Crossfired ATI HD4870s - Page 4

I'm too cheap

besides your talking to the man whom was just happily working under his truck on the the cooling system, quite content to drain the coolant into a basin, and then found out the basin had a hole and the garage had 9 litres of coolant on the floor

Bit of a squeeze, but working well

Had to cut a hole in the case as the card plus cooler is more than 2 less than 3 slots wide.

I moved the hard drive cage up top to get free flowing air from the 2 pulling noctuas, and took out the ram cooler (don't overclock ram so figure don't need it)

Planned to move one of the noctuas from the CPU cooler rigged somewhere near the top GPU but don't think I need too as temps okay

I know the coolers have 2 fans so not exactly apples to apples, but at fans 20% and GPUs downclocked bu having sliders set left in catalyst, went from 69degC to 55 and 66 (bottom/top). Testing with fans on 70% there is very little noise and temps in 50s upper & 40s lower

Lack of the whine is amazing though, I have the case fans on silent setting in asus bios and there is just low fan noise from the system. The character is much different, not whiney, more like wet air - softer

Very happy here, cheap mod and fun

I saw on hardop ( http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1352018 ) that rather than try and ram sink the card to death it was easier to leave the stock ATI RAM backplate (for want of a better word) on and it works great.

Heres some pics of the modded case and Xfire setup:

The finished article, bit of a squeeze but works



Width of card plus the cooler, ~2 slots width is the silver on the end for comparison



-Duct taped the hole to soften edges lol

Remix

system borked......expensive. Working one night, no boot the next day but had some sort of short circuit / power draw as blew fuse in an adjacent device when power on

new P5Q motherboard, new 750 quad PSU, and in process of getting new GPUs. Just bought a new motherboard as RMA to states postage too expensive. The old PSU is actually fine, was troubleshooting, will reuse in wife's new PC which is pushed into the future cos of all this

GPUs are just out of year warranty, but stateside based warranty too, and I'm in UK now, plus I had modded them anyway

on a brighter note, ram, cpu, and drives okay

GPUs poweron and fans spin and seem to follow temp profiles but no video to LCD and no post VGA video. Top and bottom LEDs flash on then all off. Think borked, will troubleshoot, but had an old crap card lying around to be able to set up motherboard. Open to any suggestions...even saw that reforming slash home baking thread on hard

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1421792

but reason its an electrical component failure cos it was an 'incident' rather than heat cycle solder failure. I have the 10mins to try on an otherwise chucked card set

Meantime I ordered and ATI 4770. If the 4870s are toast then I'll crossfire with another 4770 as they are comparatively cheap and based on 40mm so run cool and 2xCF ~ > 4890 single at 1600x1050 according to Tom's

I toyed with i7 but ive got 8gb ddr2 ram and didn't want to relearn a bios - the cpu is working fine and although the p5q deluxe is imperfect, its familiar. Was very close to going for the gigabyte equivalent but backed out, roughly same price point

just a note that UK component prices are much more than US/canadian, at least 1 year on the P45s are cheaper than launch

probably going to cost around 400 quid all in which is about 800 canadian or 650 US; and the original parts lasted not 4 years but one.

~200 motherboard and psu and ~200 for 2 new 4770s, starting with a single card

Oh well, shit happens

got my new 4770 today, just installed, its cool and quiet

I actually baked one of the 4870s last night but haven't had the time to put it back together again, did ~180deg C at 9mins all seemed to be well, very surreal though

ATI 4770 not a bad wee card for the money

Asus EAH 4770, runs crysis high 20s to 30fps at 1600x1050 with no AA, everything set high

Much cooler running than 4870
Some 3dmark6 runs for your info


Stock clocks and stock Q9450 2.7



stock clocks and 3.6 q9450




overclock and 3.6 q9450 15K

I have bit the bullet and ordered another Asus 4770
They run cool, and Xfire supposed to be = 1 x 4890, which is good enough for me occasional gaming at 1680x1050

waiting on stock coming in so probably be a week, for delivery. They dont ship with bridges but at least I have those still lol

yes, above post shows just using sliders to max in ATI Catalyst

Asus cards also have a software overvolt feature but I haven't used it yet as the max clocks are the same as ATI. Think I have to use riva tuner to get higher.

I'll probably do it someday, but to be honest after blowing up 2 cards, I think i'll just use catalyst and Xfire, it should be well enough for what I need anyway.

cheers

(still waiting on some bench runs on your new rig lol )

managed to get a lead on another same Asus EAH 4770, so should be here next week barring stock issues. XFX are available but wanted to get same exact model

lots of hassles waiting on stock to get in to retailer, thought about getting another 4870 or even 4890 or waiting for next gen, but in the end they got a delivery and I like the cooler and quieter room, so crossfire before the weekend with a bit of luck


*this bit of the forums a bit inactive, but figured Id update. I'll do benches and post the figures for anyone whos interested in the cards. New gen look awesome with the figures leaked on other forums

Its here, 18218 3dmark6 with 1.19 overvolt, and 830/3400 in Asus smart doctor

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=11988196

and vantage 12837 / 14193cpu / 12441 gpu

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=11988196

(thats with standard volts as it crashed first run)

not bad close to old 4870 crossfired results (14973/14625/15092)

frigging quiet and not throwing out the same heat!

13977 Vantage with 850/1000 overclock

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dmv=1484274

20342 3dmrk6

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=12179608


AMD GPU overclock tool