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is your 3870 fan always loud?

ungraphic said:
Yup, mine too. Though the fan turns on when playing *any* video in OS X
...
The fan is not at full speed though when this happens. Otherwise, its pretty much silent. I wonder though, would an updated driver fix the fan issue?
Click to expand...
Sounds like mine. I just installed it today on my August 2006 Mac Pro. When watching any video, or the second I launch WoW, the fan spins up. It's not really loud — not like the hair dryer/vacuum cleaner of the X1900 XT! — but clearly audible unless I'm listening to music at a moderate volume. It sounds about the same as a CD spinning in one of the drives.

Under normal OS X use it's quiet, but still noticeable. The X1900 XT was normally silent under same use. If the room is otherwise quiet, I can hear it "mooing" like other people have reported.

In short, at its loudest (that I've heard it... I'm sure it can get quite loud under extreme load) it's far quieter than the X1900 XT, but at it's quietest it's a little louder. Unless they change fan sensitivity in a future firmware or driver update, I might consider finding a 3rd party cooling solution like the Accelero (which seems hard to find for some reason).

Here's the stats and a iStat Pro screenshot (temps in ºF mind you :)).

Chipset Model: ATI Radeon HD 3870
Type: Display
Bus: PCIe
Slot: Slot-1
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 512 MB
Vendor: ATI (0x1002)
Device ID: 0x9501
Revision ID: 0x0000
ROM Revision: 113-B3390F-270
EFI Driver Version: 01.00.270
 

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kahine said:
My room temp is 73 or lower all the time - our air runs fairly non stop in summer and its in a room with most thick blinds/curtains over windows during summer also - I prefer the cold over hot and barely use the heat in the winter - just my thing

So I'm sure my ambient temp helps keep it always quiet and is around 70 most of the time - ceiling fan on always too

Mine sits on top of my side desk connected to my main one
Click to expand...


This is good to know... In a couple of days I'll be finishing a gig and I will try creating the same setup and see what happens.... Will post back... Thanks!
 
I have good situation to judge this fan problem.

I have a 1st Gen Mac Pro and purchased the 3870. The fan appears to be stuck at 100% speed at all times. Was very disappointed.

At work i have a 2nd Gen Mac Pro and purchased the same 3870. The card is virtually silent unless under heavy load. Was very happy with the card.

I wanted the quiet card at home on my 1st Gen Mac Pro...so I switched them. Sure enough the card was still silent on the 1st Gen Mac and now my work computer is loud. It's still under the 30 day warranty with OWC so i plan on getting an RMA.

I hope this helps. Also, both cards had identical specs and firmware.
 
Good News! I just installed the Artic Cooling Accelero S1 passive cooler on my 3870. Of course, NO hairdryer-noise anymore and in Vista the card is about 3-4°C cooler than with the active cooler that came with the card. :D
Well, the installation was relatively simple. Just the small RAM coolers are not really sticky enough - I am worried that one of them will come off sooner or later. So all in all I am quiet happy with this solution. There is just one concern: I am not sure if the Bridge that connects two cards in Crossfire will still fit - the large cooler might be in the way ... I have to check that before I go and buy the second card.
Hope this info is useful ... just a pitty to have to spend even more money to turn the card silent again :eek:

... apparently others had the "no space left for Crossfire bridge" problem before. Only way is to find a long bridge (or make one yourself) - or, someone managed to get the bridge through the fins of the cooler ... so it doesn't seem to be impossible ...
 
SuperGrobi said:
Good News! I just installed the Artic Cooling Accelero S1 passive cooler on my 3870. Of course, NO hairdryer-noise anymore and in Vista the card is about 3-4°C cooler than with the active cooler that came with the card. :D
Well, the installation was relatively simple. Just the small RAM coolers are not really sticky enough - I am worried that one of them will come off sooner or later. So all in all I am quiet happy with this solution. There is just one concern: I am not sure if the Bridge that connects two cards in Crossfire will still fit - the large cooler might be in the way ... I have to check that before I go and buy the second card.
Hope this info is useful ... just a pitty to have to spend even more money to turn the card silent again :eek:

... apparently others had the "no space left for Crossfire bridge" problem before. Only way is to find a long bridge (or make one yourself) - or, someone managed to get the bridge through the fins of the cooler ... so it doesn't seem to be impossible ...
Click to expand...
Nice to hear! Yes, pun intended. :D :p

I'll keep my fingers crossed on the crossfire cable fitting. :) I sure hope they didn't drop the ball on this. :eek:
 
kwarwick43 said:
Check out Arctic Cooling's web site, they have a longer SLI cable available if it turns out you need one:

http://www.arctic-cooling.com/vga2.php?idx=147&data=7&disc=
Click to expand...

