ATI Radeon HD4800 - Running Meltdown HOT!!

[Topcat]

I've never seen a GPU run this hot and still be functioning (this post created from it)!! It's not artifacting or any other noticeable malfunctions within Windows, and Windows is at idle....nothing going on. I tried it in 2 machines, same result. It's exhaust vents & bottom side of heatsink bracket are so hot you can't touch; it will burn you!! WTF is wrong with this thing?!?



Scary high temps and pulling 28 AMPS! ...and ZERO GPU load! It's not even ramping up fan speeds.....not that it would help much; it shouldn't be this hot.

[momaka]

Re: ATI Radeon HD4800 - Running Meltdown HOT!!

Yup, that's a proper Radeon HD4870 (or 4890) for ya - always running hot enough to burn you. FWIW, the HD4850 (based on th same GPU chip, but ran at lower V_core voltage and frequency) also got equally hot with their single-slot coolers.
... but that's under load. Idle, it should be running 50-55C or maybe 60C if the case/room is really hot (which I don't think is the case with your setup.)

With that being said, did you check the thermal compound under the heatsink?
ATI actually used some pretty good quality stuff that didn't pump out / run away and didn't dry out too much over time. So I suspect the thermal compound is OK. Still, you may want to check, just in case. If OK, don't repaste - just smudge back some of the old compound from the edges of the GPU die back onto the die, if the compound is nice and moist still. Otherwise, if it isn't, then just add a tiny bit of AS5 onto the old compound.

Also, try running the card in a computer with Windows XP and install the latest XP drivers from ATI (the drivers only - skip installing Control Center) to see if that changes anything. If not, I suspect something may be wrong with the VRM or perhaps someone did a volt mod for the V_core? Check voltage going to the GPU with a multimeter and see if it agrees more or less with what GPU-Z is reporting. Stock max V_core for HD4870 should indeed be around 1.25-1.27V or thereabouts.

It's also strange that the fan is not cranking up. I did a test on an HD4850, where I wired the V_core feedback to an external pot and started playing with the voltages. As I neared and went over 1.280-1.30V, the card's fan got really angry with me, lol, and started revving very high as I cranked up the voltage. On that note, backup the current card's BIOS with GPU-Z and compare it with Radeon Bios Editor (RBE) to the stock BIOS of a reference HD4870/4890 - particularly the voltage and clock tables, along with fan profile.

And if you don't find anything wrong with the card, install MSI Afterburner and put on a custom fan curve, similar to how is shown here
(^ Though don't copy that exact curve, or you will get a very loud and obnoxious fan. That's something I did for a different video card. IME, for HD3800 and 4800 series, I find it best to usually put the first point on the graph at 40C and 25-30%, then a point at 50C and 40-45%, and then a final point at 65C and 100%. That keeps these cards nice and cool... albeit with the fan very noisy under full load, but otherwise pretty tame when the GPU is idle.)

[Topcat]

Re: ATI Radeon HD4800 - Running Meltdown HOT!!

Much appreciated with the info....I'll try it this week. It's part of a crossfire experiment (yea, I know)....funny, I've never worked with a crossfire setup.... I got a couple workstations that supported it, so I wanted to play.

Those temps are crazy high....something tells me there's something wrong with the card.

[momaka]

Re: ATI Radeon HD4800 - Running Meltdown HOT!!

Yeah, 80C is not quite right for idle temps for these cards.
However, you can certainly expect to see those kind of temps (and even a little higher, like mid 80's Celsius) with the stock fan profile and the GPU under load.

Crossfire setup? With two of these?
- Ooof! Grab the burger patties, because it's going to be BBQ time. These cards run hot and eat a lot of power. 2x will ask about 300W from the 12V rail under load, so make sure you got a beefy PSU.

[Topcat]

Re: ATI Radeon HD4800 - Running Meltdown HOT!!

Crossfire setup? With two of these?

Probably not.... I got a pair of them for $25, one was damaged in shipping; poor packaging and a bunch of components were knocked off & damaged...I repaired what I could, but it doesn't get past POST (no display output), and then there's this one.

I have a pair of single slot 4600-series cards, not sure which sub-model they are, but they're what came stock with the XPS625. They're in testing now with a Dell Precision T5400 (dual harpertown Xeon) that didn't have 'official' support for crossfire, but the test was successful....but these cards are pretty gutless. I'm exploring other inexpensive options for some beefier GPU's, just another weird build...

