Radeon HD 4670: A perfect balance?

lechuck · Post by **lechuck** » Fri Sep 26, 2008 12:45 pm

@digaderfox: You can check the 'some kind of protection in the bios' so, that you unplug fan on VGA cooler
and then cool the new 'fanless' card with anoter fan plugged elsewhere...

For your trouble with Accelero S1 fanless setup. Are your temps taken off the heatsink?
If yes, then I suppose:
a) you have plenty of airflow across the VGA card (low idle temp)
b) you don't have good contact with cooler (that would explain also low 'burning with Atitool' temps)

I write you my fanless temps for reference. My 2600XT (Sap. ultimate) at idle:
- VGA at stock speed (like in bios) + no airflow: 75Â°C on VGA heatsink
- underclocked to 110/300 + no airflow: 58Â°C on VGA heatsink
- underclocked to 110/300 + one slow case fan at 5V: 46Â°C on heatsink
- underclocked to 110/300 + 4 case fans at 12V: 34Â°C on heatsink
Note that I have fanless PSU too.

So, I think you have too low temps for a fanless operation - there must be a bad contact with the cooler.

@Kriz: Thanks for the info.
So, they improved idle with running at 0.9V.

digaderfox · Post by **digaderfox** » Fri Sep 26, 2008 1:32 pm

Actually, I tried various options and it seems like this issue isn't related to any protection.

To sum up, mounted the S1, leaved the fan pluged, launched AtiTools, and bang, reset after 10 minutes or so.
What puzzled me is the system was stable this way when the fan was leaved layed onto the S1.

I finaly concluded (so far) that except the GPU and memory, there are other parts on the board that need some airflow.

This is confirmed because today I switched with a Zalman VF900-CU. Top temperature is 47Â° and idle is 33Â°.

As for the temperature readings with the S1, I mounted and remounted it many times on the two cards with the same results. Temperatures are taken from RivaTuner and CCC.
My setup isn't totally fanless contrary to yours as I put a 120mm blowing slow in front of the case.

I'd love to work passive with the S1, but it seems like the VF900 at 5 volts is a better option in this case.

Vicotnik · Post by **Vicotnik** » Fri Sep 26, 2008 4:26 pm

My Sapphire 4670 with S1 works fine. Temps max out at about 52C and 15+ mins of ATITool is no problem. Also runs through 3DMark06 without problems. Have not had the time to test any serious gaming yet.

S1 on the GPU, the heatsinks that comes with the S1 on the eight memory chips. The only fan that cools the card is the Slipstream 800RPM in the back of the P182.

Kriz: How did you acquire the bios from the card? I have tried RBE 1.15, ATIWinflash 2.0.1.2 and ATIFlash 3.60 without result.

Kriz · Post by **Kriz** » Fri Sep 26, 2008 8:38 pm

digaderfox,

There appears to have been some extra effort to provide some small amount of airflow around 2 caps and 2 other components on my card, all in a line, next to the DVI connectors, like in this picture over at AnandTech.

Vicotnik,

GPU-Z v0.2.8 seemed to have no trouble reading the bios from my card. I haven't tried any of the others as GPU-Z was the recommended program to use over at techPowerUp.

Both Winflash 2.0.1.2 and ATIFlash 3.60 appear to have not been updated since June 28, whereas GPU-Z has had several updates since then. Looking at the release notes for GPU-Z, I see there was a fix in 0.2.7 for when reading ROM on RV730, which to me sounds related to this issue.

I've uploaded a copy of my bios for comparison here

Hopefully GPU-Z will also work for you.

digaderfox · Post by **digaderfox** » Fri Sep 26, 2008 11:27 pm

Kriz wrote:...some extra effort to provide some small amount of airflow around 2 caps and 2 other components...

I agree with both you two.
It seems like the Connect3D version is an exception. I would have go for Sapphire if I knew the stock fan was so noisy.
So if an airflow is needed, I decided the Zalman would be a less clumsy option than the S1 with turbo modules.

Concerning the bios, running Vista, Winflash (or RBE) wouldn't detect the card. I managed to grab it with Atiflash.

