one. I really didn't take any attention at this point when buying my card, thinking the temperatures with the reference cooler would be the same whether I buy a Sapphire branded card or an ASUS one.
With RBE, I can see my card's BIOS. There are 5 clock profiles. The first one is 900/1050, the second one is 300/1050, then the third one is 100/300. The 4th and 5th are both 900/1050. I don't really understand why there are 5 clock settings on the BIOS, and I don't understand either why my GPU downclocks only to 900/1050 instead of 100/300 (which would allow really better temperatures).
I cannot flash the BIOS yet, as Winflash actually doesn't support it. I've tried CCC 10.10, 10.10a, b, c and d. It doesn't matter. The card seems to overclock really great but if I O/C to 950/1200, then it will idle at 300/1200, which is 6 degrees hotter (and that's the point: the 1200 MHz are obviously producing a lot of heat, so are the 1050 MHz).
Any solution or idea?
Thank you very much!
dnLL
I'm new to this forum so I just want to introduce myself a bit and ask you a question about my new video card. First of all, I'm a French canadian from Quebec. I'm sorry if my English isn't perfect.
I actually have a Q9550 (3.6 GHz w/ Corsair H50) on a P5Q-E, 4GB of G.Skill DDR2-1066. I have a Lian-Li PC-B25F computer case, a ST-85F power supply and a lot of SSDs/HDDs.
I just changed my HD5770 Vapor-X for a HD6870. I'm running a tri-22" Eyefinity setup and the 5770 wasn't enough to play DiRT2 at full settings (5040x1050px resolution). Now, with the 6870, I'm really happy with the performance, but I have a new problem: temperatures.
In fact, the card idles at ~55C (no O/C) and go up to ~75C when in load (which is in fact really great). I modded the PWM fan curve a little bit with MSI Afterburner, so that the fan hits 100% at 80C instead of 102C. It keeps my GPU cool enough when playing games or running some GPGPU application. I don't really care at the noise when I'm playing, but I really like it to be silent when the PC is idle. At 20-22%, we don't hear the fan, which is okay.
My main problem is the idle temperature, I need to raise the fan speed up to 40% (which is way too much noise for me when the PC is idle) if I want to achieve a ~42-44C temperature. I know my PC-B25F for having a great airflow (not the best, but still good). I looked at a few benchmarks and saw an interesting point: idle frequencies downclocking.
When the GPU is idle, it downclocks its frequencies. Instead of 900/1050, it's 300/1050. While it allows the GPU for lower temperature, some HD6870 downclocks to 100/300 when idling, but not the Sapphire one. I really didn't take any attention at this point when buying my card, thinking the temperatures with the reference cooler would be the same whether I buy a Sapphire branded card or an ASUS one.
With RBE, I can see my card's BIOS. There are 5 clock profiles. The first one is 900/1050, the second one is 300/1050, then the third one is 100/300. The 4th and 5th are both 900/1050. I don't really understand why there are 5 clock settings on the BIOS, and I don't understand either why my GPU downclocks only to 900/1050 instead of 100/300 (which would allow really better temperatures).
I cannot flash the BIOS yet, as Winflash actually doesn't support it. I've tried CCC 10.10, 10.10a, b, c and d. It doesn't matter. The card seems to overclock really great but if I O/C to 950/1200, then it will idle at 300/1200, which is 6 degrees hotter (and that's the point: the 1200 MHz are obviously producing a lot of heat, so are the 1050 MHz).
Any solution or idea?
Thank you very much!
dnLL