[Topcat]

Re: ATI Radeon HD4800 - Running Meltdown HOT!!

Just an update on this heating element GPU, it seems to be stable. I've been abusing it in a closed case all morning long. Of course it's toasty hot, but its been flawlessly stable. It's in the T5400, 875w Delta built Dell PSU with multiple +12v rails. If I have it mapped correctly, each GPU power connector is on its own rail.

I did find a Radeon HD8760 2gb in a goodie box I had gotten a while back....it works fine....but looking for a mate to it, it's apparently a $150 card....definitely out of the budget for this build....

[momaka]

Re: ATI Radeon HD4800 - Running Meltdown HOT!!

I got a pair of them for $25, one was damaged in shipping; poor packaging and a bunch of components were knocked off & damaged...I repaired what I could, but it doesn't get past POST (no display output), and then there's this one.

Hmmm... were they supposed to be both working? And even if not, I still dislike it when seller just slaps the cards together (when buying multiple cards) and then wraps that up as one piece. I know $25 isn't a lot and can only go so far to cover shipping costs... but it's doable. Newspaper balls and newspaper itself makes for quite good packaging material, IME - and it's free with junk mail (at least here in the US.) So at least when it comes to packaging material expenses, that should be almost nothing. I imagine the box itself will run somewhere around $17-20, depending on method used.

Anyways, I guess you were able to get the values of every component that you needed, since you have two cards? If not, let me know. I have a few of these reference cards in non-working condition, so I can easily pull parts and check values, if needed.

I have a pair of single slot 4600-series cards, not sure which sub-model they are, but they're what came stock with the XPS625.

Looks like a pair of reference HD4670... so 512 MB of GDDR3 and 750 MHz GPU clock.

There's also the HD4650... but those are extremely rare for a reference card. Actually, I don't even know if ATI/AMD made any reference HD4650 cards. Only 3rd parties did, and that was mainly only when they put the GPU on a low-profile PCB and/or wanted lower thermals to use a cheaper heatsink.

They're in testing now with a Dell Precision T5400 (dual harpertown Xeon) that didn't have 'official' support for crossfire, but the test was successful....but these cards are pretty gutless.

I guess in today's times, they are pretty gutless. And even with crossfire, it probably hardly makes any difference. Back when they came out, though, they were very competitively priced entry-level mid-range cards. Actually, the HD4670 isn't that much worse off than a HD5670 / FirePro V4800, and those still have some merit today for basic entry-level gaming (hint: the FirePro V4800 used to go for about $15 a pop not too long ago, and were a good way to give a system some 3D performance better than on-board IGP.) Main difference is that the HD5670/V4800 is DirectX 11 and comes with 1 GB of GDDR5, so it's more relevant for today's PCs.

Anyways, given that you do have 8 CPU cores... yeah, you might want to pair that with a better GPU(s). Even 2x 4870's in CF won't do that CPU justice. A single GTX460 or 560 (TI or non-TI) would already be a much better choice, IMO. Even a GTS450 / GTX550 will get you better performance. But then there's that part \/\/\/

I'm exploring other inexpensive options for some beefier GPU's, just another weird build...

Yeah, good luck with that. GPU prices are absolutely bat-shit crazy right now.

I actually tried looking up some GPU models that I know used to be cheap before... and those are either nowhere to be found or a lot more expensive too now.

The best you might be able to get @ BIN prices is FirePro V7800 2GB for about $50, which is a slightly down-graded HD5870 GPU (more on-par with HD5850.)
https://www.ebay.com/itm/234192792064
Probably still a bit too pricey (IIRC, these used to go for $30 or so at one point)... but that's still 1/3 of the price for a second HD8760, and you get slightly better performance too.

Or if looking for even cheaper cards, a used GTX 460 will offset you around $30 and still net you the same performance as the HD8760. And $10 less will get you a Quadro 2000, with further performance decrease... though the Q2000 still has about 30% more performance than a HD5670/v4800. Only caveat is that Q2000 are not SLI-able, IIRC.

*EDIT*
Scratch all of that above. You can get a GTX 570 for about $50-60, and that's a way better deal than the V7800 for performance.

Still, all in all, I can't say there are any winners here. Prices are pretty solid (high) these days. Gone are the days of cheap GPU scores... at least for now.

