# ATI Deliberately Retards Catalyst for FurMark



## btarunr (Aug 28, 2008)

It is a known flaw that some models of the Radeon HD 4800 accelerators fail oZone3D FurMark, an OpenGL based graphics benchmark application that has found to stress Radeon HD 4800 series far enough to result in over-heating, artifacts or even driver crashes. The Catalyst 8.8 drivers have found to treat the FurMark executable differently based on its file-name. Expreview tested this hypothesis by benchmarking a reference design HD 4850 board using Catalyst 8.8 driver, with two runs of FurMark. In the first run, the test was cleared at a low score, much lower compared to those of whatever successful runs on older drivers could churn out. Suspecting that the driver could be using some sort of internal profile specific to the FurMark executable, Expreview renamed the furmark.exe file, thereby not letting the driver know it's FurMark that's being run. Voila! the margin of lead the renamed FurMark executable gave over "furmark.exe" shows the driver to behave differently. A shady thing since Radeon HD 4800 almost became infamous for failing at FurMark, and at least passing it with a low score seemed better than failing at it altogether.

Expreview caught this flaw when testing the PowerColor Radeon HD 4870 Professional Cooling System (PCS+) when odd behaviour with the newer driver was noted. Successive BIOS releases didn't fix the issue, in fact, it only got worse with erratic fan behaviour caused due to a "quick-fix" BIOS PowerColor issued (covered here).




 

 



*View at TechPowerUp Main Site*


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## wolf2009 (Aug 28, 2008)

hmmm ..... trying to save the poor components used in the VRM from blowing .


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## newtekie1 (Aug 28, 2008)

Not a good thing, they should work more on fixing the cards so they can actually handle heavy load instead of grippling them with drivers.


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## jbunch07 (Aug 28, 2008)

Im trying to make sense of this, ATi instructed the card to perform poorly on furmark so it wouldn't stress out and overheat? 
This is odd to say the least.


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## jydie (Aug 28, 2008)

Actually, all they need to do if force companies like Sapphire, Vision Tek, etc. to focus more on keeping the GPU at a safe temperature.  Instead, they try to keep the fan running as slow and quiet as possible.  These are high end cards... bring on the noise!!  How cool would a motorcycle or sports car be if they were always silent??  Sure would not turn many heads now would they?


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## alexp999 (Aug 28, 2008)

So if I'm getting this right, the latest cat drivers cripple the performance of furmark cus the 48xx series cant cope with sustained 100% load even at stock?

I'm so glad I didnt get a 4870... 

Are these same problems evident with the 4870X2?

And is this a heat or crappy component issue?


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## mikek75 (Aug 28, 2008)

AH HA!!! I thought I was going mad....On 8.7 I sucessfully completed Furmark with scores in excess of 7000, with 8.8 it dropped to 3800 or so. Bastards, I thought my card was going kaputt!


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## Bull Dog (Aug 28, 2008)

Well frankly I wouldn't be too concerned about it.  My 4870 handled furmark just fine with the stock cooler and stock bios.   


And seriously we all know that the fur causes the GPU to generate more heat that anything else.  So if the card can still run every game out there with 100% reliability and there is some silly, relatively obscure benchmark that some cards seem to be having problems with, who cares?


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## newtekie1 (Aug 28, 2008)

Bull Dog said:


> Well frankly I wouldn't be too concerned about it.  My 4870 handled furmark just fine with the stock cooler and stock bios.
> 
> 
> And seriously we all know that the fur causes the GPU to generate more heat that anything else.  So if the card can still run every game out there with 100% reliability and there is some silly, relatively obscure benchmark that some cards seem to be having problems with, who cares?



This issue is that, as newer games come out that stress the GPU more, they will be pushed to their failure point just like Furmark does.  I would certainly care if my GPU was unable to handle a few minutes of max load, there is bound to be a game that will eventually do the same.

I believe this is mainly an issue with the single slot coolers on the HD4850, not the dual slot ones used on the HD4870.


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## SpookyWillow (Aug 28, 2008)

im not sure that its just this though,  my soft shadow scores have dropped considerably too and that happened on my 3870 when they introduced the new OGL AA in the 8.6 drivers.



> OpenGL Adaptive Anti-Aliasing Custom Filters support
> This release of Catalyst™ introduces Adaptive Anti-Aliasing Custom Filters support for OpenGL applications for the ATI Radeon™ HD 3000 Series, ATI Radeon™ HD 2000 Series of products. Using the Edge Detect Custom Filter, users can enable 12X and 24X Anti-Aliasing. Selecting 4X Anti-Aliasing plus selecting the Edge Detect filter delivers the equivalent of 12X Anti-Aliasing. Selecting 8X Anti-Aliasing plus selecting the Edge Detect filter delivers the equivalent of 24X Anti-Aliasing.


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## acperience7 (Aug 28, 2008)

jydie said:


> Actually, all they need to do if force companies like Sapphire, Vision Tek, etc. to focus more on keeping the GPU at a safe temperature.  Instead, they try to keep the fan running as slow and quiet as possible.  These are high end cards... bring on the noise!!  How cool would a motorcycle or sports car be if they were always silent??  Sure would not turn many heads now would they?


