Fixed: Yeah, not happy with this HD6950 (excessive heat with multimonitor problem)

[busydude]

How are yours with"mismatched monitors"?

Primary monitor: Dell 1080P LCD on DVI 1
Secondary: 1024X768 LCD on DVI 2

Temps with single monitor:

Temps with Mis-matched dual monitor setup, with 720P youtube video playing in the secondary monitor.

 

[nitromullet]

How is tessellation on that 4890? Can you do 3 displays at once? eyefinity?
... no?

When i said you have to go into the future to the OP, i was referring *specifically* to a time in the FUTURE when these issues may be minimized by driver improvements.

Just because the OP is wailing about these issues does not mean that everyone else feels the same way about progress. i am sorry that he has mismatched displays. He could probably use a 2nd card to drive the display without these clocking up issues - or just send the new card back for a refund and use an older card like yours .. or buy matched displays.

i thought *everyone* knew about these issues. But then you guys are mostly only one forum. HardOCP members have been complaining about these issues for many months .. and the complaints are much less of late
.. in my book that IS progress and i expect things will get a bit better as drivers continue to mature. But they will never be perfect with the displays the OP has.
:\

Your outlook on "progress" has changed quite a bit since your days as the leading crusader in the war against AGP obsolescence.

 

[mnewsham]

I have 7 days to return the card without giving a reason, after that I'm relying on RMA's and warranties. I'd rather not bet on that.

If that's the case i would say return it and hold off on it until you can find something you know will work for your needs

 

[WelshBloke]

Primary monitor: Dell 1080P LCD on DVI 1
Secondary: 1024X768 LCD on DVI 2

Temps with single monitor:

...

Temps with Mis-matched dual monitor setup, with 720P youtube video playing in the secondary monitor.

...

So "just" a 10C temp rise just by plugging in a secondary monitor. Are you running a custom fan profile? Mine idles at 28-30%.

Edit: also your 2d clocks are lower than normal?

 

[WelshBloke]

If that's the case i would say return it and hold off on it until you can find something you know will work for your needs

Yeah thats the plan, some one in my buying advice thread suggested getting an SSD instead as a joke. I may well have to thank them for the advice. :\

 

[busydude]

Are you running a custom fan profile? Mine idles at 28-30%.

Nop, everything on auto.

So "just" a 10C temp rise just by plugging in a secondary monitor. Are you running a custom fan profile? Mine idles at 28-30%.

That 10C jump was due to playing youtube video.. the temps are basically same.

 

[WelshBloke]

Nop, everything on auto.

See my stealth edit.

normal 2d clocks are 450/1250.

Edit: you're not talking about a 6950 are you? Thats not exactly relevant to my issue, although it does show that the problem is with older hardware as well.

 

[bryanW1995]

i don't agree considering the improvements both companies have made. If you have mis-matched LCDs, then you will have to wait - or put up with higher clocks.

The advantages of eyefinity or Surround vastly outweigh the negatives; same for multi-monitor. And i guess you could drive your second monitor off of IG or lesser video card if you did not want to deal with your HD 6950's spin up.

Since you have a hot running card, you ought to flash it into HD 6970
:biggrin:

Just kidding!

or, on a more serious note, undervolt it to the limits of stability, depending on how far down it will go that could make a very significant difference.

 

[WelshBloke]

or, on a more serious note, undervolt it to the limits of stability, depending on how far down it will go that could make a very significant difference.

If you can link me some software to undervolt it I'd be very grateful.

 

[mnewsham]

Yeah thats the plan, some one in my buying advice thread suggested getting an SSD instead as a joke. I may well have to thank them for the advice. :\

well for £250 (i assume?) you can pick up two 5770's (if that's what you want) and have £50 to spare or if you dont want to think about graphics anymore then you could pick up a 120Gb RevoDrive or a better monitor (to match your current monitor?)

 

[apoppin]

I'm not "calling you out" anymore than addressing someone thats responding to my thread. I'm also one of your readers.



Do we have to reach a quorum here before we are aloud to complain about something?



You specifically told me to read forums and not rely on reviewers.




I'm not using the preview CCC, apparently it doesn't support the 69x0 cards. I've tried the 10:12's and th 10:12 hotfix drivers, both with the same result.

I'd also appreciate it if you could dial back the attitude and maybe the use of bold. It doesn't strengthen your argument and certainly doesn't help solve my problem.

No attitude on my part; the BOLD is something i have used consistently in my posts for many years when there are multiple issues to address with another poster without confusion.

You on the other hand are confrontational, argumentative and angry and you are dumping everything on me.

Let me try for the last time and then i am going to leave this thread because i am already repeating myself and it is counterproductive.

YOU are the UNIQUE person on this huge forum with many thousands of members in many months who brought it up - so it is not "common". The people with your same issues, workaround (like i suggested) - or they put up with it .