Just an update on this heating element GPU, it seems to be stable. I've been abusing it in a closed case all morning long. Of course it's toasty hot, but its been flawlessly stable. It's in the T5400, 875w Delta built Dell PSU with multiple +12v rails. If I have it mapped correctly, each GPU power connector is on its own rail.

But the question still is, was its cooler and thermal compound up to snuff?
Otherwise, yes, those old Radeons can run burning-hot and still be stable, working well for a long time. But eventually the high temps do get them and they fail.

So if cooling is up to snuff, backup the the card's BIOS with GPU-Z, open in Radeon BIOS Editor, and change the fan profile. Then save and re-flash the card with ATIflash (or ATIwinflash... I know, it's not a good idea to flash cards from within Windows environment, but with these particular Radeon HD cards, I've never had a single hitch doing it.) And if you want to make the card run cool and quiet, download BIOS for the HD4850 card and take note of all the GPU core clocks and core voltages in RBE. After that, open the HD4870 BIOS in RBE and edit all of its GPU core clocks and voltages to look exactly like the HD4850's, except for "Clock Info 00", which is the boot-mode clock info. The reason for leaving that one is in case the new voltages and clocks make the card unstable. With the boot still the same, you can use ATIflash to put back the original BIOS. Also, the reason I don't recommend simply flashing the HD4870 with a 4850 BIOS is because of difference in RAM: 4850 uses GDDR3, whereas 4870 uses GDDR5. Thus, they have not only different RAM clocks, but also different timing tables for those.

FWIW, the HD4870 has a stock core voltage of about 1.26V and eats about 150 Watts. In contrast, the HD4850 runs at about 1.16V on the core and is only rated for 105 Watts. So you shave off about 50 Watts of power. The performance will also be lowered accordingly, of course... but in practical use, it won't be 1/3 most of the time. The neat thing about this mod is that the cooler on the HD4870 will easily handle the TDP of the GPU, now running with HD4850 heat output. So that should keep the fan a lot more quiet.

I did find a Radeon HD8760 2gb in a goodie box I had gotten a while back....it works fine....but looking for a mate to it, it's apparently a $150 card....definitely out of the budget for this build....

Yeah... that's a bit too much.

I think we determined that HD8760 is pretty much the same thing as an HD7770 GHz Edition, but with 2 GB of RAM. You can get an HD7770 for 1/3 of that price... though at $50, that's still a bit too much, IMO.

Honestly, I think it's a really bad time now to be building any sort of gaming / 3D rendering PC due to GPU prices. People say 2022 will likely look the same as 2021 in terms of stock supply... but I don't think that means the prices will be the same. If anything, they'll probably still go up, mainly because the supply of new GPUs is limited the same way, but old GPUs on the used market are also drying up. I mean, in early 2020, I bought an HD7950 for $40 shipped to my door. A year later, people are paying 2x as much for -untested- HD7950's, and sometimes over $100 for working ones. Moreover, that's not even that amazing of a GPU in today's times... but people are paying for it still. Insane!

[Topcat]

Re: ATI Radeon HD4800 - Running Meltdown HOT!!

In all my 30 years, modifying firmware on GPU's is somehting I've never done!! You're going to have to coach me through that one!! ....but FWIW, I think I got the card damaged in shipping working. I haven't 'put the fire' to it yet....but it is now post'ing and doesn't create a panic when the driver is loaded. It does run just as hot though... :-/ When I saw that components were knocked off it, I kept the packaging. Every time I shook it out over a big plastic tote, more SMT components fell out. I used the good one as the road map as to what went where....

Stay tuned!

I moved the single-slot 4600's to the T3400 system; which is a socket 775 running a modded lga771 x3363 @ 2.83/1333....the fastest it can take, it won't run 5100 or 5400 series xeons. Has the max of 8gb ECC ram, and now these GPU's. Definitely better than the Quadro NVS 290 that was in it.

The T5400 is still pending; but running the hot-runner this thread is based on, but these other GPU's didn't go to waste atleast.

[Dan81]

Re: ATI Radeon HD4800 - Running Meltdown HOT!!

I take it you never ran a Griffin based Turion along with a HD3650. Those can get a little bit CRISPY. Crispy as in near water boiling hot.