I agree with you on the noise issue. These are not the days of 9800Pro's or Pentium 3 CPU's anymore, and air cooling tech can only go so far in the noise vs heat battle. On high end cards like the 4870 and GTX 280 people should expect them to make noise with the kind of power they have. Then everyone complains about the weight of these cards. Considering the abilities that they have and the heat they put out, the high levels of noise and the weight and size of these cards make sense. Maybe it's time for OEM graphics and CPU companies to start developing water cooling solutions for these cards for people that do want them quiet. I'm all for air cooling, but you can only go so far air. Technology is getting to a point where it's time to start integrating water cooling solutions as a mainstream method of cooling. As far as I'm concerned; Crank the fans, keep em cool, keep em alive longer.


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## R_1 (Aug 28, 2008)

It is easy for ATI partners to made a silent but hot card, then silent and cool card. The hot one will degrade and eventually get toasted, but it will live long enough to become obsolete in games.


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## DarkMatter (Aug 28, 2008)

This only confirms something that I already suspected and that was almost confirmed already by the temperatures of all R7xx cards and the low OC capabilities. Ati clocked this cards very high in order to own this round and also used very cheap cooling to make the cards cheaper, for the same reason.



R_1 said:


> It is easy for ATI partners to made a silent but hot card, then silent and cool card. The hot one will degrade and eventually get toasted, *but it will live long enough to become obsolete in games.*



That's something hard to tell, but as of now it seems that the failure rate is not very high (=excesive to the point to annoy consumers), even though it's definately high above the average.


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## AsRock (Aug 28, 2008)

jbunch07 said:


> Im trying to make sense of this, ATi instructed the card to perform poorly on furmark so it wouldn't stress out and overheat?
> This is odd to say the least.



Maybe there worried about people bitching about fan noise( stop your bitching about fan noise), if there's one thing i am sick off is people wanting very fast video cards and expect them not to have fan noise.

If some thing works hard it's going produce a load of heat until we make some major break though which is not going be any time soon due to how fast things are moving.

Hence the reason i got the PSU i got as silent has bigger disadvantages IMO.  All though never heard the PSU fan still lol.

If any thing they should make these cards easier for people adjust so they can make they work to there fullest


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## btarunr (Aug 28, 2008)

Just to clarify, the cards aren't "failing" (as in going kaput) as such, it's just this benchmark that seems to be stressing the RV770, it's not clearing it. On the other hand, the card isn't "failing" in Crysis bench / game so it's not like the card is a failure when it comes to handling stress. Sources tell it could be because FurMark stresses the memory bus a lot, asserted by the MEM_IO temperatures.


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## alexp999 (Aug 28, 2008)

btarunr said:


> Just to clarify, the cards aren't "failing" (as in going kaput) as such, it's just this benchmark that seems to be stressing the RV770, it's not clearing it. On the other hand, the card isn't "failing" in Crysis bench / game so it's not like the card is a failure when it comes to handling stress. Sources tell it could be because FurMark stresses the memory bus a lot, asserted by the MEM_IO temperatures.



But on stock settings, it should never fail 100% stress/load. Where is the built in safety overhead which people usually exploit for OCing if it cant even sustain what it is theoretically capable of.


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## DarkMatter (Aug 28, 2008)

btarunr said:


> Just to clarify, the cards aren't "failing" (as in going kaput) as such, it's just this benchmark that seems to be stressing the RV770, it's not clearing it. On the other hand, the card isn't "failing" in Crysis bench / game so it's not like the card is a failure when it comes to handling stress. Sources tell it could be because FurMark stresses the memory bus a lot, asserted by the MEM_IO temperatures.



But they do have some erratic performance when they overheat on some games. Just google HD4870 overheating issues and see. I have seen many threads about that here on TPU too.

As I said it's not something that hasn't happened in the past. It's very common in the industry, and something the average Joe shouldn't care about, but it does affect many people and it's good to know that it could happen. What it is safe on some regions, on others will make the card get fried up in less than 2 mins. Radeons are around 90C when ambient temps are 25-30C, but what about when the ambient temps are above 40C?


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## alexp999 (Aug 28, 2008)

This is getting more and more like the RROD scenario on the 360's. I just hope it doesnt take AMD 3 years to fix it.


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## DarkMatter (Aug 28, 2008)

alexp999 said:


> This is getting more and more like the RROD scenario on the 360's. I just hope it doesnt take AMD 3 years to fix it.



It's not that dramatic.


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## EastCoasthandle (Aug 28, 2008)

Edit: The results are not the same...


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## btarunr (Aug 28, 2008)

That's Temp1 (that CCC and Everest use to denote "GPU Temperature").


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## R_1 (Aug 28, 2008)

The hottest parts in 4800 series are GPU and power mosfets. When mosfets are heated up their on-state resistance rises with temperature, if the load is approximately a constant-current load then the power loss rises correspondingly, generating further heat. The effect is known as "Thermal runaway". It can result in destruction of the device.
GPU overheating can reduce it's  life-span drastically to 3 years and few months.


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## btarunr (Aug 28, 2008)

EastCoasthandle said:


> Is this post directed to me?  If so, I have no idea what you are talking about.



Unless that's 100% fan throughout, ~40 C looks unreal.

CCC and Everest don't display DISP_IO, MEM_IO or SHADER_core values, the "GPU Temperature" value is somehow derived out of those three values.


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## mdm-adph (Aug 28, 2008)

Are we sure this isn't just for the PowerColor 4870 PCS+ card?  I've heard nothing but trouble with that thing and it's terrible BIOS.


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## EastCoasthandle (Aug 28, 2008)

btarunr said:


> Unless that's 100% fan throughout, ~40 C looks unreal.
> 
> CCC and Everest don't display DISP_IO, MEM_IO or SHADER_core values, the "GPU Temperature" value is somehow derived out of those three values.



