# Catalyst driver override BIOS fan settings



## QueenMaro (Dec 27, 2011)

Hi, I have the following problem:

The AMD Catalyst drivers override the BIOS fan speed settings of my Radeon HD 6870. Thus making any adjustments of RBE in the VBIOS useless as soon as windows is loaded...

Is there any way to
  - stop the Catalyst drivers controlling fan speeds?
or at least
  - adjust the min / max / slop the Catalyst drivers use?

System
 Radeon HD 6870
 Catalyst 11.11 drivers
 (behaviour ist also reproducible with other HD 5xxx / 6xxx and also other Catalyst versions...)

Thanks!

PS: the AMD driver files are full of "GetFanSpeed" / "SetFanSpeed" procedure calls...


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## _JP_ (Dec 27, 2011)

That's a known issue. 
But I though that with newer cards, catalyst could regulate the fan speed based on a graph, configured by the user. 
Anyway, the usual solution is to install MSI Afterburner and setup a fan profile there.


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## QueenMaro (Dec 30, 2011)

Any suggestions to prevent the AMD Catalyst driver to interfere ?


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## JasonLA (Jan 8, 2012)

I have the same Question for a HD6950@6970

It doesn't matter what i set in the bios at the fan settings.

The fan runs at 24% in 2D in automatic mode, but is a lot to loud but cool enough
When I set it manually, I only can set it to 20% and not above... but a bit more silent would be great!

So is there any possibility to get rid of this lock? I would like to set the fan like i do in RBE.


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## FreedomEclipse (Jan 8, 2012)

QueenMaro said:


> Any suggestions to prevent the AMD Catalyst driver to interfere ?





JasonLA said:


> I have the same Question for a HD6950@6970
> 
> It doesn't matter what i set in the bios at the fan settings.
> 
> ...



Unless either of you posses decent knowledge of programming Its impossible to change something which has been hard coded into the driver.

this is similar to the driver checks that AMD CCC does on 6800 series cards. you can flash them really easily, but it will BSOD when you next restart due to failing the driver check


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## JasonLA (Jan 8, 2012)

with MSI Afterburner I got it a little bit lower than these 20%... The Fan now runs at about 1070rpm


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## QueenMaro (Jan 28, 2012)

Hi JasonLA,
I made perfect experience with my XFX Radeon HD 6870 and SpeedFan (4.46 beta 2).
It can regulate the fan speed 0...100% (0rpm...4000rpm) according to the temperature it reads directly from the Radeon Chip.

None the less it is rediculous:
  - I have a BIOS that perfectly regulates the fan
  - then the Catalyst driver interferes without option to change anything
  - and finally I put FanSpeed on top to make things right again

Btw I am very up to driver programming, reverse assembling etc. If anyone could give me a hint which part of the 50MB+ ATI driver binaries reprogrammes the fan... I would be glad to try to change those!


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## erocker (Jan 28, 2012)

The easiest solution is to use MSI afterburner/Sapphire Trixx and setup a custom fan profile, have it start minimized with Windows. I've done this with the past few series of AMD/ATi cards and it works without a hitch. I don't know why you would use SpeedFan to adjust your fan since CCC has that option. Unless you can set a custom fan profile in SpeedFan, which I haven't seen before.


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## pignon (Feb 21, 2012)

Hello,

Since I haven't found any simple tool to do what I needed , I wrote a little systray tool that turns fan off when temperature is low. The tool also indicate the card's temperature in the systray every 30 seconds.

You can get the tool (FanlessRadeon) here :

https://skydrive.live.com/embed?cid...=4930EF42F98BF041!254&authkey=AMKlHU9Jay99rZs

A couple of notes :

- the tool only manage one card and is configured to turn fan off when card's temperature is below 40°C.  Temperature is checked every 30 seconds. If needed, the following arguments can be used to   change default settings : FanlessRadeon [/LIMIT:value (°C)] [/INTERVAL:value (seconds)]

- If you want to autorun the tool on startup, you'll need to run the exe as full admin and check the "run on logon" option (this is needed to add the tool in the HKCU startup key)

- I honestly don't understand why similar feature is not present in driver/ccc (and why driver override bios settings!). Dear Mr ATI, don't consume energy when it's not needed and keep your cards quiet whenever possible!

Use this utility at your own risk ! I don't want to be help responsible for potential damage of your Radeon card using this tool... 

Regards,

Emmanuel Francois Pignon


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## JasonLA (Feb 21, 2012)

Sounds like great work!
I resolved my problems by assembling an Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme Plus II on my card.
Now everything is very silent, even when I play games.
I recommend it to all high-end graphics-card owner, but don't use the stock heatsinks shipped with the Cooler, I damged my Card with it. I used them from Scythe.

With the HD 7000 series AMD is trying to improve power consumption and heat, but with these stock coolers, it isn't possible to get silent cards


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## pignon (Feb 25, 2012)

Thanks JasonLA! I believe your hardware solution is probably the best one but since I'm not a "hardcore gamer" (my Radeon sticks most of the time around 35°), a software solution like FanlessRadeon is cheap! I've update the link since, for some reson, the sky drive location was changed. Feel free to test the tool and provide feedback!

Emmanuel


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## JasonLA (Feb 25, 2012)

I tried your program. When I open the exe as administrator my fans turn to 50%


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## pignon (Feb 25, 2012)

Hello JasonLA,

What does the about box says when you run the tool ?
I'm assuming your overdrrive fan setting is set to 50% and the temperature of your card exceeds 40° (you can change this by specifying the temperature limit in the command line used to run the tool - see doc in about box).  If you use FanlessRadeon, best is to not use overdrive (that's my setup). In this scenario, either your fan should be off (temperature <40), either default value will be used for the fan speed.

I hope this helps,

Emmanuel


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