ATi/AMD 48xx Video Card Fan Fix Guide

[Force Flow]

ATi/AMD 48xx Video Card Fan Fix Guide

If you've purchased a 48xx series video card, by now you've probably noticed it runs quite hot. While the card itself can withstand high temperatures, the ambient heat it gives off is not all that healthy for other components.

Note that this fix involves increasing the fan speed and run time of the fan speed. ATi/AMD intended for there to be minimal use of the fan, and instead rely on the heat sink solution and the board's ability to withstand high amounts of heat. By changing the fan speed, there is a potential risk for burning out the fan early, although I have yet to see any cases of it turning up.


Anyway, to combat the heat issue, there are 3 general solutions. One involves the CCC, the 2nd involves RivaTuner, and the 3rd involves a small collection of applications for flashing the video card's BIOS. I would suggest trying those solutions in that order, as they incrementally get more complex.


There is a difference between the way the 4870 is handled from the 4850 and 4870x2. This guide was written with the 4870 in mind. Unless someone else is able to offer concrete tests and setting info, I can only give a ballpark guess as to what the settings should be for a 4850 and 4870x2.


At the time of writing, for testing the temperatures under load, I used the ATITool 0.27 beta 4. Do not use the last final version (0.26), as it locks up and crashes on up-to-date OSes. Upon opening the application, only click "Show 3D View" when you want to test the GPU load at 100%. Closing or clicking outside of the "hairy box" render will defocus the window and cease the test. Other features in this application are geared towards overclocking and shouldn't be messed with for the purposes of this guide.


These solutions should work (at minimum) on Catalyst 8.7 and 8.8.


The CCC Solution

The easiest solution, but one that has to sometimes be applied every time the machine restarts.

1. Open the Catalyst Control Center (CCC)
2. Open in Advanced mode (if it isn't already)
3. Go to the "ATi Overdrive" section
4. Check "Enable ATi Overdrive", apply, and follow the prompts. Do NOT adjust the clock speeds. That's only for overclocking, which is not what we're doing here.
5. Go to "Profiles" > "Profiles Manager"
6. Enter a name for the profile and select "all catalyst control center settings". Hit save, and close. This will generate some XML files that keep track of the profile's settings. We will be editing these.
7. For XP: C:\Documents and Settings\[Username]\Local Settings\Application Data\ATI\ACE\
8. For Vista: C:\Users\[Username]\AppData\Local\ATI\ACE\
9. Either in this main folder, or in a subfolder named "profiles", there will be an XML file with the same name as the profile you created earlier. Open this in notepad.
10. Search for "FanSpeedAlgorithm_0". Change the value on the next line from "Automatic" to "Manual"
11. Search for "FanSpeedPercentTarget_0". Change the value on the next line to the fan speed percentage you want. I would suggest a number between 28 and 45. For my 4870, 32 seemed to strike a good balance between cooling and noise levels at idle and under load. For 4850 and 4870x2 cards, 60-70 appears to be the ballpark suggestion.
12. Save and close the XML file, and activate the profile in the CCC by going to "Profile" > "Activate Profile" and selecting the appropriately named profile.

You can monitor the temperature and GPU load on the "ATi Overdrive" section.

Like I mentioned at the beginning of this procedure, the profile may not always activate itself upon a reboot, so you may often find yourself having to activate the profile manually each time.

(4870 cards): Note that I do not at all recommend setting the fan speed percentage over 60, and especially not 84 (the card's default startup blast speed). If so, running the fan constantly at those speeds *could* burn out the fan, as it was not designed to run constantly at those speeds. However, I found no information confirming this, as these cards are still fairly new on the market.

(4850 & 4870x2 cards): Follow the same general advice as above. Can owners of these particular cards clarify as to exact fan speed percentages?



The RivaTuner Solution

I would recommend this solution over the CCC solution, as it takes advantage of automatic fan speed control, rather than running the fan at a constant speed. More economical for the fan, so to speak.

In this guide, RivaTuner version 2.10 was used.