In this case they are not necessary to show that the amperage between the 2 are different. The fan speed between the 2 are within margin.


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## W1zzard (Aug 28, 2008)

EastCoasthandle said:


> 3D-Analyze using nvidia ID



doesnt 3d analyze reduce the general performance of the "card" ? if yes then that's why you see the lower temps. more overh ead in 3d analyze, less time to render, less fps, less load, less heat

you lose ballpark 10% FPS and 10% power consumption accordingly. isn't that to be expected?


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## DarkMatter (Aug 28, 2008)

EastCoasthandle said:


> 3D-Analyze using nvidia ID
> Ambient temp 25C
> GPU 42C
> GPU VRM 70C
> ...



What's your point? Under Nvidia ID performance is significantly lower too, thus everything else is lower too.

TBH are you trying to make a point based on what? You tricked the benchmark to think it was a Nvidia card and you didn't expect something strange to happen? For instance, because the benchmark thinks is a NVidia card, probably isn't loading all the shaders because Nvidia cards don't have 5 ALUs per SP... :shadedshu

EDIT: Wizzard beat me to it.


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## EastCoasthandle (Aug 28, 2008)

An easier way to answer it is to post results of a nvidia card (9800 GTX/GTX+, 260/280) and compare the results of the gpu temps, vrm temps and vrm amps.

I didn't do this to compare scores but to see if a difference was found in temps/amps.


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## btarunr (Aug 28, 2008)

Don't scores relate to amperage anyway? Aren't they directly proportional?


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## EastCoasthandle (Aug 28, 2008)

btarunr said:


> Don't scores relate to amperage anyway? Aren't they directly proportional?



Unless I missed something aren't there differences in results between one make/model video card and another? If so, wouldn't the results be different anyway regardless of amperage?


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## btarunr (Aug 28, 2008)

Aren't you using the same card to emulate / "trick" FM to seeing a NVIDIA card? As W1z said there's a loss of ~10% score, as also amperage/VRM Temps.


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## EastCoasthandle (Aug 28, 2008)

btarunr said:


> Aren't you using the same card to emulate / "trick" FM to seeing a NVIDIA card? As W1z said there's a loss of ~10% score, as also amperage/VRM Temps.



I didn't know that a 4800 series was suppose to give the same score when the ID is changed to another. I see your point of view on this.  However, I do not believe that the scores are suppose to be the same.  However, I am curious as to what a 9800 or 260 GTX results temps/amp/etc would be when using furmark.  Do you (or anyone else) mind posting them?


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## DarkMatter (Aug 28, 2008)

EastCoasthandle said:


> I didn't know that a 4800 series was suppose to give the same score when the ID is changed to another. I see your point of view on this.  However, I do not believe that the scores are suppose to be the same.



No, scores are not supposed to be the same, as I said probably there are many ALUs sitting idle. But, it doesn't matter. You don't seem to understand that when the card is not stressed under 100% load, the card requires less amperage, will consume less, heat less and even maybe require less voltage. 

When disabled or when at idle the SPs act like resistances. High resistances when at idle and almost infinite resistance when totally disabled (I think only GT200 GPU can do this right now though, not sure). Now when voltage is constant (as is the case) the higher the resistance the smaller the amperage it will be.


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## DrunkenMafia (Aug 29, 2008)

It baffles me how these companies (ATI) think they can do something like this and no one will catch on.

They should be fixing the overheating problem rather than trying to slow the card down under our noses.

thats just bad business practises


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## HAL7000 (Aug 29, 2008)

Well my 2 4850's from diamondmm have been running great. I bought the pair for 138 each after the rebate. They run hot but I don't OC either. 

So is this limited to powercolor and their card bios?   The life of a graphics card isn't that long anyways. With improvements, upgrades  and so on, this bench means nothing IMHO. 
But if it isn't powercolor and it is ati and their drivers ,well lets hope they fix the dam problem and quick.


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## PVTCaboose1337 (Aug 29, 2008)

Just an FYI, once the fan fix is initiated, which I bet not many users do, the temperatures are pretty good!  38c on stock cooler, idle, and 80f room temp.  Pretty nice if you ask me!  40% fan btw.


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## newtekie1 (Aug 29, 2008)

PVTCaboose1337 said:


> Just an FYI, once the fan fix is initiated, which I bet not many users do, the temperatures are pretty good!  38c on stock cooler, idle, and 80f room temp.  Pretty nice if you ask me!  40% fan btw.



Idle temps mean nothing.


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## Kursah (Aug 29, 2008)

newtekie1 said:


> Idle temps mean nothing.



Very true...many like to brag of it, hell even I do from time to time...my GTX260 idleing at 44-45C means nothing in reality...it's the load temps and stability that should truly matter. With the cooler temps up this way...my GTX260 hits 57C folding and 60-61C gaming/benching/stress testing @ 80% fan speed.

It's a bummer ATI decided to do this driver "un-tweak"...but it's just a benchmark in the end...gaming performance is what SHOULD matter to most of you out there...if you're a bencher, then obviously these drivers will be skipped or maybe a "patch" will be created to override what has been done.