It has been somewhat addressed by Nvidia and AMD with updated drivers; so they are aware of it and they are both working on it. But your 2 mismatched displays are not their priority.

OTHER *major* tech sites have already addressed this issue; try search. You missed it; not my fault. Gaming is my focus and i never use mismatched LCDs like you do for productivity. i use either one 2560x1600 display or three screens at the same resolution for eyefinity and Surround gaming.

When i did try mismatched displays, i did not get your extreme results. It would not annoy me like it does you, so i never bother to take it further. It is a well-known issue (outside this forum until now).

Maybe you could try an earlier driver. i have nothing further to suggest other than to return your card if you can't live with it or workaround. And now AnandTech Video forum knows all about it so you have provided a useful user experience for others in the same boat.

i got to go to work. Good luck and aloha.

 

[bryanW1995]

No I cant, I'd be happy for you to link me some software to do it though.

you can't get the older version of CCC to work yet?

sounds like that is just a problem card all around, I'd return it before the 7 days is up for sure.

 

[SlowSpyder]

Just a related note. I put a second display on my Vapor-X 5870 just to see what would happen with the temps. Idle went from 42C to 47C.

 

[mnewsham]

Just a related note. I put a second display on my Vapor-X 5870 just to see what would happen with the temps. Idle went from 42C to 47C.

that is pretty much what happens with my 5770 goes from 40-43 to about 45-48

 

[WelshBloke]

you can't get the older version of CCC to work yet?

sounds like that is just a problem card all around, I'd return it before the 7 days is up for sure.

??? I can get the older CCC to work. It only gives me the option to adjust 3d clocks.

 

[WelshBloke]

No attitude on my part; the BOLD is something i have used consistently in my posts for many years when there are multiple issues to address with another poster without confusion.

You on the other hand are confrontational, argumentative and angry and you are dumping everything on me.

Let me try for the last time and then i am going to leave this thread because i am already repeating myself and it is counterproductive.

YOU are the UNIQUE person on this huge forum with many thousands of members in many months who brought it up - so it is not "common". The people with your same issues, workaround (like i suggested) - or they put up with it .

It has been somewhat addressed by Nvidia and AMD with updated drivers; so they are aware of it and they are both working on it. But your 2 mismatched displays are not their priority.

OTHER *major* tech sites have already addressed this issue; try search. You missed it; not my fault. Gaming is my focus and i never use mismatched LCDs like you do for productivity. i use either one 2560x1600 display or three screens at the same resolution for eyefinity and Surround gaming.

When i did try mismatched displays, i did not get your extreme results. It would not annoy me like it does you, so i never bother to take it further. It is a well-known issue (outside this forum until now).

Maybe you could try an earlier driver. i have nothing further to suggest other than to return your card if you can't live with it or workaround. And now AnandTech Video forum knows all about it so you have provided a useful user experience for others in the same boat.

i got to go to work. Good luck and aloha.

Fair enough, you seem to be taking it personally that I have an issue so its fine you leave, although I've not seen any workarounds you've suggested that work or are relevant.

 

[imported_GrizzlyAdams]

What OS are you guys using? I wonder if maybe something is being accelerated or something (possibly something that your previous card wasn't). The explanation about the change could definitely be part of it.

There was an article linked to in one of the threads on here about the changes made to 2D in Vista and Windows 7, and that makes me think that with beefier hardware the OS might be going to more aggressive 2D settings or just enabling features that weren't available on the old card possibly. You might look up some tweaks for that and see if it helps any.

Also, do you possibly have anything running in the background (say widgets or things like that)?

Did disabling the AA help any with temps/noise?

Also, were you maybe using some third party application like UltraMon or something?

The entire desktop is composited starting with Vista, and that definitely causes some extra strain on the card. We are dealing with pseudo 3d here -- perhaps try disabling Aero to see if that's the issue, WelshBloke.

 

[WelshBloke]

The entire desktop is composited starting with Vista, and that definitely causes some extra strain on the card. We are dealing with pseudo 3d here -- perhaps try disabling Aero to see if that's the issue, WelshBloke.

Thanks for staying with this problem but just tried that and it makes no difference.

I really think this is something that needs to be sorted out at the hardware level.

 

[imported_GrizzlyAdams]

im using 10.12 drivers

Haha well I should expect users up to date drivers -- especially in this forum. Excuse the incorrect assumption Obviously something else is afoot here, and it's going to require cooperation from everyone to figure it out.

An excellent first post from someone who signed up over a year ago...where have you been?!
...

Thanks for the compliment! I'm generally a lurker, but now that I'm a little more well versed in the basics (3rd year EE student) I feel more confident commenting. Obviously GPUs are significantly more complex that anything I'm working on, but there's no better way to learn than to jump right in.

