First take on reading the Radeon 4850/4870 reviews

They make noise, too.

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First take on reading the Radeon 4850/4870 reviews

Post by CA_Steve » Wed Jun 25, 2008 2:39 pm

There are a bunch of articles reviewing the latest from ATI. Here's my take away:

- great performance vs. pricepoint with the 4850 @ $200.

- really lousy thermal solution. Multiple sites showing 80C+ operation, and this is with a fan! One reviewer replaced the stock cooler with an aftermarket solution (Orb? - can't remember) and brought the temp from 80C to 30C....

- No mention of hybrid crossfire compatibility. Wouldn't the 4850 + a 780G mobo kick butt for a moderately priced gaming platform? The 780G graphics for 2D and easy 3D lifting; turn on the 4850 for gaming.

Here's hoping the vga vendors start providing a decent thermal/quiet solution for the stock cooler!

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Post by thejamppa » Wed Jun 25, 2008 3:05 pm

They will soon bring 3rd party solutions on their cards. However does anyone remember how peoples compalined how 8800 GT's ran over 90 degree's with HD 3850? Sure they ran hot but I have yet to heard that cards would have broken down... Accerlor S1 will probably be the best solution for 48x0 aswell.

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Post by Freyr » Wed Jun 25, 2008 4:28 pm

CA_Steve not sure if this was the review you were talking about.

http://tinyurl.com/4yrlv8

It was a Thermalright HR-03 GT on the 4870.it had a 40c drop at load and a 20 at idle. That was replacing a two slot cooler. These companies need to get on the ball and start providing a better cooling solution, considering how much videocards cost.

Arctic Cooling S1 Rev.2 going by the article did fit.

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Last edited by Freyr on Wed Jul 02, 2008 11:09 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by CA_Steve » Wed Jun 25, 2008 5:25 pm

Freyr wrote:CA_Steve not sure if this was the review you were talking about.

http://tinyurl.com/4yrlv8

It was a Thermalright HR-03 GT on the 4870.it had a 40c drop at load and a 20 at idle. That was replacing a two slot cooler. These companies need to get on the ball and start providing a better cooling solution, considering how much videocards cost.

Arctic Cooling S1 Rev.2 going by the article did fit.
Nope - that wasn't the article, but it certainly makes the point. When you can get 40C drop by changing the cooling solution, maybe your stock cooler has some issues, eh?

For full disclosure, my secondary PC has a 6600GT passive solution that runs at 85C....it's not the temp that annoys me, it's the complete lack of even trying for a decent cooling solution that ticks me off. :)

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Post by blackworx » Wed Jun 25, 2008 10:12 pm

CA_Steve wrote:
Freyr wrote:CA_Steve not sure if this was the review you were talking about...
Nope - that wasn't the article...
Think it might have been this one at TechSpot:
We decided to investigate our cooling issues a little further. Considering the Radeon HD 4850 is based on a 55nm design we were sure the problem was with the heatsink being insufficient. Our suspicions were confirmed when we installed the Thermaltake DuOrb on the Radeon HD 4850. With the new cooler in place idle temps sat at 28 degrees, while full load temperatures went down to 37 degrees. These figures go way more in line with the kind of low power consumption levels that the Radeon HD 4850 produces.
I also know folk have had good results simply replacing the TIM. The 4850's HSF seems to be a high temp/high airflow design that simply doesn't keep the card "cool" at idle when the fan is switched off.

My 2c: The cooler seems like a pretty good tradeoff to me, and it passes the biggest test of all: it works. As far as AMD's concerned, what's the point in the cost of a half-decent cooler when anyone who cares enough is going to rip it off and replace it with a better one anyway? Basically: it's good enough for Joe Blow who doesn't know any better.

Also, is there not a thing going round where there's supposed to be driver issues causing increased power consumption at ide? If that's true, then once it's fixed that's half the problem gone already.

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Post by Scoop » Thu Jun 26, 2008 2:06 am

Hybrid Crossfire with this kind of cards? What good would an IGP do when paired with either of these?

