Gigabyte HD6870: Fan speed/temperature control

[ellissitzky]

Hey,

I am running a Gigabyte 6870 card and I am suspicious the fan is not budging from it's idle speed when it is under intensive conditions that would normally warrant it speeding up. (ie. World of Warcraft on it's highest performance setting)

This is my second hackintosh and I am a little worried as my previous one had that problem and I think it was the cause of me burning out one of my cards. My solution was to just stop gaming in OSX all together. Unfortunately I built this one under the impression the video card fan would work properly out the box but when it comes down to it we don't build hackintoshes because they work out the box, right?

Upon getting a replacement card for my previous hackintosh I made an attempt to flash the bios while trying to fix this very exact problem and some how managed to brick the card even though I was pretty careful about it. Luckily I was able to RMA it for a new one.

That being said, if anyone can point me in the right direction on how to fix this, it would be very rad of you. Is there anyway for me to take a peak at the temperature or fan speeds so I can confirm this? I'm just worried I'm toasting my card when I'm gaming at max graphics settings.

I see a lot of people are still having the exact opposite issue of the fan running full speed and part of me kind of wishes I had that issue since it wouldn't actual mean damaging my computer if I was gaming hard.

This guy is running on a GA-Z68XP-UD3 LGA in Lion 10.7.3 by the way.

 

[Mate94]

Simply: No.

 

[ectoplasmosis]

RE: Temp monitoring;

In a word: FakeSMC.

In several: FakeSMC + Radeon plugin. Both in Multibeast. Works perfectly.

Fan control is managed by the graphics card's BIOS independently of OS. This is why you must edit the BIOS clock/fan profiles and flash the card rather than run a utility which does this in realtime.

Sounds like your GPU isn't clocking up to the highest profile, in which case you need to read this thread: viewtopic.php?p=348890#p348890

 

[ellissitzky]

Thanks a lot ecto! I'll do some testing/reading.

 

[ellissitzky]

I've done a little bit of research and testing.

I've gone and installed the radeon plugin for the fakesmc and now I measured some temperatures.

The card is idling at around 44c. While under a decent load in diablo 3 with the graphics maxed out brought it up to 62c.

Is it possible this isn't a high enough temperature for the fans to kick in high speed or is it increasing ever so slightly that I can't hear the difference?

My next step is to test Unigine Heaven as you posted a link to it ecto.

 

[ectoplasmosis]

Those are normal temps.

Post your Unigine score (1920x1080, default settings) and you'll be able to tell whether the card is clocking up properly.

 

[ellissitzky]

Well it looks like I don't have anything to worry about.

I ran the default bench as you suggested and here is my result:

Screen Shot 2012-05-16 at 11.16.51 AM.png

I also had a hand full of background apps running, so I'm not sure if that took a way a couple fps but it looks fine to me. I suppose I'll just keep an eye on the card if a heatwave arrives this summer but otherwise I'm astonished how cool this gpu runs.

 

[ectoplasmosis]

All is blissful my child.

 

[ellissitzky]

Thanks a lot!