1. If you first tried the CCC solution, delete the profile and under the ATi Overdrive section, uncheck "enable ATi Overdrive". Sometimes the two applications fight about clock speeds (if they're different) and the fan speed settings.
2. Next, install RivaTuner, leaving the I/O option checked.
3. Open RivaTuner and go to the "Settings" tab. Check "send to tray on close" and "run at windows startup"
4. Go to the "Power User" tab, read any warning, and ignore if you want to continue.
5. Go to the "Rivatuner/Fan" entry, expand it, and next to the "AutoFanSpeedControl" field, double click and enter the number "3". This allows you to edit fan speed settings. Click the save button and save to a file at the default location.
6. Go to the "Main" tab. There should be two text fields. The first listing the video card model, the second with its specs. On the second one, click the button on the right, and select the icon with the video card. Go to the "Fan" tab and check "enable low-level fan control" A warning message will come up and ask you to reboot. Go ahead and do that.
7. Go to the "Main" tab again, click the small button again, and now select the icon that looks like a magnifying glass. This with bring up all the monitoring graphs. Click "Setup" and enable "Reference Fan Speed". This will show the fan speed percentage. You can disable some of the voltage meters, as we really only need the temperature, load, and fan speed monitors.
8. Back on the "Fan" tab again, select "auto" for fan control. You can ignore the "lookup entries", as those are for another method of automatic fan control.
9. You can see more specific settings here: http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread....69#post2629869
10. PWM mode = 3 is for using the fan speed tables, and PWM mode = 2 is for automatic fan control (the method we're using here).
11. Here are the settings I used for my 4870 (all temps are in Celsius and fan speeds are in percent):
    
    PWM mode = 2
    PWM hysteresis = 0
    PWM ramp on = 1
    Duty cycle 100% = 128
    Duty cycle min = 21
    Spinup cycle = 84
    Spinup time = 2
    PWM Ramp = 20
    T min = 45
    T max = 91
    T slope = 34
    T hysteresis = 2
    
    
12. Check "apply fan settings..." and hit save to store the settings. Hit apply on the lower right to enable the fan settings.
13. Now, a lot of these settings I don't entirely understand myself, but the bolded ones are the more important ones.
    
    -Duty cycle min sets the minimum fan speed
    -T min is the lowest fan temp you want the fan running at. Anything below will stop the fan (although I'm not entirely sure how this interacts with "duty cycle min"
    -T max is the temp at which the fan speed goes to 100%
    -T slope is a bit more difficult to explain. Basically, it's a math ratio thing. See the link for details.
    -T hysteresis is the temperate tolerance level for fan speed adjustments. Setting the value at 2 – 4 degrees keeps the fan from micro-adjusting itself all the time.
    -PWM Ramp has to do with how the fan speed changes. 0 and the fan speed jumps up and down instantly. 20 ramps the speed up more gradually.
    
    
14. Remember, these settings are for the 4870. My idle temp hovers around 48'C with a full load around 56'C. Before the fan control fix, idle temp was about 72'C.

The BIOS Flash Solution

First and foremost, proceed with caution here. If a BIOS flash goes sour, generally the card will be toast. I did not research recovery options here, so there may very well be some actions to pursue. It is doubtful that a BIOS Flash is covered under warranty, but it's worth it to check if you find yourself in this situation.

Second, Before you flash, I would recommend testing your fan settings with RivaTuner. Repeatedly making adjustments and re-flashing the BIOS is bound to produce a problem (either with incorrect fan settings, a problem with flashing, or some other thing possibly related to Murphy's Law).

Once you have the settings the way you want them in RivaTuner, just carry those over to the BIOS editor.

Without further ado, the BIOS flash guide: http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum...m/1020578.html

Be sure to get the latest version of all the programs, as some of those linked are already behind a few versions.

Note that you should save a copy of the BIOS from the video card first before making any changes. Use RBE and go to File > Save BIOS.

Note that "T slope" is automatically calculated for you in RBE. You can use this value to plug into RivaTuner if you so choose.



Lastly...