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Post by Landroval » Thu Jun 26, 2008 2:18 am

Scoop wrote:Hybrid Crossfire with this kind of cards? What good would an IGP do when paired with either of these?
Turn off the main card in 2D mode to save power --> idle consumption to ~0W.

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Post by FartingBob » Thu Jun 26, 2008 6:32 am

Yea the 2 problems they have are high temps and higher than expected idle power consumption. The 1st problem is because they were looking to cut costs and making a cheap cooler is one way to do it without losing any performance. Once the aftermarket 4850's come out with 2 slot coolers that actually cool then it'll be much better. And the temps are safely in the operating range, so it shouldnt effect reliablility.
As for the power, apparently some of the power saving features arent working with current drivers, if its just a software issue then it should soon be fixed. Which will also help bring temps down.

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Post by thejamppa » Thu Jun 26, 2008 6:39 am

Peoples said that aswell from HD 3850 and I've played well with stock cooler for almody a year now. Still most SPCR reader still going to use Accelero S1 to cool down their cards. Most coolers manufacturers use are still too loud, like Asus' Glaciator or the PowerColour/Tul/ Club 3D' Zerotherm coolers.

Let's talk about the power consumption when the Power Play gets to work. I still wished they would have put that already in 8.6 catalyst so we would not need to wait for 8.7...

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Post by falcon26 » Thu Jun 26, 2008 3:29 pm

The S1 fit perfect on the 4850 lots of people have done that and dropped their temps by half :-) Now we need something for the 4870 :-) Which I plan to have very soon I hope :-)

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Post by MoJo » Thu Jun 26, 2008 5:48 pm

Some people are saying that the power saving stuff is not working properly in the driver yet, so once that gets sorted out idle power consumption and temps should drop a lot. Fingers crossed.

High idle temps seem to be partly down to poor coolers or poor thermal interface. 8800 cards tend to idle at about 60-65 and that seems to be similar or higher to what most reviews put the 4870s at.

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Post by Shadout » Thu Jun 26, 2008 6:20 pm

It seems like a BIOS update is needed to fix the idle power saving. Should be out for various brands now, if the rumours are true

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Post by thejamppa » Fri Jun 27, 2008 2:45 am

I thought that in HD38x0 Power Play was fixed on Bios but in HD 48x0 its fixed on driver to give less problems for the manufacturers make their Bios...

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Post by Elvellon » Fri Jun 27, 2008 2:53 am

How much do the stock fans ramp up under load? If they stay almost silent and keep the card at 80-90C (like 3850?), then it's fine by me. Well, not me personally but most people.
falcon26 wrote:The S1 fit perfect on the 4850 lots of people have done that and dropped their temps by half :-)
You can't drop Celsius/Fahrenheit temps by half :).

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Post by roadie » Fri Jun 27, 2008 4:44 am

The cards look great, although I think I will skip this round to see what ATI can do with their 40nm shrink. However, I believe the 48x0 cards are slightly longer than the 38x0 cards; does anyone anticipate any problems fitting them into an Antec Solo? Not only does the length of the cards have to be taken into consideration, but also the fact that the extra power connector(s) face the rear of the card instead of the top.

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Post by CA_Steve » Fri Jun 27, 2008 5:05 am

roadie wrote:The cards look great, although I think I will skip this round to see what ATI can do with their 40nm shrink.
40nm? Where did this come from? 65nm transitions to 45nm and then to 32nm. I kinda doubt that there will be 45nm GPUs until end of 2009.

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Post by ~El~Jefe~ » Fri Jun 27, 2008 6:32 am

er, right now its 55nm so 40 makes sense.

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Post by nutball » Fri Jun 27, 2008 6:53 am

55nm is an optical shrink of 65nm, 40nm is an optical shrink of 45nm I believe.

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Post by Ant6n » Fri Jun 27, 2008 9:56 am

Elvellon wrote:How much do the stock fans ramp up under load? If they stay almost silent and keep the card at 80-90C (like 3850?), then it's fine by me. Well, not me personally but most people.
falcon26 wrote:The S1 fit perfect on the 4850 lots of people have done that and dropped their temps by half :-)
You can't drop Celsius/Fahrenheit temps by half :).
would the s2 fit, though?