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## candle_86 (Aug 29, 2008)

DarkMatter said:


> This only confirms something that I already suspected and that was almost confirmed already by the temperatures of all R7xx cards and the low OC capabilities. Ati clocked this cards very high in order to own this round and also used very cheap cooling to make the cards cheaper, for the same reason.
> 
> 
> 
> That's something hard to tell, but as of now it seems that the failure rate is not very high (=excesive to the point to annoy consumers), even though it's definately high above the average.



its nearing the 7900GT failure rate

all this tells me is ATI is scamming there drivers, and they can't cope with 100% load on the GPU. I think ill get either a 9800GTX or GTX260 and not have to worry that in a year or so other games will be just as intense and smoke my card to ash.


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## eidairaman1 (Aug 29, 2008)

So are they gonna try this on other boards aswell, because remember powercolor is having a rough time with their New line of boards.


btarunr said:


> It is a known flaw that some models of the Radeon HD 4800 accelerators fail oZone3D FurMark, an OpenGL based graphics benchmark application that has found to stress Radeon HD 4800 series far enough to result in over-heating, artifacts or even driver crashes. The Catalyst 8.8 drivers have found to treat the FurMark executable differently based on its file-name. Expreview tested this hypothesis by benchmarking a reference design HD 4850 board using Catalyst 8.8 driver, with two runs of FurMark. In the first run, the test was cleared at a low score, much lower compared to those of whatever successful runs on older drivers could churn out. Suspecting that the driver could be using some sort of internal profile specific to the FurMark executable, Expreview renamed the furmark.exe file, thereby not letting the driver know it's FurMark that's being run. Voila! the margin of lead the renamed FurMark executable gave over "furmark.exe" shows the driver to behave differently. A shady thing since Radeon HD 4800 almost became infamous for failing at FurMark, and at least passing it with a low score seemed better than failing at it altogether.
> 
> Expreview caught this flaw when testing the PowerColor Radeon HD 4870 Professional Cooling System (PCS+) when odd behaviour with the newer driver was noted. Successive BIOS releases didn't fix the issue, in fact, it only got worse with erratic fan behaviour caused due to a "quick-fix" BIOS PowerColor issued (covered here).
> 
> ...


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## Kursah (Aug 29, 2008)

My Powercolor x1950Pro Extreme 256mb is still running strong in a friends' rig after almost 2 years...wonder what happened...


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## candle_86 (Aug 29, 2008)

they wanted to catch up to NVidia and in return didnt plan the cooling well enough.


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## bangmal (Aug 29, 2008)

LOL.
I see that all the long fraustrated nv boys who bought the overpriced GTX200 series are crawling out of the woodwork to celebrate.

It is amusing to see all the nv girls are having orgasm at the same time because a shady software and a shady website.

Anyway, I ran a test because of this "news":
My setup:
An overclocked 4870 running at 820/1000 using stock cooler
Furmark 1.4.0
Windows Vista Sp1

after running two tests for 1000 seconds, i took two image.

The first image was before the name change.

The second image was after "FurMark.exe" changed to "fuckmark.exe"

As you can see, the temperaure, the load, the VDDC current remain almost the same.
Also notice that the fan is even not spinning at half of the max speed.
so much for the "overheat"
So much for the "ATI Deliberately Retards Catalyst for FurMark" 
cheers


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## Kursah (Aug 29, 2008)

Yes but search the forums...there have been at least 2 threads I can recall about this issue with HD48xx cards in the last month.

I'm not a fanboy, though you show your true colors...and maybe need to take a brake from the PC...but I get what makes sense for me and my budget...I spent less than an HD4870 on my GTX260 and have had nothing but an excellent experience with it. The HD's just seemed too finicky to me, fan speed issues, driver issues, temp issues, mediocre cooling, it's gotten better on most fronts and can only improve and even with the issues I found to be "issues" for my "preference" those cards still kick ass and are only improving, for the most part.

Kind of a crap time for news like this to come out tho...almost in-opportune for ATI, hopefully this isn't some sort of scam as I like ATI, I've had many ATI and NV cards...but this kind of crap is unnacceptable from either side...the GPU needs to perform, not be retarded with drivers so less users complain...both sides have done it in one way or another...it will continue, just depends on what seems like the biggest deal or is most noticable at the time I guess.


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## candle_86 (Aug 29, 2008)

i doubt its a scam honestly, not from faud anyway, he is AMD bias'd already.


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## btarunr (Aug 29, 2008)

@bangmal: More number of people have verified this than you disproved it. You've not even shown which catalyst driver you use.


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## bangmal (Aug 29, 2008)

Driver Packaging Version	8.522-080731a-067980C-ATI	

Catalyst® Version	08.8	

Provider	ATI Technologies Inc.	

2D Driver Version	7.01.01.809	

2D Driver File Path	/REGISTRY/MACHINE/SYSTEM/ControlSet001/Control/Class/{4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}/0001	

Direct3D Version	7.14.10.0603	

OpenGL Version	6.14.10.7873	

Catalyst® Control Center Version	2008.0731.2322.39992	
-----------------

@btarunr, people do not report when their cards are working perfect. I admit, I have too much time tonight


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## btarunr (Aug 29, 2008)

They don't, but even when a handful of them do, it becomes a cause for concern. Especially when websites report this flaw and publish it. It's a known and verified fact that PowerColor HD 4870 PCS fails FurMark more times than it passes it, and that successive BIOS didn't fix it, at reference fan speeds the card can't take those temperatures, and so Catalyst 8.8 turns down performance.


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## bangmal (Aug 29, 2008)

PowerColor HD 4870 PCS is using a very different cooler, i guess that is the problem.
I was using a GTX 260, overclocked at 720/1440/1200, it gets a significant lower score than a stock 4850 at furmark, does it mean nvidia deliberately turns down performance on furmark too?