Fungi · Post by **Fungi** » Fri Sep 26, 2008 11:44 pm

For things already available, I'd go with HIS. All solid-state capacitors of good quality and a (reportedly) quiet exhaust type stock cooler. ASUS and Gigabyte haven't gotten theirs out yet but I'd assume Gigabyte's cooking up something good.

Vicotnik · Post by **Vicotnik** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 6:54 am

Kriz wrote:GPU-Z v0.2.8 seemed to have no trouble reading the bios from my card. I haven't tried any of the others as GPU-Z was the recommended program to use over at techPowerUp.

Both Winflash 2.0.1.2 and ATIFlash 3.60 appear to have not been updated since June 28, whereas GPU-Z has had several updates since then. Looking at the release notes for GPU-Z, I see there was a fix in 0.2.7 for when reading ROM on RV730, which to me sounds related to this issue.

I've uploaded a copy of my bios for comparison here

Hopefully GPU-Z will also work for you.

Thank you. GPU-Z worked but I have problems opening the bios in RBE. I have sent both our bioses to BAGZZlash, the author of RBE. Hopefully he will look into it.

I have uploaded my bios here if anyone want to take a look at it.

Today I would go for HIS instead of Sapphire. I didn't know the HIS had all solid caps and the bios seems to work better too. I went with Sapphire because the HIS was 12.5% more expensive here in Sweden at the time. I should have done my homework, dammit.

inti · Post by **inti** » Tue Sep 30, 2008 2:24 am

Asus 4670 with a factory-installed Accelero L1 2-slot cooler - said by Asus to be 15 degrees cooler than reference design, so maybe scope for Fanmating it down to something really low noise?
http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=2&l2=8&l3=806

(Edit: this was covered by the jamppa on page 1 of this thread:)

thejamppa wrote:Cooler is Accelero L1 OEM cooler and fan shoul spin around 2000 RPM's. Peoplesi n here have said its decently quiet but not silent. Effectiveness: Club 3D / Force 3D uses same cooler to cool down HD 4850, so it should be plenty for HD 4670 which draws almost half less power...

There's also a Powercolor 4670 (slightly overclocked at 770MHz) with a Zerotherm cooler: good images of the cooler here:
http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/vi ... cid=3&pg=2

Caution: a few months back there were bad reports of the Powercolor 3870 with a similar Zerotherm cooler: fan was set to run at 100% all the time: viewtopic.php?t=45450
Does anybody know different, this time around?

walkingjohn · Post by **walkingjohn** » Tue Sep 30, 2008 2:26 pm

inti wrote:Caution: a few months back there were bad reports of the Powercolor 3870 with a similar Zerotherm cooler: fan was set to run at 100% all the time: viewtopic.php?t=45450
Does anybody know different, this time around?

This review of powercolor's 4670 suggests that the fan speed changes with load and that the card is very quiet. Their methodology looks okay at a quick glance.

I believe they also have a review of the HIS model and found it drew less power but was louder.

Greg F. · Post by **Greg F.** » Tue Sep 30, 2008 8:47 pm

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3420

So now it looks like a 4550 passive for fifty USA bucks would be the way to go for HTPC. I don't know how you could go wrong.

I'm a PC.

Vicotnik · Post by **Vicotnik** » Thu Oct 02, 2008 4:15 pm

Finally an Xbitlabs review.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/ ... 512mb.html

8.7W idle, 47.1W load. Not bad.

Kriz · Post by **Kriz** » Wed Oct 08, 2008 8:49 am

I finally had some time this week to put my PicoPSU back in and do some more testing with the HIS HD4670. I decided with the PicoPSU and my 80w brick that I'd only test the card at idle, with all the fans off except the video cards own.

I'll keep this short and just say that the fan on this card spins faster than is necessary at idle. I don't know just how fast it's spinning, but in a quiet room it's more audible than I'd like it to be. I've tried to find a way of slowing it down through software, but I've come to the conclusion that it isn't possible just yet, but hopefully a way will appear soon.