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Post by ~El~Jefe~ » Sat Jun 28, 2008 12:13 pm

the useless collection of temperature reviews.

it is all about wattage. thats it.

the 4870 is not possible to do silently unless you have two zalman water towers.

4850 can be made silent easily as it doesnt have THAT high a wattage.

no one on here should read those reviews! they dont actually remove the heatsinks and put on something non-retarded.


also, according to several tech sites, the hybrid technology works and you can use a 3870 with it so far. I just dont know of anyone personally who has checked this.

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Post by nutball » Sat Jun 28, 2008 1:14 pm

~El~Jefe~ wrote:the 4870 is not possible to do silently unless you have two zalman water towers.
You know this because... ???

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Post by thejamppa » Sat Jun 28, 2008 2:56 pm

Would not Accelero S1 rev + Fan would be more than enough to cool HD 4870 or what have I missed?

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Post by nutball » Sat Jun 28, 2008 5:22 pm

thejamppa wrote:Would not Accelero S1 rev + Fan would be more than enough to cool HD 4870 or what have I missed?
You have missed nothing as far as I can see. But what do I know.

Our NY stuff yeah word friend on the other hand appears to regard this as irrelevant. Maybe because it's from Canadia rather than NY stuff yeah word land, but who the hell knows what's really going on.

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Post by ame » Sat Jun 28, 2008 11:23 pm

The cards look great, although I think I will skip this round to see what ATI can do with their 40nm shrink. However, I believe the 48x0 cards are slightly longer than the 38x0 cards; does anyone anticipate any problems fitting them into an Antec Solo? Not only does the length of the cards have to be taken into consideration, but also the fact that the extra power connector(s) face the rear of the card instead of the top.
I was able to fit 3*HDs with the 4850's power connector taking up the spot of the potencial 4th HD leaving the second slot from the top empty (I use the SOLO's trays :wink: ).
I believe if I had to I could squeez it in but I only had 3 HDs to begin with.

Stock cooler is hot but it never gets higher than 85. The fan keeps ramping to keep it that way. Its not my system (I only built it for a freind) and I'm trying to get him to put an S1 in there.

Crysis at 1900*1200 with 2xAA is the sweet spot for this card. All other tested games are above 50FPS at this res.

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Post by Tzupy » Sun Jun 29, 2008 4:27 am

The reviews seem to point to 4870's power consumption of around 150W, while the 4850 is firmly at 110W.
So I doubt you can quietly cool the 4870 with Accelero S1 and one 120 mm fan, I would put two quieter fans (maybe Slipstream 500) on it.
I'm not sure how the extra weight from the second fan would affect the mounting of the S1 though.
I believe that for GPUs in the GTX280 and 4870 class of power consumption, a new Accelero S3 would be most welcome.
This new S3 would have 6 heatpipes, be slightly larger and designed to take two 120 mm fans.

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Post by thejamppa » Sun Jun 29, 2008 4:54 am

Tests have shown that adding two fans do marginally little benefit for the S1... TurboModule might be better then...

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Post by Ryan Norton » Wed Jul 02, 2008 7:37 am

Does the original, i.e non Rev. 2 version of the S1 work on 4850/4870?

The product page for the Rev. 2 lists 4850/4870, but the product page under Discontinued for the original S1 does not.

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Post by thejamppa » Wed Jul 02, 2008 9:10 am

rev 2 should not be discontued, the original one should have been. I think there is slight mistake. Rev brought compatibility with G92... But I am not sure if Original was found compatible for HD 38x0. If they fit HD 38x0 then then they fit for HD 48x0.

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Post by Copyright » Wed Jul 02, 2008 10:20 am

My 4870 idles at 78C... I set the fan to 25% and got 62C at idle while still being quiet. I do notice a high pitch noise from the fan its self. I have ordered the HR-03 GT and 92mm Low speed Kama-flex I will under volt. In case anyone is curious.. the HR-03 GT does fit.

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/ha ... ew-21.html

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Post by Freyr » Wed Jul 02, 2008 11:06 am

HardwareCanucks is back at it again with a review of the Radeon HD4850 using the Accelero S1.
http://tinyurl.com/57xhjz

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