It looks to me it is nothing more than a bug in the furmark, ATI fixes it in the driver update, thats all. Some people, especially the nv fanboys are making a mountain out of a mole hill.


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## btarunr (Aug 29, 2008)

We're not comparing GTX 260 to HD 4850 here, we're comparing the same card performing differently with different drivers on a benchmark, more so, performing differently with the same driver with the application renamed. Don't make pointless accusations without looking at sources, it's not just Expreview, several sources I talked to point to the same thing. The mountain is because that's a significant performance hit just to let the card sail through.


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## Wile E (Aug 29, 2008)

The only thing this shows me is that they need to raise fan speeds. Not that there's some inherent flaw in RV770 itself. This is a simple issue with a simple fix, ATI needs to get on the ball about it.


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## DarkMatter (Aug 29, 2008)

Wile E said:


> The only thing this shows me is that they need to raise fan speeds. Not that there's some inherent flaw in RV770 itself. This is a simple issue with a simple fix, ATI needs to get on the ball about it.



IMO if the fix was that simple, they would just have done that instead of creating a modified profile for Furmark. That way they would not only fix Furmark, they would also make many people having issues on some games very happy, don't you think? Sometimes uping up the fan beyond some speeds does not help a lot if the heatsink is bad, maybe that's the case, I don't know. I really don't know, I'm just speculating, based on what I said above. Ati has had a lot of time and a handful of driver releases in which they could have totally fixed the fan speed issue. I guess there's a reason for not making it go faster. But noise? Could they risk stability or reliability just to not make the card sound like a hairdryer?


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## eidairaman1 (Aug 29, 2008)

DarkMatter said:


> IMO if the fix was that simple, they would just have done that instead of creating a modified profile for Furmark. That way they would not only fix Furmark, they would also make many people having issues on some games very happy, don't you think? Sometimes uping up the fan beyond some speeds does not help a lot if the heatsink is bad, maybe that's the case, I don't know. I really don't know, I'm just speculating, based on what I said above. Ati has had a lot of time and a handful of driver releases in which they could have totally fixed the fan speed issue. I guess there's a reason for not making it go faster. But noise? Could they risk stability or reliability just to not make the card sound like a hairdryer?



Its not ati but the Third parties that cant get anything right, also i believe some of these 3rd partie manufacturers have bad QA (making sure cooling is contacting everything etc) Beyond that most of these reports are for Benchwhores anyway, it doesnt seem this is a complaint about Game performance.


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## EastCoasthandle (Aug 29, 2008)

bangmal said:


> LOL.
> I see that all the long fraustrated nv boys who bought the overpriced GTX200 series are crawling out of the woodwork to celebrate.
> 
> It is amusing to see all the nv girls are having orgasm at the same time because a shady software and a shady website.
> ...





> Driver Packaging Version 8.522-080731a-067980C-ATI
> 
> Catalyst® Version 08.8
> 
> ...


Thanks for the input .  The name change shows the exact same GPU load, temps and power draw.


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## Darkrealms (Aug 29, 2008)

Thanks for the info *btarunr*.

There's two ways to look at it.
  A.  Either they try to keep the majority of their cards cool and functioning.  Apparently by using drivers now.
OR
  B.  They wind up like Nvidia with a recall level failure rate.  Right now ATI/AMD can't afford that.  Hell look what it did to Nvidias stock.  Try and tell me ATI can handle something like that.  They are just getting back into the High End competition.

*B* is probably the right choice but right now they can't afford it.  Hopefully AMD's new CPUs will help pull them out and get them going on stable ground again.  _*Honestly what would people rather have them do??*  Seriously think about that for a minute!_

_And remember I'm an Nvidia fan and I still don't want to see ATI take the hit Nvidia did earlier this year._


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## btarunr (Aug 29, 2008)

I personally don't think it's a demerit as such. It's just a little ePenisMark application that faced the hit. HD 4870 is an asset to the computing world and it performs great with games.


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## Wshlist (Aug 29, 2008)

My 4850 (with 3rd party cooling) can handle furmark  but it certainly radically reduces the amount of OC I can apply before it artifacts

I think ATI should have put something in the release notes of 8.8 as an excuse though, because after all the specific circumstance are very limited, nothing now or in the future of games will likely do what furmark does and it's mostly an issue for OC'ed cards.

I wonder though if the companies that released pre-OC'ed cards have something to do with it, I'm guessing those cards show the same issues but you can't blame the OC'ing customer then.

I also wonder if the brand of RAM has an influence, it seems there are 2 kinds of RAM used on 4850's now and the RAM is the stuff that gets bloody hot I find, and probably heats up the rest of the card too a lot including the heatsink that sits on the VRM's


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## newtekie1 (Aug 29, 2008)

btarunr said:


> I personally don't think it's a demerit as such. It's just a little ePenisMark application that faced the hit. HD 4870 is an asset to the computing world and it performs great with games.



It isn't about the application and the score, it is about the fact that this is evidence that the cards can't handle being put under load.  The current situation in the gaming industry doesn't require that the card can handle full load in real world applications right now, but it should still be able to without problem.

Whatever the reason behind it, be it the cards over heating and needing a higher fans speed/better cooling or whatever, it is still ATi's responsibility to provide us with a quality product that will last.

Currently the cards aren't required to run at full load under normal gaming conditions, but as new games come out, the cards will be pushed harder and harder.  Especially if they are required to do more than graphics, like is PhysX is offloaded to them, they are put under even more load.

