I Finally Upgraded My PC...Finally!!!!

[[DRuG]Rassilon]

Though the truth is I pretty much replaced it.

The only stuff I kept from my old one was a 250gig SATA HDD, my 2 gig a 3200 RAM, my chassis, PSU and all the other essentials like monitor, mouse, keyboard etc
On top of the above I now own:
Powercolor HD3870
AMD 64 X2 4800+
400gig SATA HDD
nForce4-4X motherboard

Yay me, not a huge upgrade but itll do me just fine.

[[DRuG]NikT]

Wow, I have the old AMD 64 3500+ and a gig of ram and an ati x1600gt 256Mb and it runs most stuff at full speed/settings.. your must be running really smooth.. nice one.

[[DRuG]Rassilon]

smoove as butter :p

[[DRuG]Shane0]

Nice upgrade should last you for a while. Now that reminds me to get a new HDD, running out of space

[[DRuG]Rassilon]

I RMAed my HD3870 tonight, turns out it has the same problem this card suffers alot.

It overheats because the fan only spins at 24% but needs to spin at least at 50% to stay stable.

By the time I discovered the problem, the damage was already done (it got to 130 degrees and I played all the way thru Crysis like that without knowing)

After I realised the temp it was getting to, I used ATI Tray Tools to control the fan to a minimum of 50%, and all seemed stable till it finally gave out last night.

In the mean time i spent $38 on a Asus HD3450 so I can still use my computer until i get my HD3870 back in 2 weeks time.

[[DRuG]KillFrenzy]

It overheats because the fan only spins at 24% but needs to spin at least at 50% to stay stable.

By the time I discovered the problem, the damage was already done (it got to 130 degrees and I played all the way thru Crysis like that without knowing)

Wow.. ATI really needs to put thermal throttling and better fan control into that lol. Nothing should let itself overheat majorly.

[[DRuG]Rassilon]

The cards fan was set to 24% to keep it quiet, though i'd rather have the sound of a wind tunnel over having an interesting tartan pattern covering everything displayed on my monitor.

I think it was just a bum card, because for most ppl it seems 90 degrees is normal operating temperature under load and 50 degrees idle.

Though with Ati Tool I was able to get it running at 38 idle and 69 under load, it never hit 70, with fan at 80%.

I won't need ATI Tool when I get my card back because:

A) The manufacturer may have updated the cards bios to one that automatically speeds up the fan depending on the temperature. *

B) You can create a profile in Catalyst Control Center and then edit the profiles .xml file manually with something like notepad++ and set the fan speed to what you want from there.* *

* I could have flashed a new bios myself but that would have voided warranty.

* * No fun for the Average Joe who cannot comprehend idea of such things, or is just plain scared of fiddling in windows nether regions.

[[DRuG]KillFrenzy]

Yep, fan speed control is what's needed in that card. Also, like most of us here, I'm not the average Joe and love to tweak with things like that

If that's 90 degrees celcius, I don't consider that to be normal, cause the temperatures I work with are like 30 - 70 degrees celcius. With CPU's, 45nm Intel Core 2 Duo heatsinks are tiny as now and still run at temperatures of about 55 degrees on full load, unless you overclock that is. These CPU's have enormous overclocking potential.