I think I may have killed my 4870

[SlowSpyder]

I was in the middle of reading up on the software based voltage mod for the GTX and Radeon 38x0 cards/48x0 cards when my display just went blank. The PC was still powered on. My monitor light went orange to show that it was no longer receiving a display signal from my video card. I had not yet made any changes and was running at 100% stock voltage, I was just in the reading stage to see how complicated this was and to see if I wanted to do it.

Last night I installed Rivatuner and started overclocking my video card through that instead of Catalyst Control Center. CCC maxed out at 820MHz, I figured since I already had my GPU happily running at that speed, I'd want a big more room to push this core once I applied the voltage mod. Just for fun, on stock volts I pushed my core to 830, I kept my memory at the same speed I've been running at since the day I got the card, 1150x4 - 4600MHz effective.

At 830/4600 I ran some instances of 3DMark05 as that's what I had installed on my PC. It completed each time, scores were about 17500 if anyone cares. I figure that's not so bad on a slow-ish Phenom processor.

Anyway, just reading the voltage mod page, but with F@H GPU version running in the background, the same thing I've done pretty much everytime the PC is fired up, the problem occured. The display blanked out, no sounds/beeps occured, just lost video. PC was still powered up and fans spinning like normal. The only difference between today and the previous few months was another 10MHz on the core.

I reseated the card, pulled the CMOS batter with the PC unplugged and hit the power button to try and remove any power in the capacitors, etc. One time my monitor light went green, but then changed orange upon trying to boot. Every other time the monitor light just stays orange, nothing much happens. I connected my laptop to the monitor to veryify that it is working, no problems there, the laptop displays without issue to the monitor.

I'm going to let it sit and cool down then give it another go <fingers crossed>

I didn't think that I could damage the card so long as I didn't touch the voltages, but not sure I guess.

Anyway, and suggestions would be helpful. I'd hate to lose the card, I've only had it since Christmas and have been exceptoinally happy with how well it performs and how quiet it is. Losing a $200 card in 2 months wouldn't be the end of the world, but I'd like to avoid it if at all possible as I'm sure you understand. Thanks in advance for any suggestions, I appreciate any help.

 

[SlowSpyder]

After letting it sit for a while it booted up. I went into safe mode and disabled Rivatuner and F@H for the first boot up. Everything is at factory settings now, CPU @ 2.5, video @ 780/4000. I think I'll just leave it like this for the time being, my new PhII should be here in a few days. I'll tinker again later, and I'll keep my GPU at 820 or less from now on I think.

So, false alarm, all seems ok for now.

 

[dust]

It'd be too bad, you have a nice card. Mine top up at 790 core each as suggested by the CCC, I'm not sure if I could "con" it to get higher than that.

 

[TC91]

just a suggestion, you might want to go a little easy on the memory since imo it doesnt make as big of a performance difference on the 4870 compared to the core clock.

 

[thilanliyan]

Originally posted by: SlowSpyder
After letting it sit for a while it booted up. I went into safe mode and disabled Rivatuner and F@H for the first boot up. Everything is at factory settings now, CPU @ 2.5, video @ 780/4000. I think I'll just leave it like this for the time being, my new PhII should be here in a few days. I'll tinker again later, and I'll keep my GPU at 820 or less from now on I think.

So, false alarm, all seems ok for now.

Try F@H again and see if it does the same thing...it could be a dying card if it screws up again.

 

[SSChevy2001]

Why don't you drop the memory clocks when folding? If it was me I would drop the memory bandwidth ( 200Mhz ) and try to reduce the wear and tear on the card. Also you'll save energy while more than likely keeping the results the same.

 

[SlowSpyder]

Originally posted by: Drivenbyvoltage
It'd be too bad, you have a nice card. Mine top up at 790 core each as suggested by the CCC, I'm not sure if I could "con" it to get higher than that.

Thanks... I certainly lucked out with this card. I'm sure the very excellent 'Toxic Edition' cooler has something to do with my very decent clocks, but that will only take me so far. I think I got lucky and got a pretty decent chip. But with that being said, the truth is, I'd be shocked if there was any tangible difference in game play between 790MHz and 820-830MHz. Maybe some 3DMark points that I couldn't care less about, but I doubt there's much difference at all in actual game play while gaming.

Originally posted by: thilan29

Originally posted by: SlowSpyder
After letting it sit for a while it booted up. I went into safe mode and disabled Rivatuner and F@H for the first boot up. Everything is at factory settings now, CPU @ 2.5, video @ 780/4000. I think I'll just leave it like this for the time being, my new PhII should be here in a few days. I'll tinker again later, and I'll keep my GPU at 820 or less from now on I think.

So, false alarm, all seems ok for now.

Try F@H again and see if it does the same thing...it could be a dying card if it screws up again.

Yea, good idea. I'll run 3DMark, F@H, etc. to make sure everything runs without a problem.

Originally posted by: SSChevy2001
Why don't you drop the memory clocks when folding? If it was me I would drop the memory bandwidth ( 200Mhz ) and try to reduce the wear and tear on the card. Also you'll save energy while more than likely keeping the results the same.

I could do that, but I'm kind of a 'set it and forget it' type. I tested by trial and error and found the memory to be 100% stable as 1150x4 (4600). Somewhere around 1200x4 (4800) my memory gets unhappy. I haven't squeezed every last MHz out of it, but don't think I need to, I'm pretty happy with a 4600MHz effective speed. Other then synthetic benches I doubt faster memory would make much difference... well that and that it'd be cool to say you have 5GHz effective memory. Anyway, in my rambling I'm just getting at I don't want to change my memory speed everytime I run F@H or game, I know it's stable at an effective 4600MHz speed, so I just leave it there. My card has a factory oc on the memory of 1GHzx4 (4000MHz) so I am pushing it a bit, but not as much as if I was using 900MHz memory.

 

[SSChevy2001]

Just use ATT and make a profile for the folding client, and it will change the clocks for you. I understand you have room with the memory clocks, but I'm sure folding@home isn't using that extra memory bandwidth for nothing.

Here's a quick example I made without any load.
820/3925 = 25.7A VDDC current
820/800 = 9.5A VDDC current

 

[SlowSpyder]

Originally posted by: SSChevy2001
Just use ATT and make a profile for the folding client, and it will change the clocks for you. I understand you have room with the memory clocks, but I'm sure folding@home isn't using that extra memory bandwidth for nothing.

Here's a quick example I made without any load.
820/3925 = 25.7A VDDC current
820/800 = 9.5A VDDC current

Wow, quite the drop. Sounds like it's probably worth looking into... ATT = ATI Tool?

 

[SSChevy2001]

ATI Tray Tool
Memory clocks seem to make a big difference in power consumption on the 4870. ATT is a really nice replacement to CCC, and the profiles work really nice.