Personally, I would be worried if my graphics card was unstable under load.  But I am also one that doesn't like my processor to be unstable under 100% load, even if it functions perfectly except when under 100% load, and it will never really see 100% load.


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## btarunr (Aug 29, 2008)

newtekie1 said:


> It isn't about the application and the score, it is about the fact that this is evidence that the cards can't handle being put under load.  The current situation in the gaming industry doesn't require that the card can handle full load in real world applications right now, but it should still be able to without problem.



The card doesn't fail running Crysis? How much more load would you ask for?


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## newtekie1 (Aug 29, 2008)

btarunr said:


> The card doesn't fail running Crysis? How much more load would you ask for?



Crysis with PhsyX.  And we don't know that some crashes in Crysis are not caused by this.


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## mikek75 (Aug 29, 2008)

My 4870 has NEVER crashed yet. I ran Furmark on the 8.7 drivers several times, all sucessfully! Theres far too much bitching going on about the 48xx series if you ask me. I couldn't give a monkeys about furmark, just nice to now there was a reason why the score went down with the 8.8's.


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## candle_86 (Aug 29, 2008)

newtekie1 said:


> It isn't about the application and the score, it is about the fact that this is evidence that the cards can't handle being put under load.  The current situation in the gaming industry doesn't require that the card can handle full load in real world applications right now, but it should still be able to without problem.
> 
> Whatever the reason behind it, be it the cards over heating and needing a higher fans speed/better cooling or whatever, it is still ATi's responsibility to provide us with a quality product that will last.
> 
> ...



excatly, my old 6800GT did fine for a long time, then came games that made it stop, i played COD2 on it, and Fear Combat. I started getting over heat issues, and had to go get a better cooler than that single slot the 6800GT shipped with to fix my issues.


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## DarkMatter (Aug 29, 2008)

candle_86 said:


> excatly, my old 6800GT did fine for a long time, then came games that made it stop, i played COD2 on it, and Fear Combat. I started getting over heat issues, and had to go get a better cooler than that single slot the 6800GT shipped with to fix my issues.



Exactly! It has happened the same to me more than once, paradoxically one of the time I was with the 6800GT (Sparkle BTW).

Anyway that's the point, the one of yours and newtekie. It's not the benchmark, it's what this can tell us. The issue is not if the card is safe "on average" neither, because as I said there are many many places where the (usually rather favorable) conditions used to test the cards can't be replicated. Same for all those who say it has never failed for them. Average Joe won't have the same cooling as enthusiast here, and these cards are not only for enthusiast, thus the fact that changing the cooler or the fan speed manually, makes it run a lot better doesn't matter. For example, in some places summers are very hot and still the air is 96%+ wet. Not everybody has a centralised AC, and even if you have it, it will cost you a fortune to fight against the hot wet air of the outside. I know for sure that I don't live in the hottest and wettest place in the world, I'll be surprised if it's above the average, and still my GPU's are usually 5-10C higher on summers. That with the case opened and a big fan blowing directly to the case! Sometimes it doesn't matter how much air you throw at the thing because it has already warmed the air surrounding it and because this is wet it doesn't circulate as well as it would do on "normal" air (what is normal anyway?). That's just one of the possibilities.

Another good point is that as the card ages it will go worse. Not only because they inherently go worse, but most importantly because the verage joe never cleans the dust on interior of the case and the heatsinks. If the cards with one month of life are failing (and don't say it only happens on this benchmark) what will happen next year?


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## erocker (Aug 29, 2008)

btarunr said:


> I personally don't think it's a demerit as such. It's just a little ePenisMark application that faced the hit. HD 4870 is an asset to the computing world and it performs great with games.



Exactly.  If you are a die-hard furmark benchmarking enthusiast, might as well get two GTX280's.  I didn't buy my 48xx series cards just for some OpenGL benchmark that does nothing but torture your cards to death.


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## Basard (Aug 29, 2008)

yeah, i love how they try to keep the fanspeed as low as possible, even though the card is running 100c..... 

my friend had the same problem with his 8800gt, fan speed would not budge automatically, playing crysis the screen scrambles red and comp freezes cuz gpu's at 115c--fanspeed would stay at 40%.  yeah, he could manually turn fanspeed up, but then you gotta do that always....  so he got that xigmatek hdt for it, it never passes 60c now... 

my 3870 has the zerotherm cooler on it that things pretty nice.... i dont see why reference doesnt include a heatpipe..... 

its like they go out of their way to find the absolute biggest bunch of idiots to come up with a plan for reference coolers... and pick the worst plan of the bunch. why even bother making a card if you cant cool it right?  

the fault lies mostly with ati and nvidia, i think they need to make a WAY better reference, no reference at all, or chill out with the huge cards... manufacturers like xfx, powercolor, asus, they put the good coolers on because nobody will buy a reference card.

it would be nice to keep it all reference, that means cheaper for everybody anyways...  reference coolers, single slot anyways, have been done since the 2900's came out, and they keep getting worse... a company puts together 15,000 reference cards, tests them, and like 75% probably fail, of that 75% like 50% get sent out anyways probably so they dont lose their ass, and now everybody is pissed off at ati _again_... ahaha


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## Wile E (Aug 29, 2008)

If this is happening at stock speeds, I still say upping the fan speeds would completely fix the problem. They really need to get on that, and quit worrying about silence. It's ridiculous.

As for those that are saying "it's just one benchmark", what if a game releases that requires the same amount of processing power? Then it does become a real issue. So saying "it's only one application", is no real excuse.

