Asus Radeon HD 4870 Matrix

Want to talk about one of the articles in SPCR? Here's the forum for you.
Post Reply
MikeC
Site Admin
Posts: 12285
Joined: Sun Aug 11, 2002 3:26 pm
Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada
Contact:

Asus Radeon HD 4870 Matrix

Post by MikeC » Sun Mar 08, 2009 11:46 am


lb_felipe
Posts: 270
Joined: Wed Dec 24, 2008 12:21 pm
Location: São Paulo, SP, Brasil

Post by lb_felipe » Sun Mar 08, 2009 4:28 pm

"13 - 20 - 20 dBA"

Can we consider that the reference Radeon HD 4870 1GB is appropriate for a Low-noise System?

MikeC
Site Admin
Posts: 12285
Joined: Sun Aug 11, 2002 3:26 pm
Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada
Contact:

Post by MikeC » Sun Mar 08, 2009 5:12 pm

yes it is. It will get audible during gaming but not badly, and in 2D -- ie, most other windows work -- it'll be pretty much inaudible in a decent case.

lb_felipe
Posts: 270
Joined: Wed Dec 24, 2008 12:21 pm
Location: São Paulo, SP, Brasil

Post by lb_felipe » Sun Mar 08, 2009 6:59 pm

Mike,

thank you for the answer!

Among the options below, which use a cooler with the same acoustic characteristics as the reference cooler?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi ... rder=PRICE

All cooler "like" the cooler used in the "reference Radeon HD 4870 1GB" have the same sound characteristics?

MikeC
Site Admin
Posts: 12285
Joined: Sun Aug 11, 2002 3:26 pm
Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada
Contact:

Post by MikeC » Sun Mar 08, 2009 7:21 pm

The Diamond and the red HIS have hsf that look identical to the ATI reference. You'd hope the fan & controller would be left unchanged!

merlyn
*Lifetime Patron*
Posts: 149
Joined: Mon Jul 12, 2004 2:14 pm
Location: Jersey, UK

Post by merlyn » Sun Mar 08, 2009 11:49 pm

what are the chances of using a different controller for the fans on the matrix? it would seem to me that if you could run them at a low voltage during idle you wouldn't get the on/off problem although given their size and character it might not be worth it.

MoJo
Posts: 773
Joined: Mon Jan 13, 2003 9:20 am
Location: UK

Post by MoJo » Mon Mar 09, 2009 4:50 am

It's a shame that ATI really dropped the ball on idle power consumption with this generation. The 38x0 cards were legendary, but the 48x0 are just the opposite.

As a 4870 owner I have spent a lot of time looking into ways of improving idle power consumption. There are various modified BIOSs available but none of them are flawless. The current best one (http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthrea ... 64&t=67928) occasionally gives green spots on my system and tends to crash when doing things like HD video playback or starting a GPU app like Folding@Home, AVIVO video encoding or Elcomsoft's WPA cracking.

MoJo
Posts: 773
Joined: Mon Jan 13, 2003 9:20 am
Location: UK

Post by MoJo » Mon Mar 09, 2009 4:52 am

MoJo wrote:It's a shame that ATI really dropped the ball on idle power consumption with this generation. The 38x0 cards were legendary, but the 48x0 are just the opposite.

As a 4870 owner I have spent a lot of time looking into ways of improving idle power consumption. There are various modified BIOSs available but none of them are flawless. The current best one (http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthrea ... 64&t=67928) occasionally gives green spots on my system and tends to crash when doing things like HD video playback or starting a GPU app like Folding@Home, AVIVO video encoding or Elcomsoft's WPA cracking.

rpsgc
Friend of SPCR
Posts: 1630
Joined: Tue Oct 05, 2004 1:59 am
Location: Portugal

Post by rpsgc » Mon Mar 09, 2009 7:34 am

Not to doubt Mike's expertise or anything but... couldn't the lower idle power consumption be (partly) due to the fact that this Asus card uses a 4 phase power circuitry? And not digital at that?