[Topcat]

Re: ATI Radeon HD4800 - Running Meltdown HOT!!

The repair of the damaged one has been deemed successful. I've been abusing both of them for a few days, they've been fine. Temp-wise, they're within 5~10* of eachother at any given time....damn these bastards run hot!

So firmware hacking? hmmm....I'm open to the idea, but have never done it before with a GPU (I've modded plenty of motherboard firmwares).

but here we are....







This is the Precision T5400. FWIW, the 'windows experience' score (for as little as that means) went from 6.8 to 7.4; 1 GPU versus 2 in crossfire....

[momaka]

Re: ATI Radeon HD4800 - Running Meltdown HOT!!

In all my 30 years, modifying firmware on GPU's is somehting I've never done!! You're going to have to coach me through that one!!

No problems, will do. I think I even have one of these HD4870's that I might not have modded yet (was a reflown card and I didn't invest too much time into it.) Just have to dig it out... and maybe also wait a few days for the house to cool down a little. It's still hovering around 80F / 27C here, and the temperatures will easily jump up with any hot hardware, like these cards, lol.

I moved the single-slot 4600's to the T3400 system; which is a socket 775 running a modded lga771 x3363 @ 2.83/1333....
Definitely better than the Quadro NVS 290 that was in it.

Oh, for sure! That Quadro is a 4-ROP beast with only 16 shaders and not very fast core clock. Just a single HD4670 is approximately 350% faster than it, according to TechPowerUp. So two of these in CF is probably anywhere from 350% to 400% better. It will do nice with older games.

The repair of the damaged one has been deemed successful. I've been abusing both of them for a few days, they've been fine. Temp-wise, they're within 5~10* of eachother at any given time....damn these bastards run hot!

oof. Yeah, that's why ATI gave them such bright red PCBs and coolers - sort of to say Danger! HOT! Keep away! lol

So firmware hacking? hmmm....I'm open to the idea, but have never done it before with a GPU (I've modded plenty of motherboard firmwares).

Eh, I wouldn't call it hacking, as it really isn't that complicated. I mean for me to say that - a guy that prefers not to diddle with software (especially firmware and BIOS updates, unless absolutely necessary) - means this really is pretty easy.

At least to get your feet wet a little, you an try the fan mod for now. Then later we can worry about under-clocking & under-volting:

Step 1) open GPU-Z and backup/save BIOS to file (hit that button with the gray arrow icon on GPU-Z in the upper-right corner.)

Step 2) open Radeon Bios Editor [RBE] (download online) and hit "Load BIOS..." button, then load the BIOS file you just saved from step 1.

Step 3) click on the "Fan Settings" button in RBE and change the "Tmin (C)" temperature to a lower value. Tmin is the minimum temperature the GPU core needs to hit before the fan starts ramping up in speed. Depending on the vendor and the cooler used, this can vary... but IME, regardless of cooler used, I like to start mine at around 45C. Next, change the "Tmax (C)" temperature to something more sane. Stock is typically around 100C for these cards , which IMO is a bit ridiculous. Tmax is temperature where the fan will hit 100% speed. I like to keep my cards under 60C at all times... but from what I remember from my tests, that's an overly-ambitious goal with these HD4870 cards. As beefy as the cooler may look, it's actually not quite adequate for the 150W TDP of these cards - not if temperatures are to be kept lower. So if you put Tmax at 60C, I think you will find the fan to ramp up very quickly with any moderate 3D load, and thus the card will likely sound like a jet engine... though it will stay a lot cooler compared to the stock profile. Trying something like 65-75C for Tmax should make it a little more quiet but maintain a lot lower temperatures than with the stock profile. Of course, that's assuming your card's stock values for Tmin and Tmax were actually higher than what I suggested above. If they are lower, then a volt & core clock mode might be the only thing to help the temperatures here.

Step 4) When you're done diddling around with the options, hit the "Save BIOS" button. Don't worry, this step won't flash the card's BIOS yet - you're just saving the modified BIOS file.

Step 5) Flash the modded BIOS onto the card. You can do this with ATI Flash or with ATI WinFlash. The latter is for doing it under Windows running. Generally it's better to do it without the OS... but for these older Radeons, I've never had a hitch doing it through ATI WinFlash. Regardless of which option you choose, it's probably best to do it with only 1 video card installed in the system.

