Second Ati 3870 and STILL noisy!

[mandwa]

Hi all, I'm new to this forum, long time browser, first time poster!

I just got a replacement Ati radeon 3870 because the first cards fans didn't run at all for a minute or so and would then spin up full for 30 seconds or so and so forth, regardless of what i was doing.

My replacement card came today but this cards fan runs full all of the time!!!!????????

Surely this is a driver or fan control issue or something, my previous nvidia 8800GT was silent all of the time, but alas I could not play Call of Duty 2 with that card hence the switch.

Is there anything i can do to help cool the card besides fitting aftermarket fans which i don't feel confident doing and they don't seem to support the 3870 100%. Maybe open up the PCI slots or upping the Mac Pros fans via SMC Fan Control?

Or do i return it and switch back to a 8800gt and forfit Call Of Duty 2 or wait and switch it for a 4870?

I'm going to try and live with the fan noise tonight but does anyone own a quiet 3870?

For the record I'm running a 2008 2.8GHZ 4-Core Mac Pro with 8Gb of Ram and 10.5.6. I tried a clean install on a new hard drive and the card behaved the same. Also reset Pram etc. Thanks 🙂

 

[apfhex]

This huge thread covers the topic: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/541289/

Some are quiet, others are noisy. The 8800GT is whisper quiet always, I like it a lot more, but I do know what you mean about Call of Duty 2 (after seeing how unplayable the demo was I've decided to find the Windows version).