Yes, someone in another forum mentioned the long SLI-bridge. However, at the same time he was told by Arctic Cooling that they do not sell longer Crossfire Bridges because the manufacturer didn't respond to their request.
Does the SLI- bridge work with Crossfire? ... same dimensions etc? Don't think so. :( ... oh wait, I can at least check if my short Crossfire Bridge (the one that came with the card) fits on the 8800GT I had in the Mac before :rolleyes:
 
Just an idea: A lot of guys here noticed that a non-EFI card is extremely loud when "running" in Mac OS, meaning although it is not recognized the fan blows at full speed. Using a passive cooler should be a good way to stand the noise. Of course it would be important to make sure the card doesn't eat hundreds of Watts without working. Artic Cooling claims the passive cooler I used for the 3870 works as well for the 4870 ;)
 
AW YEAH! :D

My replacement card arrived today. It's SUPER QUIET! It's just as quiet as the stock 2600 XT card.

Idle temps are higher on this card than my previous one though. 54c now vs ~43c on the loud card in Windows XP.

Haven't tried out a game yet, but so far I'm a happy camper. A bit saddened by the news posted on the MacRumors home page about the Radeon 4870 and 4850 coming to the Mac, but eh you can't win 'em all I suppose.

Version numbers in OS X System Profiler show the same values as with the old card. Something tells me that Sapphire has a bunch of wonky coolers that just sound really loud for whatever reason. (It does appear that Sapphire makes these cards, based on the output from GPU-Z by techpowerup.com.)

Here's a screenshot of GPU-Z running on my system, for those that may be interested:
 

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Quick update.

Just played GRiD for about an hour. The fan spun up during the game and was quite loud. In fact, it was as loud as my first 3870 was when it was idling. So the new card is definitely much better than the first one. Right after I finished playing the fan spun down and got quiet again.

I'm definitely a very happy camper now. :D
 
DualShock said:
Quick update.

Just played GRiD for about an hour. The fan spun up during the game and was quite loud. In fact, it was as loud as my first 3870 was when it was idling. So the new card is definitely much better than the first one. Right after I finished playing the fan spun down and got quiet again.

I'm definitely a very happy camper now. :D
Click to expand...

It really appears like there is a bug or hardware problem, with regards to the fan speed control. Seems they have a temperature set point that the fan speed kicks up. Perhaps it is possible to calibrate this threshold and this is not being done properly at the factory? Hopefully with time we'll find out the true story... I wouldn't be surprised to see a future firmware or software update to resolve this issue.
 
DualShock said:
Quick update.

Just played GRiD for about an hour. The fan spun up during the game and was quite loud. In fact, it was as loud as my first 3870 was when it was idling. So the new card is definitely much better than the first one. Right after I finished playing the fan spun down and got quiet again.

I'm definitely a very happy camper now. :D
Click to expand...

Yeah that's they way your 3870 should be , mine even during gaming gets barely audible -
 
Me too!!

I'll add my 'vote' for having a noisy (full speed) fan. My driver/firmware are the same as the ones previously posted.

This morning, after the machine was sitting off overnight with a room temp of about 75 deg F, I turned it on. Fan was high but went silent almost at the same time as the chime. OSX came up to the desktop (about 20 seconds) and started the fan then sped up to full speed and stayed there.

Sounds like some sort of flakey sensor or something. Hope it can be fixed via firmware/software. I may open up an incident with ATI just to bump up the counter of loud 3870 card issues.
 
I also have installed the Accelero S1. In OSX, it works fine and ended up cooling the temperature of nearby components as well (since it wasn't blowing hot air on it all the time) - my Velociraptor went from 46C to 35C. And of course, the only sound now are the big built-in 120mm fans now.

I tried Portal for a few minutes and the card seemed to run fine with no artifacts or anything. If I end up doing a lot of heavy gaming i might consider getting the turbo module for my card.
 
DualShock said:
Quick update.

Just played GRiD for about an hour. The fan spun up during the game and was quite loud. In fact, it was as loud as my first 3870 was when it was idling. So the new card is definitely much better than the first one. Right after I finished playing the fan spun down and got quiet again.

I'm definitely a very happy camper now. :D
Click to expand...

Kick ass game by the way. I've got the game but havent installed it yet (no time), but ive had the demo for a little bit and omg the graphics are amazing. The game does hiccup a little using the 3870 depending on the map when using Level 2 or higher aliasing, or 4X FSAA (1920x1200, max quality).
 
ATI 3870 Fan Woes, card perfection

This is a very interesting discussion!

I bought a Quad-core Mac Pro in May and got the "better" Nvidia 8800GT. I thought I was happy, but there were redraw issues after sleeping and a display "roughness" I found annoying.. I ascribed it to funky drivers from Apple.

The store I bought the Mac from offered to swap for my suggestion of an ATI HD 3870, so I went for it about a week ago.

This card is far smoother than the 8800GT and just as fast in rendering benchmerks for graphics. (I'm not a gamer.) I am a happy camper! There is no stuttering, oddball redraw, or jerkiness as there had been with the 8800. It's perfect.