Don't get me wrong, it's a reasonably quiet card as is, but I couldn't recommend it to anyone on SPCR without some way of slowing down that fan some more. This fan noise chart in the techPowerUp review of this card puts it in perspective:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/HIS/ ... bo/25.html

...Meanwhile...

Just a quick note. The PC I've been using to do these tests with has just had a HD4870 with a modified BIOS tested in it. All I have to say is WOW...... here are the numbers:

HD4870 (2D) idle clocks: 550MHz GPU / 225MHz RAM / 1.083v
HD4870 (3D) full clocks: 750MHz GPU / 900MHz RAM / 1.263v

Power testing with the Seasonic SS-300SFD 300W PSU...

Using onboard GPU: 41W Idle / 69W CPU Load (Prime95 Small FFTs)
Using MSI HD4870: 68W Idle / 96W CPU Load (Prime95 Small FFTs) / 180W Peak Load (playing DiRT)

= 27W consumption at idle.

When I first put this card in I was shocked to see the system idling at 108W! So, using a BIOS from this extremely helpful techpowerup forum thread, I have been able to save 40w at idle with this configuration.

Cobos · Post by **Cobos** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 12:54 pm

Sorry to be grabbing this old thread but thought that would be better than starting a new one.

Anyone tried watercooling the 4670 yet? I'm currently using a Zalman watercooling set with a ZW-GWB2 on my old 7600GT, and I want to ditch Nvidia and jump to ATI. The 4670 seems like the logical choice as in a good compromise for a quiet/low power system and decent upgrade. Zalman's webpage doesn't say much but someone mentioned in another thread that any HD3XXX cooler should work on the HD4670. Before I buy it, if something has actually tried any watercooling set that would be very useful.

Cobos

panita · Post by **panita** » Fri Oct 17, 2008 3:39 am

Fungi wrote:For things already available, I'd go with HIS. All solid-state capacitors of good quality and a (reportedly) quiet exhaust type stock cooler. ASUS and Gigabyte haven't gotten theirs out yet but I'd assume Gigabyte's cooking up something good.

I see that the Gigabyte HD4670, is now selling at Scan in the UK. Anyone got this card or seen any tests on its power draw/ fan noise?

There seems to very little HD4670 stock right now in the UK, Sapphire has sold out and I can't find the HIS card either, (Scan has listed it for a couple of weeks but no ETA)

maf718 · Post by **maf718** » Fri Oct 17, 2008 6:49 am

panita wrote: There seems to very little HD4670 stock right now in the UK, Sapphire has sold out and I can't find the HIS card either, (Scan has listed it for a couple of weeks but no ETA)

Overclockers.co.uk has a reasonable selection of 4670's in stock including the HIS IceQ (512 and 1Gb) and Powercolor with non reference cooler.

They also list a HIS passive 4650 if anyone is interested.

nikosmavros · Post by **nikosmavros** » Sat Oct 25, 2008 5:37 am

Hi guys does anyone knows for certain if the Asus EH4670 is compatible with Accelero S1 rev 2?

I need to be sure before I use it?

Has anyone tried it?

The Asus version is to loud since the fan is working at 100% an there is no way turning this down.

leifeinar · Post by **leifeinar** » Sat Oct 25, 2008 8:46 am

Hi guys does anyone knows for certain if the Asus EH4670 is compatible with Accelero S1 rev 2?

I need to know allso

panita · Post by **panita** » Thu Oct 30, 2008 2:57 am

It looks like the answer to whether the 4670 is a perfect balance is,.."not yet", at least on the noise front.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but from reading many reviews and comments on all the current 4670 cards now selling, it looks like none of them have fan speed control support either in the bios or by software. The fans all seem to run at 100% speed no matter what load.

It also looks like the 8.10 Catalyst drivers are incapable of controlling the fan speed on the 4670 cards yet, at least under WinXP, perhaps under Vista?

So for the time being I'm waiting for better fan control options as I don't really want to mess around with an aftermarket cooler. It's a shame, as the 4670 looks like it has the potential to be an almost silent card at idle with decent fan control.

Vicotnik · Post by **Vicotnik** » Thu Oct 30, 2008 3:19 am

The 4670 is ideal for fanless operation. For people concerned about noise it's very easy to slap an S1 on it.