And of course it is said that 1GB cards use less power than 512MB cards, I'm talking about reference cards of course. And in those same reviews, custom cards with 4 phase power circuitry consume even less power, not night and day, but it's something.

lb_felipe
Posts: 270
Joined: Wed Dec 24, 2008 12:21 pm
Location: São Paulo, SP, Brasil

Post by lb_felipe » Mon Mar 09, 2009 3:38 pm

MikeC wrote:The Diamond and the red HIS have hsf that look identical to the ATI reference. You'd hope the fan & controller would be left unchanged!
Thanks again.

Which one is more quiet at idle, "reference HD 4870 1GB" or "reference GTX 260 55nm"?

FaaR
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Mar 09, 2009 3:49 am
Location: Yurop

Post by FaaR » Tue Mar 10, 2009 4:43 pm

Hoping for ASUS to release a "fixed" (ie: quieter fans) BIOS is probably hoping in vain. I borrowed an ASUS HD 3xxx X2 series card from a friend to try out in my PC, it also has two fans (inside an aluminium shroud), and they make a TERRIBLE racket. It's hairdryers two times over. :s

ASUS supposedly offers software to overclock and regulate fanspeed, but this software needs a very careful installation procedure to make it work:

* First graphics driver, followed by a reboot.

* Then an ASUS proprietary videocapture utility, and another reboot.

* Last, the proprietary GPU tweaker, along with - you guessed it - a third reboot.

This by the way, after the third reboot, is when you discover that the ASUS utilities don't work with standard ATi Catalyst drivers! And the newest ASUS-certified driver is some six months old... So you're stuck with fans that screech like hairdryers unless you're willing to gimp yourself by first uninstalling everything you just installed (except the uninstallers for the ASUS utilities failed to work for me, only giving cryptic error messages), then download an ancient driver version and go through the whole rebooting circus all over again and hope things work out better this time (and that your games work with this pre-historic driver...)

So that is why you don't buy ASUS video cards with proprietary crappy buggy (ugly-looking) software.

The whole design of the cooler on this card is a total mutant by the way, the fans have blades designed to blow downwards, but there's an awful lot of fins right below, plus the PCB itself creating huge backpressure and turbulence. This causes the fan to revv up and just sit there and slosh air around much like a blender, rather than actually"fanning" it... Obviously a poorly thought-out and implemented design, only intended to act as eye candy to pull in and ensnare geeky types. ...Probably with its siren-like wailing fans. ;)

The radial fan of the original cooler is a much better and more efficient concept in comparison, it could have used a bigger diameter blower though.

z5300
Posts: 4
Joined: Fri Nov 18, 2005 11:26 pm

Post by z5300 » Wed Mar 11, 2009 4:11 am

Looks like the cooler design has changed a little from the original http://www.anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=490

Tim Connor
Posts: 18
Joined: Sun Jan 09, 2005 10:13 am
Location: New Jersey, USA

Post by Tim Connor » Tue Mar 17, 2009 4:55 am

MikeC wrote:yes it is. It will get audible during gaming but not badly, and in 2D -- ie, most other windows work -- it'll be pretty much inaudible in a decent case.
I'd agree with this. I have a reference 4870 in an Antec P182 and you could just barely hear the cooler at idle. But for me the problem was hearing the fan ramp up and down while playing 3D games. I don't have the sound turned up particularly high so I don't annoy everybody in the house. Hearing the change in the fan noise is in many ways more annoying than the noise itself.

I gave up and modded my reference design.

viewtopic.php?t=50678&highlight=reference+4870

However, I ran into the problem that Mike had on the Asus Card with the new cooler cooling my reference card so much that the fan briefly shut off causing it to cycle on and off.

As a result I had to adjust the fan curve in the BIOS. Since the Asus card has two fans it isn't as clear how the BIOS would need to be adjusted to re-curve the fans.

Regards, Tim

johnxp
Posts: 3
Joined: Fri Mar 06, 2009 11:47 am
Location: UK

Post by johnxp » Mon Mar 23, 2009 5:39 am

z5300 wrote:ImageLooks like the cooler design has changed a little from the original http://www.anandtech.com/weblog/showpos ... 656767.jpg[/img]
that sucks. i liked the older design better

Post Reply