Now, if this is only OCed cards this is happening to, or some non-reference designs, then ATI isn't to blame at all. They put forth a reference, and they are not responsible for other manufacturers choices when they decide to deviate from that.


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## W1zzard (Aug 29, 2008)

EastCoasthandle said:


> I didn't know that a 4800 series was suppose to give the same score when the ID is changed to another.



yes the scores will be the same unless furmark asks the driver "hello there little card, so alone? what is your name?" and then picks a different render path/quality settings based on manufacturer and/or device (happens in many games, but not in furmark afaik).


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## swaaye (Aug 29, 2008)

strange stuff. It will be interesting to see how the 48x0 series lasts in the long run. Cost cutting to hit that $200 price point, methinks.


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## insider (Aug 30, 2008)

This is a fan speed issue that exists with both nVidia and ATI cards, damn manufacturers throttling the fan to insanely low speeds for such cheap crap slim profile coolers just doesn't cut it.

The easy solution is to use Rivaturner and set the fan to 100%, people shouldn't need to do this!

I only buy cards with slim coolers if I plan to bin the piece of junk immediately and replace it with something beefy like a thermalright VGA cooler, otherwise I would only buy cards with a decent two slot cooler.


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## moto666 (Aug 30, 2008)

Hmm...
Bad Bad AMD


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## bubba_000 (Aug 30, 2008)

I just looked at the furmark homepage and the app is just 1.4 MB. sorry if i sound stupid, but ca a tyni program like this really stress a GPU more than, say Crysis or 3dmark06 and fry it?

And can't artifacts appear because of bugs in the program? For example, when i play mass effect on my radeon x1700-based laptop i sometimes get some flickering in the water ONLY in the virmire facility. I went through some intense combat scenes whitout any issues, so overheating is clearly not the case.


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## eidairaman1 (Aug 30, 2008)

insider said:


> This is a fan speed issue that exists with both nVidia and ATI cards, damn manufacturers throttling the fan to insanely low speeds for such cheap crap slim profile coolers just doesn't cut it.
> 
> The easy solution is to use Rivaturner and set the fan to 100%, people shouldn't need to do this!
> 
> I only buy cards with slim coolers if I plan to bin the piece of junk immediately and replace it with something beefy like a thermalright VGA cooler, otherwise I would only buy cards with a decent two slot cooler.



My fan on the 1950 Doesnt do what these current ones do and its a slim cooler.


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## Wshlist (Aug 30, 2008)

Yes it only takes a small program to run it at max (shows as high stress in gpu-z too), and no it's not such bug-artefacts, the furmark ones disappear if you reduce your overclock, and don't show at all on 4870 people report, plus they look like typical overstressing artefacts, glitches and colored squares and such
Oh and furmark also rapidly heats up the temperature of the GPU which again shows it's really taxing it.

The thing with games is that it displays all kinds of objects and textures and waits for the AI and events in the game, whereas furmark just runs some very tight shaderprograms in loops in the GPU itself so it uses it at max but doesn't use all functions of the GPU like a game does I expect, that's why it's not a big worry in gaming because games are unlikely to stress a GPU in just that way in such a localised loop, however when the GPU would be used for only calculations like CUDA does on nvidia it might be an issue, but then you can just reduce the load a bit and not run it at 100% I guess.
Makes you wonder if ATI's folding client cause undue stress, you would not see it since it doesn't push the results to a display at full speed, but I guess if that was an issue people would notice it since the client would notice calculation errors and their scores would drop.


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## insider (Aug 30, 2008)

eidairaman1 said:


> My fan on the 1950 Doesnt do what these current ones do and its a slim cooler.



Exactly, it shows the slim cheap and nasty single slot coolers just doesn't cut it with today's generation of powerful high end graphics cards, I had an 8800GT that I RMA'd twice and still the same overheating problems (yes it works with the fan set to 100% but still too hot), the solution was to replace it with an expensive Thermalright cooler! 

We are paying for the card and a cooler pre-installed that is just not up to the job of keeping the GPU cool enough (no >70C full load nonsense!), I would rather they sell bare cards as well for say £10 cheaper than one with a fitted fan, left up to the customer to purchase their own cooler, it isn't any more difficult than fitting a 3rd party CPU cooler on a mobo anyway...

To make matters worse they throttle those crappy fan speed to ~40% on those coolers, retards!


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## eidairaman1 (Aug 31, 2008)

insider said:


> Exactly, it shows the slim cheap and nasty single slot coolers just doesn't cut it with today's generation of powerful high end graphics cards, I had an 8800GT that I RMA'd twice and still the same overheating problems (yes it works with the fan set to 100% but still too hot), the solution was to replace it with an expensive Thermalright cooler!
> 
> We are paying for the card and a cooler pre-installed that is just not up to the job of keeping the GPU cool enough (no >70C full load nonsense!), I would rather they sell bare cards as well for say £10 cheaper than one with a fitted fan, left up to the customer to purchase their own cooler, it isn't any more difficult than fitting a 3rd party CPU cooler on a mobo anyway...
> 
> To make matters worse they throttle those crappy fan speed to ~40% on those coolers, retards!



mine hasnt overheated, and only time i hear the fan is during boot Continuous high speed until it hits windows (i guess it does a reliability check or something) then it slows down, during gaming i dont hear it and the card is well within temperature specs, i guess the newer cards sensors are too sensitive that why they adjust too quickly. I also recall expensive coolers (dual slot) being for the overclocker, not for stock cooling. Also reason they do sell the cards with fans is because they will not cover warranty when people buy non factory fans from 3rd parties, basically meaning if you try to send a card in with the aftermarket cooler they will not cover it (Excluding just a finger full of companies)


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## insider (Aug 31, 2008)

Dual slot OEM copper coolers should be as standard on ALL high end cards, they barely cut it for anything more than mild overclocking, anything more requires beefy 3rd party coolers.