People who find themselves concerned about noise but unwilling/unable to change the cooler needs to decide what's more important - silence or convenience.

Btw, another thing. If anyone has the BE8801SA.017 bios for the Sapphire 4670 512MB please drop me a pm. It got pulled from Sapphires site before I got a chance to grab it.

panita · Post by **panita** » Thu Oct 30, 2008 5:50 am

Vicotnik wrote:The 4670 is ideal for fanless operation. For people concerned about noise it's very easy to slap an S1 on it.

People who find themselves concerned about noise but unwilling/unable to change the cooler needs to decide what's more important - silence or convenience.

Btw, another thing. If anyone has the BE8801SA.017 bios for the Sapphire 4670 512MB please drop me a pm. It got pulled from Sapphires site before I got a chance to grab it.

Well sure, but that's not really the point. An S1 is fine if you have no problems with paying a further 25% of the cost of the card to make it work as it could/should and happen to have two spare slots in your case.

I personally have no probs with fitting a cooler. Maybe I'm being picky but see no reason why a card maker can't put a couple of lines of code in the bios to control the fan so I can play the occasional game and not hear the card while I'm surfing the web afterwards. In other words, there's no reason why we should be forced to choose between silence and convenience,... fan speed control is a pretty basic feature that NVIDIA has used well for quite a while.

I see the latest Catayst drivers have enabled fan control for 4800 cards my guess (hope) is that ATI will add the 4670s sooner or later.

leifeinar · Post by **leifeinar** » Thu Oct 30, 2008 7:33 am

It looks like the answer to whether the 4670 is a perfect balance is,.."not yet", at least on the noise front.

i got a HIS 4670 today, with the ice-Q cooler and its the PERFECT card, it got idle temps at 35 celcius with 25 ambient, peak load is 54 celcius. i cant hear the fan. and its more poverful than i remember, 3dmark 2006 is 9200 points

and i did a farcry 2 benchmark. 1024/768, high settings and x2 AA

gives a 74 max 40 low FPS and that shows there is some power in this card

once again this is the perfect card, atleast the HIS model

panita · Post by **panita** » Thu Oct 30, 2008 8:58 am

Leifeinar...

I'm glad to hear you are happy with your HIS card. That's certaintly the card I was drawn to due to its exhuast fan setup. I've read mixed reports , however, on the noise of the HIS card,... that it's not as quiet as the powercolor card and has a distinct hum to it. The HIS card would, I think, be the pick of the bunch if the fan slowed at idle.

In practice it's difficult to compare subjective noise levels as it depends so much on the noise of the fans from your existing box. I have an Antec case with a silent 120 fan, and a pratically silent PSU. The CPU cooler slows down to a wisper at idle so I'm pretty sensitive to any addition fan noise.

silo · Post by **silo** » Thu Oct 30, 2008 3:09 pm

panita wrote:It looks like the answer to whether the 4670 is a perfect balance is,.."not yet", at least on the noise front.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but from reading many reviews and comments on all the current 4670 cards now selling, it looks like none of them have fan speed control support either in the bios or by software. The fans all seem to run at 100% speed no matter what load.

It also looks like the 8.10 Catalyst drivers are incapable of controlling the fan speed on the 4670 cards yet, at least under WinXP, perhaps under Vista?

So for the time being I'm waiting for better fan control options as I don't really want to mess around with an aftermarket cooler. It's a shame, as the 4670 looks like it has the potential to be an almost silent card at idle with decent fan control.

for me it was an easy choice. and it cost me $129 usd + afcooler $78 usd (vf1000) i could have gotten one 9600 or even 9800Gt cheaper (185)
but is just the perfect videocard 4 what i want. i mean 20c idle, 0 power consumption and runs cod4 at 200fps?

leifeinar · Post by **leifeinar** » Fri Oct 31, 2008 3:59 am

I'm glad to hear you are happy with your HIS card. That's certaintly the card I was drawn to due to its exhuast fan setup. I've read mixed reports , however, on the noise of the HIS card,... that it's not as quiet as the powercolor card and has a distinct hum to it. The HIS card would, I think, be the pick of the bunch if the fan slowed at idle.

