My Birthday Gift

[MRG]

Greetings all,

I turn 34 this coming Sunday, but because no one here at home had the day off from work that day, myself included, my family choose to give me my birthday present early. Now I have to give kudos to a member of my family for putting it all in motion. My brother in law, Top Secret, a member here on these forums, has been PC Gaming with me for close to 13 years now & over those years, him & I have had a friendly rivalry in the form of the hardware under our towers covers. We started off back in the very early Pentium, Celeron & AMD days. He would upgrade a component in his PC which would be better than whatever I had in mine & vice versa. Well I have always been stuck with AGP. Now AGP is not bad by any means, but I was stuck on older AGP hardware, while he has moved onto faster & faster PCI-e hardware. So he got the family involved & hooked me up.

Thanks Bro!!

This was my present:

-MRG

 

[Sedako]

Well, happy birthday in advance. I recently bought a Powercolor 4850 myself. These are excellent cards, and will only be made better if DX10.1 ever comes around. Make sure you take advantage of edge-detect anti-aliasing, it's a feature that only the 4800s have.

 

[Krynn72]

I hope he got you a new motherboard as well, or you're going to be one sad puppy when you realize it wont fit.

Its a kick ass card though. I just upgraded to it myself (graduation gift whoo!) and its great. Except for the drivers, which suck. Mount&Blade can only be played in DX7 mode because you get graphical errors with it in DX9 when using the 48xx cards.

 

[Sedako]

Its a kick ass card though. I just upgraded to it myself (graduation gift whoo!) and its great. Except for the drivers, which suck. Mount&Blade can only be played in DX7 mode because you get graphical errors with it in DX9 when using the 48xx cards.

The Catalyst 8.7 WHQLs were just released. Have you given those a try yet? But yeah, the drivers for these cards are still slightly immature. I'm still waiting for a permanent fan speed fix.

 

[Krynn72]

I'm pretty sure there was a hotfix for it packaged with the 8.6 drivers. And yeah I tried the 8.7s as soon as they came out, no luck though.

 

[Sedako]

I'm pretty sure there was a hotfix for it packaged with the 8.6 drivers. And yeah I tried the 8.7s as soon as they came out, no luck though.

Nope, the Hotfix 8.6 drivers just add support for the 4800s. The fan speed issue has still not been corrected.

 

[DEATHMASTER]

Nice present, what are you upgrading from?

 

[Top Secret]

6800 Ultra, lmao. Quite the upgrade.

 

[Barney Fife]

No one loves you MRG, if they did, they should prove it and buy you the 4870 instead. Or throw a MB in there while they're at it.
But they're costing you unnecessary expenses by buying a new PCIe MB yourself.
If you ask me; Their love is questionable.

But I do I love you man, I love you this <---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------> much man.

Happy Birthday

 

[MRG]

No one loves you MRG, if they did, they should prove it and buy you the 4870 instead. Or throw a MB in there while they're at it.
But they're costing you unnecessary expenses by buying a new PCIe MB yourself.
If you ask me; Their love is questionable.

But I do I love you man, I love you this <---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------> much man.

Happy Birthday

LMAO... I think... Cheers for the HB wishes! :cheers:

I am Feelin Da Love!

For a couple of hours after installing the card & updating the drivers & then rolling back the drivers, I had MASSIVE artifacts. Desktop was ok, but in any 3D application, I had some serious issues. Talk about being bummed. I tried another identical card in my system to check to see if the card was to blame, but I had the same issues, so I knew it was an issue with my current hardware & not the card itself. Since my motherboard only supported PCI-e up to 4x, I thought that because it was a hybrid AGP/PCI-e board, that maybe that was the prob. A few days ago, I had flashed the mobo's Bios to the newest version, which actually happened to provide new support for the Radeon HD 3x00 line of cards (Little did I know at the time that my actions were going to come in handy)

There ended up being a PCI-e setting in my mobo's Bios that was enabled by default. As Top Secret looked online, I was reinstalling the card itself, making sure I had it installed correctly, as it IS damn long, he read that many others were having the same issues as I was, only with the 8800 series. So I turned off the option in the Bios, restarted & then fired up GRAW2 as a test, all the artifacts were gone & I had smooth as silk performance, with every setting ingame maxed out.

It's not even funny how much faster this card is over my 6800 Ultra. Kinda funny though. On the box the card came in, it touts that the cards built on the 55nm die, & so it runs cool, which provides excellent overclock ability, but when I checked the cards temp, it was idling @ 60c. Thats almost 150f. So I believe that an aftermarket cooler will need to be installed as soon as a high quality one is available.

This card sure is fast though. Even with the PCI-e being limited to running @ 4x, the HD 4850 just crushes my old 6800 Ultra performance wise. Damn!

-MRG

 

[-Psy-]

Heh. I remember upgrading my entire PC from an Athlon XP, 1GB and a 9600XT to an 4200+ X2, 2GB, and a X1950GT. It was great to finally have a speedy computer!

 

[Hectic Glenn]

If it's crushing things at 4x, I dare to think the performance you'll see on 16x. Future ambitions to get that mobo one day?