BUT, as I now see from others here, I wasn't alone is getting a screaming-Mimi at first! The first 3870 ran at nearly full fan speed at power-up. The speed changed a little with resolution changes on my big Mitsubishi CRT monitor, and actually *stopped* when I switched to 1080x1920 @ 72Hz! Then the fan would start and quit, start and quit randomly -- convincing me it was defective.

I returned this RED-shrouded unit and the store replaced it, this time with (randomly) a BLUE-shrouded unit. (Slightly lower serial.)

Bottom Line: This replacement 3870 is quiet as a mouse! Fan runs near-silently at startup and after hours of regular use in a 75ºF room. I get the distinct feeling that a bunch of cards with wonky fan controllers were built, and some of us got 'em.

*******
Regarding the Mac Pro fans: smcFanControl works like it should and has helped me understand which fans are which. The CPU_MEM and EXHAUST fans (bottom-most compartment) are actually tied together in speed: You set the CPU_MEM speed, and the EXHAUST runs 100 rpm faster at a minimum, no matter what. But you can independently set the EXHAUST fan even faster; it's just that you can't go below that minimum. Mine is nearly silent at CPU_MEM set to 600 rpm (=EXHAUST at 700).

The IO fan is an intake at the front, and it responds to the fan control SW. There is no exhaust for this compartment, which contains the hard drives and video cards. I leave mine at 800 or 900 rpm.

I find that the PS (power supply) fans are not controllable by the software. They run at the stock 600 rpm.

*******
Bad News: The ATI HD 3870 does NOT support multiple refresh rates under Windows XP-SP2 booting the Mac Pro, with or without Boot Camp drivers installed. No version of the ATI drivers fixes this. You can choose a resolution okay, but you're stuck at 60Hz refresh -- a pain for those of us who hate 60Hz flicker. (I like 100Hz refresh.)

Hope this is useful to the discussion.

Ken Peterson
Portland, Oregon
 
Another loud fan

I just got the replacement for the one I sent back and it also has a loud fan. Not happy. I see only several options, keep sending them back until I get one that works, get the 8800GT instead, or put an aftermarket cooler on and risk warranty issues. Is it really that hard to get a working card?
 
jhaifley said:
I just got the replacement for the one I sent back and it also has a loud fan. Not happy.
Click to expand...

With my initially-noisy card, I called ATI tech suppport to ask if this behavior was normal, and I was told no, that the fan should stay slow unless there is stress on the card. I.e. the card should be QUIET for normal desktop activities. Armed with that, I had no trouble getting the dealer to swap cards. The "blue" one I have now must be an earlier production run or something -- it's the one typically in the reviewers' photos, and the serial number is 180828 010475-01.

So make sure you hold ATI responsible! These noisy cards do NOT conform to ATI's own intended behavior. Their phone number is 877-284-1566. (You'll have to push 1 a bunch of times to get to a person.)

The question to ATI should be: When are you going to put 3870s with corrected fans into the pipeline? Where can I buy one now?
 
Well, I went for the Accelero S1 rev2 solution and it's just perfect !
Really quiet obviously and the temperatures inside the MacPro are even lower !
 
kentech said:
Bad News: The ATI HD 3870 does NOT support multiple refresh rates under Windows XP-SP2 booting the Mac Pro
Click to expand...

I wrote this on 8/26, but it is bad information. Sorry. No thanks to ATI, as they were no help at all. I had to play persistent detective.

My monitor is a VGA-connected Mitsubishi 20" CRT. The cable/monitor apparently does not support the monitor's reporting of its characteristics; and so the card defaults to a safe 60Hz maximum refresh rate.

The solution, in Windows (if this issue should affect anyone alse):

(1) Install the latest drivers and Catalyst, for me version 8.8 from late August.

(2) Open Catalyst Control Center in Expert Mode.

(3) At the left, click Monitor Properties, then Attributes.

(4) Uncheck the "Use EDID" option, and set a reasonable maximum refresh rate and resolution. I chose 100Hz and 1600x1200.

(5) Click Apply, then OK.

(6) Now you can use CCC or the Display control panel to set your display refresh rate to anything within the limits set above.

NOTE: The monitor has to inherently support the rate you choose!
 
DualShock said:
So wait, there's more than 1 model of the 3870, with different PCB colors? :confused:
Click to expand...

The same model was produced with both blue and red fan shrouds (not pcbs). I am inferring the blue ones were earlier-production than red, but who really knows.

I am beginning to think that one should accept whatever card seems to work okay videowise, then apply the Accelero S1 Rev2 cooler. Fan problem gone!

Even though mine is relatively quiet, I see this as a superior cooling solution, period. I will be getting one of these coolers.
 
Someone should post a video or step by step images (or link) on how to replace the 3870 fan with the Accelero S1 Rev2 cooler (or a similar mod).

I'm willing to pay extra for the cooler, but im worried on how to actually replace the fan and all myself.
 
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