6870 = High Expansion Slot Speed!

[wispy007]

Hi All,

I have been following the 6870 threads for some time now. Yesterday i decided to replace my flashed 4890 with the 6870.

At this time i was running 10.6.8 with the exotic patch to enable qe/ci. Once the card was installed, i got the expected black screen until the desktop appeared. Then expansion slot fan sped up to 1500rpm and the power supply fan up to 1200rpm!!

I restarted the mac a couple of times and on the third restart the speeds came back down to 799 and 599 respectively. I thought this had fixed the issue, however when i restarted the machine this morning same thing, high fan speeds.

Thinking that it may have been a driver issue, (having previously applied the exotic patch) i thought i'd take the plunge and install loin as i had read that it has native support out the box for the 6870.

Installed Lion and same problem :-(

After indexing had finished i restarted the machine, high fan speeds again :-(

Restarted again high fan speeds when first booted but then after 5 minutes or so they have dropped back down to 799 and 599 respectively.

Never had this issue with the 4890, so I'm wondering if the drivers are messed up or the power management file is corrupt. The fan on the 6870 seems to be running at low speed through out all of this so it kind of makes me think the card is ok.

All programs work great (except the usual DVD player etc) but these fans are driving me crazy!

Any help would be greatly appreciated

 

[Cindori]

It might be that the computer is not able to read the GPU thermal sensor, thus blowing full blast in PCI compartment to avoid overheating.

Try boot other OS (win) or in PC, if same problem I'd say thermal sensor on GPU is bad.

Options to consider is flashing card and see if that helps, rom's available at netkas.org

 

[wispy007]

Thanks Cindori,

I tried the card in windows XP (bootcamp) and it runs fine, the mac is silent.

I stumbled across a strange thing yesterday. If i open iPhoto and scroll up and down the fans rev up (just like the old G5 2.7 ), however once i close iPhoto the fans immediately drop back down to the normal speeds.

So i guess i have a temporary fix, when i get time I'll try flashing it.

Anyone else out there experiencing this with a 6870?

 

[ActionableMango]

Anyone else out there experiencing this with a 6870?

If you have the time, you should probably ask on Netkas.org as well. I think there are a lot more 6870 users there.

 

[Cindori]

people were experiencing similar stuff with some 4870 cards, but then it was the GPU fan, not PCIE compartment fan. anyway the solution was to dump rom and edit with RBE to lower fan speeds. search around and you'll find. like google "rbe 4870 macrumors" or similar. might do it for the PCIE fan also.

id look into flashing the card with a mac rom though.