Well, now after having the card for a day, and im alone in the house a silent moring i can hear the the HUM... its not anoying, but its there.

and i cant find any software that can manage the fan. but i actualy think i can run he card fanless if i remove the plastic. i try that later today

brenta100 · Post by **brenta100** » Fri Oct 31, 2008 10:17 am

I installed a Powercolor AX4670 in my new build and can attest that, although it has a fan, it is extremely quiet. I chose this model because of the dual DVI. Haven't tried any games on it yet, so don't know if the fan actually ramps up under load. I'll try to do some testing this weekend.

Philtho · Post by **Philtho** » Fri Oct 31, 2008 1:33 pm

panita wrote: I personally have no probs with fitting a cooler. Maybe I'm being picky but see no reason why a card maker can't put a couple of lines of code in the bios to control the fan so I can play the occasional game and not hear the card while I'm surfing the web afterwards. In other words, there's no reason why we should be forced to choose between silence and convenience,... fan speed control is a pretty basic feature that NVIDIA has used well for quite a while.

I see the latest Catayst drivers have enabled fan control for 4800 cards my guess (hope) is that ATI will add the 4670s sooner or later.

I think the issue is the fans on the 4670s have only two wires for the power. Three wires are required for fan control speed. I bought a VisonTek 4670 1GB and the fan is really loud. Louder than my XBox 360. I ordered an S1 and then my PC will be silent. I could have gone with a different card, but then I would have had to choose which PSW I wanted to slap in there as well. Anything cheap these days tends to die horribly, so it would be close to an extra $100. Not worth it for me.

Chang · Post by **Chang** » Fri Oct 31, 2008 2:11 pm

Philtho wrote: I think the issue is the fans on the 4670s have only two wires for the power. Three wires are required for fan control speed.

Yes and no. Three wires are required to get feedback on how fast the fan is actually spinning (or if it's spinning at all). However you can run PWM or voltage changes over two wires just fine. It's a question of whether or not the correct chip is installed on the graphics card in question.

Case in point, here's a thread on AMD's boards where users have reported successfully using ATI's fan control in the 8.10 Catalysts with a Powercolor 4670 that has only two wires.

[edit]
Googling suggests that Gigabyte and Asus both use dumb controllers and do not allow fan speed adjustment through the card. MSI and Powercolor versions of the 4670 appear to allow it. Depending on the card and motherboard, a fairly easy solution to the problem of fan speed control for those dumb cards would be to connect the card fan to a motherboard header and tie the card sensor to the mobo fan speed via a program like Speedfan.
[/edit]

velvet45 · Post by **velvet45** » Fri Oct 31, 2008 3:48 pm

Chang, even though you can adjust the fan speed with 2 wires you will still have no idea what is is spinning at so you will have to set it by best guess and sound vs cooling. Not the best setup... but not really that big a deal.

Chang · Post by **Chang** » Fri Oct 31, 2008 11:23 pm

velvet45 wrote:Chang, even though you can adjust the fan speed with 2 wires you will still have no idea what is is spinning at so you will have to set it by best guess and sound vs cooling. Not the best setup... but not really that big a deal.

Actually if you think about it, knowing the actual fan RPM is pretty meaningless for normal operation. The control program knows the temperature of the card. Fan speeds are usually set in percentages. If it's too hot, you set the percentage higher. If it's too noisy, you set the percentage lower. The actual RPM the fan's spinning at doesn't really factor in.

Where it comes into play is telling you when the fan has stopped spinning even though you've told it to spin. But even then, you don't really need to know the actual RPM, just if it's working or not.

leifeinar · Post by **leifeinar** » Sat Nov 01, 2008 6:50 am

there is no problem to unplug the fan. and add an adapter, i tried 2, one 7V adapter wich was perfect. and it even starts with the noctua U.L.N.A

its a thight fit but no proble to use that.

the perfect way to go is the accelero S1, IDLE 31, and max load 48 celcius. but I have 2 14cm fans as intake