I was well aware that my Radeon cards were running well above 80 degrees at factory speeds. Even on idle. (That scale is in Celsius) I thought the 4800 series were meant to run that way and thus, I never had a second though about it. Guess what? I randomly rummaged through some forum entries today and saw that others had their 4870s running on 50 degrees on idle, 70 degrees under load.
readings of my primary graphics adapterLet’s do the math. If others have their cards running ~40% degrees higher under load than when it’s idle, my ΔT should increase by approximately the same percentage right? Well, yes, I guess.
80 + 80*40% = >100°C.
Ahem…That number with double zeros sure looks familiar. I guess that’s somewhat beneficial: with that value, moisture that may have somehow condensed on my pc’s internals will be vaporized quickly.
(Note that this will most probably never happen, as the GPU's fan will automatically crank out a couple more rpms when temperatures escalate to hazardous levels. We all don't like toast components, do we?)
Ok, that won’t do; I’m in need for a remedy.
Later, with a simple google search, I found an article on one of my frequently visited sites: custompc.co.uk. It said that it is possible to increase the fan speed on the Radeon by performing some tweaks on an XML file. But then, upon clicking the second link, I was back to square one. Here’s why: the second link was a forum with a heading containing the following words, “Dead 4870 from adjusting fan speed?” And that was performed through the exact same method that was cited in custompc’s article.
Fortunately, I read further that ATI has made the fan control option freely available in its control panel itself (the Catalyst Control Center with v8.10 drivers). Perhaps it’ll be better if I downloaded that legitimate graphics driver and from there, take a safer approach to radiate a little more heat away from my cards.
I will be updating this column when time allows me to do so.
T’ang
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