Enjoy the upgrade, I'm sure it'll make a world of difference. Not sure if you are into the online gaming scene, or on Steam much, but you should join the hl2.net steam group and come by the chat room some day and form an unhealthy addiction to TF2. Also happy birthday

 

[VirusType2]

when I checked the cards temp, it was idling @ 60c. Thats almost 150f. So I believe that an aftermarket cooler will need to be installed as soon as a high quality one is available.

so 60c is really hot for a graphics card? I know mine would crash at something in the mid 70's. ... But 60c is practically room temperature for me.

(That's a joke) but my card (x1900GT) did have an idle temperature of 62-65 and my temperature based fan controller constantly kicked in even when my System is Idle.

I'm just trying to have a card that doesn't break next time.

 

[Sedako]

MRG, the 4800s have a bug where the fan speed is set to a very low percentage. It has not yet been fixed via drivers, but there is a software fix currently available that you can use:

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1320351

If you're looking for a great aftermarket cooler, it doesn't get an better than the Acellero S1 rev. 2. Grab the Turbo Module that goes with it and some RAMsinks and you'll have some of the best VGA cooling on the market. It is quite big through, so you'd need to make sure your case will allow it to fit.

 

[MRG]

MRG, the 4800s have a bug where the fan speed is set to a very low percentage. It has not yet been fixed via drivers, but there is a software fix currently available that you can use:

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1320351

Excellent find there Sedako. Thanks! I have it activated & am waiting to see if the idle temps go down. I do not so far notice any difference audio wise, from a faster spinning fan with the custom profile enabled. I set the fan to 50%.

If you're looking for a great aftermarket cooler, it doesn't get an better than the Acellero S1 rev. 2. Grab the Turbo Module that goes with it and some RAMsinks and you'll have some of the best VGA cooling on the market. It is quite big through, so you'd need to make sure your case will allow it to fit.

More great info. In the coming weeks I will be buying a cooler. In the past I have not had very good luck with silent cooling. However, i'm sure the tech has advanced greatly since then & so I have bookmarked the link to the cooler you linked to. I will be reviewing it closely over the coming weeks.

Thanks again! :thumbs:

-MRG

Update:

3 minutess after performing the steps that Sedako linked to, I rechecked the cards temps.
1) Idle Temps Before: 63c-66c
2) Idle Temps Now: 42c

I award Sedako

-MRG

 

[Krynn72]

What do you use to find the temps of your card? I tried that fix sedako posted but I have no idea if its doing anything. I'm not even sure I did it right because im not sure how to work with profiles in the CCC.


Also, I just noticed that the control center says I still have the 8.6 drivers installed, instead of 8.7s, but I know I installed them. Is something wrong?

 

[Sedako]

MRG, just make sure you make a shortcut to the profile you created and drop it in the windows startup folder. Otherwise you'll have to manually start it whenever you restart.

Krynn, in the CCC, once you've created the profile and edited it, you need to first go to the ATI Overdrive panel and unlock it using the lock icon. Then, go up to the top menus, and under profiles, click the one you created. Your current GPU temp will be shown in the Overdrive panel along the right:

Also, I just noticed that the control center says I still have the 8.6 drivers installed, instead of 8.7s, but I know I installed them. Is something wrong?

If you're using XP, you'll want to make sure you completely clean the old drivers out first by uninstalling. You can also run Driver Cleaner Pro afterwards to make sure it's completely cleaned out. For Vista, you can just install over the old ones. I would try reinstalling the 8.7s, just make sure they're the WHQLs and not the betas: http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catalyst.aspx

 

[MRG]

Will do Sedako. Thanks again man!

Temp update: @ idle 37c

@ Krynn - When you install newer video card drivers,

1) Remove the current/old drivers via Add/Remove Programs under Windows Control Panel.
Make sure that you also manually delete any ATI folders located here: "C:\ATI" & here "C:\Program Files\ATI" that are left over.
2) For good measure, I advise you to run a program like "Driver Cleaner Pro" to remove any old ATI system files left over from the previous drivers. - http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=745
3) Install the newest drivers & restart.

-MRG

 

[Sedako]

Will do Sedako. Thanks again man!

Temp update: @ idle 37c

-MRG

Glad I could help. Hopefully ATI will give us a permanent fix soon.

 

[Krynn72]

Ahh thanks sedako. I heard the fan pick up speed right away, its already dropped 12 degrees in less than a minute haha.

I'm on vista, and I just installed over the last driver installation, but it still showed the 8.6 drivers. I'll try driver cleaner and reinstall. This gives me new hope for the Mount&Blade issue!

 

[Sedako]

Ahh thanks sedako. I heard the fan pick up speed right away, its already dropped 12 degrees in less than a minute haha.

I'm on vista, and I just installed over the last driver installation, but it still showed the 8.6 drivers. I'll try driver cleaner and reinstall. This gives me new hope for the Mount&Blade issue!

I've personally never had an issue installing over the existing drivers, but it certainly wouldn't hurt to try.