That said, if you do have another HD4600/HD4670 card like the ones you put in the T3400, you can try the above steps on it as well, just to familiarize yourself with the process. Then you can try it with the HD4870.

If you loose the original BIOS of a card, let me know. I've backed up most cards I've gone through my bench. I also have a few modded ones. And IIRC, TechPowerUp also keeps a good deal of stock BIOSes.

I take it you never ran a Griffin based Turion along with a HD3650. Those can get a little bit CRISPY. Crispy as in near water boiling hot.

That has more to do with laptops just having crappy cooling. Even gaming ones always provide just the minimum adequate cooling and call it a day (and hence why they regularly die so quickly.)

[Topcat]

Re: ATI Radeon HD4800 - Running Meltdown HOT!!

By golly, that was easy!! It also worked! Still a hot-runner, but fans ramped up I'm far less concerned about it! 100% a success! Thanks for taking a waning/failing project and helping make it a go! Fans obviously more audible, but not ridiculous/obnoxious! Well done!

The image is 2 instances of GPUZ; reflecting the temps of both GPU's. MUUUUUCH BETTER! ...but I noticed that the clock speed of one is 150MHz higher than the other.... Perhaps it's a 'speedstep' kind of thing....I noticed they both fluctuate core speeds between 600~750MHz, GPU 2 more than GPU 1 is lower....I guess one is bootstrapped; much like a multi CPU system, one is always favored over the other.

[Topcat]

Re: ATI Radeon HD4800 - Running Meltdown HOT!!

Just a bit of a FWIW, I showed this thing to someone locally today, who fell madly in love with it for some reason....and I sold it.

[momaka]

Re: ATI Radeon HD4800 - Running Meltdown HOT!!

Just a bit of a FWIW, I showed this thing to someone locally today, who fell madly in love with it for some reason....and I sold it.

Nice!
Good to know there are people who still appreciate such systems.

& sorry I'm replying so out-of-date on this (just catching up a little on old posts, finally. :\ )

Last I checked, I promised to show you how I do the BIOS mods to lower the clocks and voltages...

I think I even have one of these HD4870's that I might not have modded yet (was a reflown card and I didn't invest too much time into it.) Just have to dig it out...

... and I did actually dig out my HD4870 for this, back before you sold the system.

But as luck would have it, that reflown HD4870 I had died within 20 minutes of using it, just as I was preparing the BIOS files to flash it.

However, one thing to note about it is that I already had modified the fan settings on my BIOS - probably did it after reflowing the card in the hopes of extending its life. Sadly, even with the much lower temperatures, it still died.

That said, if you do get more of these HD4870 cards, just know that they can (and should) actually run even cooler. My modded BIOS didn't make the fans too loud at idle (I think it was running the fan at around 40% PWM, just like yours.) But the GPU was sitting idle at a comfy 44C before it died - and that was with a rather warm 80F / 27C room temperature. Again, this was before I was able to attempt core clock and voltage mods. So with those, I'm guesstimating I can bring the temperature down even further - possibly to under 60C with the card under full load.

On the other hand, I suspect your cards were just stuck in performance mode all the time for whatever reason, and perhaps that was the reason they still seem to run a little hot.

By golly, that was easy!! It also worked! Still a hot-runner, but fans ramped up I'm far less concerned about it! 100% a success! Thanks for taking a waning/failing project and helping make it a go! Fans obviously more audible, but not ridiculous/obnoxious! Well done!

You're welcome!

Yeah, whoever made RBE and GPU-Z - kudos! Just a little tweaking to the fan profile can make quite a difference for these cards.

I still can't figure out why ATI/AMD let the temperatures go so high before ramping up the fans. Sure it keeps the cards quiet... but when they die, they will be quiet forever. And these high-end HD4800 cards do fail quite a lot after enough thermal abuse.

Seems like you tamed them a little more now. 55C for idle temps is still a little high. However, perhaps that has to do with the cards not going into full idle mode (IIRC, around 150 or 300 MHz core clock and ~1V on the core instead of 1.2xx V.)

Perhaps it's a 'speedstep' kind of thing....I noticed they both fluctuate core speeds between 600~750MHz

Yeah, that's normal and indeed kind of like Intel Speedstep. All "modern" GPUs do this to conserve power (well, since like 2007 or so.) Newer cards are just more aggressive about it.