Feel free to post settings you've found that produce desirable results, or any corrections and suggestions for this guide.

[shadowpr]

Nice guide.

[Sentinal]

The CCC Solution is the way I have decided to go with my 4870. However, I just enabled the ATI Overdrive and set the fan speed to 40%. I was not concerned to make a profile at this stage. At 40% the fans speed is 2700 RPM + or - 30 RPM and it had dropped the temprature from 70Deg ( idle ) to 46Deg - 115F + or - 1.
I was playing CODWAW the pc would shut down and reboot. Almost bought a new power supply but I was wondering why in the back of my mind the fan speed was so slow? Well, after comming here to this forum and reading ( Thank you to the Author ) it confirmed what I was thinking. And that was, OVERHEAT-REBOOT. So now I have set fan speed to 40% and plays games fine and no heat issues or reboots.

My Hope is that ATI will supply a fix for this as IMO a automatic fan speed system-load should be inplace without need to unlock ATI Overdrive.

I hace sent a ticket to ATI/AMD about this. My hope is the reply will endevour to resolve this without the need of manual adjustments for the future drivers.

Vista Ult X64.

[Sentinal]

Update :- Lowered Manual Fan control too 35% - 2400RPM and GPU temp at Idle is now 50Deg. Played CODWAW for 1.5Hrs straight and top temp was 63 Deg. No Shutdowns or issues at all. The upside is the Fan is noticibly quieter with the 5% decreace.

Hope this is of help to any with the 4870.

Thank you again to the author as this has resolved my issues.

[Force Flow]

Glad it helped

Note that the CCC solution is simply a brute-force constant fans speed--it doesn't spin up or spin down in accordance with load or temperature. That's why I would recommend the RivaTuner solution over the CCC solution.

[Bricker]

Sorry for Necroing ... guess you guys have moved on from the HD4870 512MB by now ..

I wish I had the cash to get me some HD4870X2 Loveliness

Ok FF mate Thanks so much for the guide .. I've gone the RivaTuner method on this attempt
and it Works beautifully .....

seeing as I have Bricked and un-bricked and re-bricked my card with the ASUS TOP BIOS... prolly 5 times so far so screw it

the only Prob I have is, the Rivatuner works brilliant until I reset PC .. then it fires up the fan at SPINUP speed every 30 seconds or so, even though temps are at idle in a freezing cold room in the frozen north of UK

HELP ?

do I need to put it in a launcher or scheduler or .. I dunno summat.

Cheers + peace out

[Force Flow]

Open rivatuner > "settings" tab. Check "run at windows startup" and select "via startup registry key". It will load after logging on in Windows.

When you first boot your PC, yes, you will hear the fan spin up, then again when rivatuner loads. After that, you shouldn't have a sudden jump in the fan speed until the next time you reboot/login

[sprayall]

I'm using Rivatuner v2.22 and trying to change the settings shown above (PWM ramp on, T min, T max, T slope, etc.) and I'm unable to change any of them. I have selected, under Power user tab, AutoFanSpeedControl, PowerUser=1, PowerUserProtectedMode=0. Why is it not letting me change the values mentioned above? Thanks in advance.

[BradleyDalton]

HI

Note that the CCC solution is simply a brute-force constant fans speed--it doesn't spin up or spin down in accordance with load or temperature. That's why I would recommend the RivaTuner solution over the CCC solution.

[sr-2 plz]

Eh sorry for the serious necro here, but I have a question about the rivatuner settings.

First though I wanna say thx for the guide
although it was written with RT v2.10, i'm using the latest v2.24 and all the settings were almost the same.

I applied all the settings from this guide and it works great with my 4870.

However, i wanted to know what values I needed to change to change the % of fan speed.

For example, with the current settings, idle fan speed is about 35% and loaded with Furmark it goes to about 73% speed.

Sure they get me great temps, but they're just a tad loud for me .

I wanna change the settings so that it'll idle with 30-ish% and load 40-ish% fan speeds, i like the noise/temp ratio of that better, as it's still better than stock settings.