Going back to green: a rant

[nemesismk2]

there was an issue w/ the early 4850s, not sure when you got yours, but basically the fan didn't kick on until 69C - you had to, back when the card first came out modify the cards firmware and fix the fan profile. that was the only issue i had from when i got my 4850 quite some time ago, until NOW w/ their ccc 10.x setup, going back to 9.12. shouldn't have opened my mouth earlier in this thread, jinxed me

I bought the Gainward 4850 when they first became available.

 

[Zstream]

there was an issue w/ the early 4850s, not sure when you got yours, but basically the fan didn't kick on until 69C - you had to, back when the card first came out modify the cards firmware and fix the fan profile. that was the only issue i had from when i got my 4850 quite some time ago, until NOW w/ their ccc 10.x setup, going back to 9.12. shouldn't have opened my mouth earlier in this thread, jinxed me

I purchased two of them from best-buy for 150$ each when they first came out and had no such issue.

 

[MrK6]

there was an issue w/ the early 4850s, not sure when you got yours, but basically the fan didn't kick on until 69C - you had to, back when the card first came out modify the cards firmware and fix the fan profile. that was the only issue i had from when i got my 4850 quite some time ago, until NOW w/ their ccc 10.x setup, going back to 9.12. shouldn't have opened my mouth earlier in this thread, jinxed me

There's nothing wrong with that, at all. The cards are designed to run at ~90C; using the fan sparingly is a feature to the average consumer since it keeps operational noise down.

after trying ver 10.1 of ccc, i have to say ati did something bad w/ that. i had to clock the 3d clocks down to 620/940 just to get it to be somewhat stable. i uninstalled, rebooted into safe mode, ran driver sweeper to get rid of all things ati and put 9.10 back and let it "auto tune" its oc - went to 690/1115 and just gamed for an hour straight w/out so much as a hiccup and went up to 60C (coh high or very high graphics / 1920x1200 and according to fraps 40-50fps in the sparse areas, ~20 in dense areas w/ a lot of fighting/explosions, buildings, etc).

what exactly was introduced in the latest 10.1 version? i will concede, it is pretty bad since i am running a mature card on xp 32 - nothing new here and 10.1 destroyed it.

Well, like most overclocks (especially for graphics cards), your original overclock's stability was most likely temperature dependent. If I'm understanding the situation correctly, 10.1's changed the fan profile operation on your 4850, using it more sparingly and causing the card to operate in a higher temperature range. Since you're operating your card out of spec, you should keep an eye on your temperatures and adjust the fan profile accordingly using a program like Afterburner. I don't see what's so difficult here.

 

[bob4432]

There's nothing wrong with that, at all. The cards are designed to run at ~90C; using the fan sparingly is a feature to the average consumer since it keeps operational noise down.
Well, like most overclocks (especially for graphics cards), your original overclock's stability was most likely temperature dependent. If I'm understanding the situation correctly, 10.1's changed the fan profile operation on your 4850, using it more sparingly and causing the card to operate in a higher temperature range. Since you're operating your card out of spec, you should keep an eye on your temperatures and adjust the fan profile accordingly using a program like Afterburner. I don't see what's so difficult here.

actually, my fan profile was modified in the cards bios using RBE (radeon bios editor) and while before switching to the 10.1s, using gpuz i would see temps after gaming of ~81C but still had excellent reliability, but obviously needing of a cleaning. w/ the 10.1 and after a cleaning, temps were ~60C but still w/ the 10.1s the card is extemely unstable even at much lower clocks, put 9.10 back on - temps are still 60C after gaming w/ the much higher clocks and rock stable (fwiw, i have used this fan profile/bios since shortly after i got the card in july 08, so using cat 8.6 or so then and am still getting the same clocks w/ the 9.10s as i did using the 8.6s). i don't mess around w/ the ccc's fan control because i made the profile in the bios of the card.

i don't think the 10.1 ccc changed the fan profile since it is in the card bios, but i could be wrong. gpuz still showed it reacting like it always had and heat was not an issue.

this is the fan profile that is in the cards bios - my profile as at that time ati was shipping cards that didn't turn the fan on until 69C:

 

[Qbah]

Try the new 10.2s. The 10.1 was an abomination - I had problems with them and all I'm running is a HD4350! Web browsing, sleep and two screens. And the 10.1s couldn't even do that without issues. I just installed 10.2s and will see how it goes. It can hardly be any worse, so I'm hopeful it will be better.