 

[Daedalus685]

Welsh,

My understanding is that this issue is primarily to do with flicking when GDDR5 is down clcocked that would occur when a second display was used. The work around was simply to not downclock the memory. The GPU is kept a bit higher with a second display likely for performance reasons and a "to be safe" kind of thing.

Your card *should* not get as hot as it does, it is likely flawed. You are going to see higher power draw for using a second display (at idle only) though on any modern card but it should not make a temperature (5 or 6 C at most) or audible difference.

If the mere fact that the cards don't down clock as low as they could is the issue you'll likely have to get something with GDDR3 instead unless you modify the bios and perhaps (depending on the memory chips, they may be better than they used to be) deal with flicker... but be aware that modern cards have crazy low idle clocks, old ones do not. The small clock change you see with a second display is the best you could get with one on an older card.

As for the temperatures, your card is just broken. It shouldn't be nearly that bad and likely the heatsink was either never put on correctly or took a bit of a fall in the shipping truck.

 

[WelshBloke]

Welsh,

My understanding is that this issue is primarily to do with flicking when GDDR5 is down clcocked that would occur when a second display was used. The work around was simply to not downclock the memory. The GPU is kept a bit higher with a second display likely for performance reasons and a "to be safe" kind of thing.

Your card *should* not get as hot as it does, it is likely flawed. You are going to see higher power draw for using a second display (at idle only) though on any modern card but it should not make a temperature (5 or 6 C at most) or audible difference.

If the mere fact that the cards don't down clock as low as they could is the issue you'll likely have to get something with GDDR3 instead unless you modify the bios and perhaps (depending on the memory chips, they may be better than they used to be) deal with flicker... but be aware that modern cards have crazy low idle clocks, old ones do not. The small clock change you see with a second display is the best you could get with one on an older card.

As for the temperatures, your card is just broken. It shouldn't be nearly that bad and likely the heatsink was either never put on correctly or took a bit of a fall in the shipping truck.

I really don't wont to be rude or awkward, but have you tried running this monitor config on a 6950? I see lots of people telling me how my temps shold be without ever having touched the hardware.

The only other guy in the thread that has had the the same hardware has had the same results as me..

 

[Daedalus685]

I really don't wont to be rude or awkward, but have you tried running this monitor config on a 6950? I see lots of people telling me how my temps shold be without ever having touched the hardware.

The only other guy in the thread that has had the the same hardware has had the same results as me..

I use a 6970, the absolute highest the thing gets at full load with my two mismatched displays is 80C. A full 15C lower than what I'd see with my 4890 in the same system. At idle I am looking at 50ish depending on ambients, but the fan is never above 30%.

No, I have never used a 6950.. but the 6970 is clocked higher and has the exact same cooling so I'd generally assume.

The GDDR5 clocking thing was well documented when they first started using the memory. Flickering was an issue and the work around was to simply sacrifice some idle power draw + temperatures. One either uses older memory or deals with it, but keep in mind cards that used GDDR3 don't down clock nearly as much as modern cards do.

 

[WelshBloke]

I use a 6970, the absolute highest the thing gets at full load with my two mismatched displays is 80C. A full 15C lower than what I'd see with my 4890 in the same system. At idle I am looking at 50ish depending on ambients, but the fan is never above 30%.

No, I have never used a 6950.. but the 6970 is clocked higher and has the exact same cooling so I'd generally assume.

OK, so whats your temp(and clocks) with one monitor plugged in?

Whats your temps(and clocks) with mismatched displays plugged in?

If you have identical displays could you please post those results as well.

I'm not trying to be awkward or make things up here, it a real problem I didn't think I'd have to deal with.

 

[Daedalus685]

OK, so whats your temp(and clocks) with one monitor plugged in?

Whats your temps(and clocks) with mismatched displays plugged in?

If you have identical displays could you please post those results as well.

I'm not trying to be awkward or make things up here, it a real problem I didn't think I'd have to deal with.

I don't have identical displays unfortunately, does it work the same if I run my main at a lower res to match the second?

At any rate, full load is the same regardless of the displays, is about 80C after half an hour of crysis. My card is over clocked to 935. Load I see the fan creep to 32% at times.

Idle without is about 43C, Right now I'm looking at 50C dead on. In both cases the fan is at 28%.

 

[WelshBloke]

I don't have identical displays unfortunately, does it work the same if I run my main at a lower res to match the second?

At any rate, full load is the same regardless of the displays, is about 80C after half an hour of crysis. My card is over clocked to 935. Load I see the fan creep to 32% at times.

Idle without is about 43C, Right now I'm looking at 50C dead on. In both cases the fan is at 28%.

All I'm interested at the moment is idle temps, and yours are 50c yes?

Thats with default fan settings and voltage and plenty of time for temps to settle down, yes?

I don't want this to turn into a pissing match where people post the best case scenario for bragging rights.

This is the first time this has been investigated on this forum so lets keep it watertight.