Radeon 9600xt on Vista

interpellated · Post by **interpellated** » Sat Apr 21, 2007 4:10 pm

Hello all,

I've been testing out Vista and one of the main things keeping me from using it as my default OS is the whine of my Asus Radeon 9600xt's fan. Under XP I use Smartdoctor to ramp down the fan to acceptable levels, unfortunately I can't get the latest version of Smartdoctor to work under Vista. I've tried the beta version of AtiTools and while it opens up in Vista, something I can't get Smartdoctor to do, the fan control doesn't seem to be implemented yet.

Since this is an older machine, I prefer not to spent any more money on it, as such I'd really rather not buy an aftermarket VGA coolers.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

interpellated · Post by **interpellated** » Sun Apr 29, 2007 11:59 pm

Just wanted to let everyone know that I've found a solution. Hopefully it will help someone else too.

AtiTools 0.26 can be installed under Vista. While you can't do much if you just try to open it normally, if you open it as an administrator (right-click and you will be presented with the option to open as administrator) the fan option is available and works.

Note that while this version is not listed as Vista-compatible, it works for me.

jhhoffma · Post by **jhhoffma** » Mon Apr 30, 2007 6:13 am

Judging by the size of my 9600XT's HSF, I doubt you'd even need active cooling on the board. If you could find an old northbridge (or southbridge, for that matter) HS or even an old CPU HS and stick that on the GPU you could probably run it passively. If you need to crank it up for gaming and the like, you can always put a quiet 80mm fan in the area.

Just keep an eye on the temps...

mimwdv · Post by **mimwdv** » Mon Apr 30, 2007 5:59 pm

So the 9600XT runs pretty cool?

I'm trying to find an AGP DVI card that will run passively in an HTPC case with almost no airflow and using a PicoPSU with 80w brick - so very little power usage, too (my nvidia 6600 sucks too much juice).

I've got a borrowed 9600LE in there at present, which does what I need it to do but doesn't have DVI. I was thinking about getting a 9600 pro - which is slightly less powerful/hot than an XT.

chrisb71 · Post by **chrisb71** » Tue May 01, 2007 5:32 am

my 9600xt is passively cooled
I have a the Aerocool vm101 cooler, with the heatsink mounted on the cpu side of the card so it's near the exhaust fan, though I am not sure how much air gets pulled across it since it's not right in front. But i have no problems even playing games let alone sdtv and hdtv watching.

http://www.aerocool.us/p-cooler/vm-101/vm101.htm

(I didn't put that big plate on the other side. not sure if it does anything I thought it was just silly

)

Thermaltake has a similar new one that's even bigger, not sure what cards it fits on.

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Tue May 01, 2007 6:01 am

mimwdv wrote:So the 9600XT runs pretty cool?

I'm trying to find an AGP DVI card that will run passively in an HTPC case with almost no airflow and using a PicoPSU with 80w brick - so very little power usage, too (my nvidia 6600 sucks too much juice).

I've got a borrowed 9600LE in there at present, which does what I need it to do but doesn't have DVI. I was thinking about getting a 9600 pro - which is slightly less powerful/hot than an XT.

FWIW, I'm running the passive Sapphire 9600 Pro's in a few of my boxes and they seem to run quite cool. They all have DVI-out, too.

jhhoffma · Post by **jhhoffma** » Tue May 01, 2007 6:12 am

Actually, IIRC the XT should be cooler than the Pro as the GPU was made on a smaller manufacturing process and uses low-K dielectric materials.

I'm sure you can cool it passively if you have adequate case airflow (you don't need much, just enough to move some of the heat from underneath out to the exhaust).

jolynsbass · Post by **jolynsbass** » Tue May 01, 2007 7:02 am

I have an AIW 9600XT, on which the fan ran out. I also thought that passive cooling would be adequate, as it is really a low power draw, but if you look at my recent build upgrade/silencing project here you'll see that it really does take some airflow around the card. I didn't have any, and my temps went super high, so I added an 80mm blowing on the bare heatsink. temps are now really great. (45C idle, 60C typical gaming load.)

jhhoffma · Post by **jhhoffma** » Tue May 01, 2007 7:43 am

That basically confirms what I thought. The AIW is a little bigger, causing more blockage to convection airflow. Having a small, slow fan moving the air away from the PCI slots should be all that's needed to get the hot air out of that zone, then proper airflow should guide it out of the rest of the system.

dfrost · Post by **dfrost** » Tue May 01, 2007 8:02 am

Another vote for a passive 9600 (Pro here, cooled by a modified VM-101). The GPU temp is 42C or less under load measured with an IR thermometer.

I'll let you know in a few weeks how it works with Vista - waiting for my daughter to finish a big high school paper before I load the new OS.