You can't compare the X1950 with today's power house flame throwers, my old 1950GT can be clocked to insane levels with just a crappy air cooled arctic accelero X2 heatsink with a 80mm fan strapped on top with ease and the temps are still pretty low.


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## eidairaman1 (Aug 31, 2008)

insider said:


> Dual slot OEM coolers should be as standard on high end cards and they barely cut it for anything more than light overclocking, for that you will need expensive 3rd party coolers.
> 
> You can't compare the X1950 with today's power house flame throwers, my old 1950GT can be clocked to insane clocks with just a crappy cheap arctic accelero X2 heatsink and dual 80mm fans with ease and the temps are still pretty low.



accelero was a top cooler for its time, and its still after market compared to what is stock.


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## insider (Aug 31, 2008)

It was NEVER a top end cooler lol, my old thermalright on a 1950XT was top end and miles better, today's cards requires much better coolers than what the X1950 can get away with.


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## eidairaman1 (Aug 31, 2008)

im just saying for overclocking you had to buy a cooler to keep it cool, not run it stock, the 1950 Pro i have is running factory clocks and remains cool fine with the stock cooler. now if there is a problem with the current stock cooling they should rebuild the design of the cooling, i just believe that the sensors on the cards are too sensitive thats why the fan goes crazy. I swear things were much easier when fan sensors werent required, because they suffer the same fate as Motherboard sensors (rarely work Properly)


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## insider (Aug 31, 2008)

Yes but the problem with today's cards is the single slot cooler just doesn't cut it even at stock speeds when they all choose to slow the fan speed right down, it should be programmed so the fan hits 100% full speed when the GPU hit above 55C, we are seeing cards idling above that lol


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## Basard (Aug 31, 2008)

i can draw a heatpipe cooler up on a napkin with a friggan crayon, single slot too... why cant ati or nvidia do it with their computer aided design programs??


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## eidairaman1 (Aug 31, 2008)

insider said:


> Yes but the problem with today's cards is the single slot cooler just doesn't cut it even at stock speeds when they all choose to slow the fan speed right down, it should be programmed so the fan hits 100% full speed when the GPU hit above 55C, we are seeing cards idling above that lol



should be able to open the bios and tweak it so it reads the temps differently and changes the fan speed.


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## Widjaja (Aug 31, 2008)

I have to admit any games/apps with alot of HDR really pushes the heat up of my HD4850 and quite fast with auto fan speed.


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## Hayder_Master (Aug 31, 2008)

newtekie1 said:


> This issue is that, as newer games come out that stress the GPU more, they will be pushed to their failure point just like Furmark does.  I would certainly care if my GPU was unable to handle a few minutes of max load, there is bound to be a game that will eventually do the same.
> 
> I believe this is mainly an issue with the single slot coolers on the HD4850, not the dual slot ones used on the HD4870.




right , just like fumark does with nvidia physics before


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## Nitro-Max (Sep 1, 2008)

So there basically saying a top end card pushed to the max will fry its self "GREAT" so that automatically makes it faulty and destined for self destruct if enough people kicked up a stink they would have to reclaim every card sold and sort it.

btw i can never get my 3870x2 to run at 70% usage never mind 100% usage even if i open 3 games at once im pushed to hit 70 at all so is this designed to run like this too to stop overheating ?? would also mean this cards not living up to its true potential.


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## Wshlist (Sep 1, 2008)

Don't worry about it, just don't run furmark for hours and you'll be fine, especially if you have a 4870 with its superior voltage circuitry there's no need to worry.
No games do what furmark does, and if you don't OC to the max and/or use 3rd market cooling even 4850's are OK.
And even with furmark on a 4850 on 8.7 drivers you can clearly see glitches when your card is pushed too much and you can OC less or simply quit furmark.
I can OC to a level that creates glitches in furmark but NEVER shows any anomalies in any game I play, and when I don't overclock furmark doesn't cause glitches on my 4850.


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## candle_86 (Sep 1, 2008)

no games do it yet, can you say in 6 months no game will push that hard, honestly can you?


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## HAL7000 (Sep 1, 2008)

I would dare say no game in the next 6 months will push it that hard, besides *in 6 months we will be talking about another range of ATI and Nvidia cards anyways*. To me this is just another bitch session about ATi, not with standing that we excuse Nvidia and there sub par build quality as of late... 

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/39045/135/

ATI has a great 4800 series but with heat issues. I've dealt with these issues with Nvidia and ATI in the past. but at least I spent less today for 2 4850's than I did for one card in the past. Gaming couldn't be better. I am also looking into some aftermarket cooling for these cards.


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## Nitro-Max (Sep 1, 2008)

Well what about crisis ? that can push cards hard.


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## PVTCaboose1337 (Sep 1, 2008)

Wile E said:


> The only thing this shows me is that they need to raise fan speeds. Not that there's some inherent flaw in RV770 itself. This is a simple issue with a simple fix, ATI needs to get on the ball about it.



I raised my fan speed to 40%.  It is pretty good.  

The only problem is it is loud.  At 100%, the fan is louder than hurricane Gustav...


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