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Ati Sapphire 6870 HD - Fan is noisy


seltsam23
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Hi there,

 

Im running a very stable Lion 7.3 for a while now, but even in idle/browsing the fan of my graphiccard (Sapphire 6870 HD) is accelerating and then slowing down again all the time.

The fan is generally running a bit faster than in windows 7.

 

Is there a better kext available to avoid these problems?

 

Thank you big time cause its hard to concentrade on work with such a noisy fan.

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Good evening there sir, well lets start things off by asking if you have iStats installed to measure your temps so that we can tell if the gpu is running at full blast or if it's another issue.

 

 

Good day sir, and thank you!

 

I've downloaded and installed iStat as you told me, but I'm afraid the GPU-temps are not even mentioned there. Have a look for yourself: vzsfrqstmbos.png

 

What to do now?

 

 

Flashing it with a custom BIOS should fix your issue. I flashed my GPU with a moded EFI rom I made and my fans seem to be working better when gaming under Mac OS X.

 

 

If anything else fails I'll try that. First I want to rule out any other possible error. I may come back to that, thank you!

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Oh yeah it certainly is, you're welcome though credit is due to its creator. (good ol Kozzy)

 

Assume that's Cº then yeah, that's certainly idling temps right there. Since the gpu isn't at full blast, mind checking with the comp sitting in the BIOS or cham menu and see if the fan on the gpu is still noisy.

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Since the gpu isn't at full blast, mind checking with the comp sitting in the BIOS or cham menu and see if the fan on the gpu is still noisy.

 

Ok, I'll check in a bit. I'll edit and let you know.

 

Thanks mate

 

EDIT: Never thought that, in bios-idle the fan has the same speed as in Lion-idle. Even measured with dB-Smartphone-Tool next to the fan.

The fan doesn't even acellerate without any reasons, he does only when watching youtube and stuff - makes perfect sense though.

 

So, the kext and stuff seems ok.

 

Pew, what to do now? The Bios-thing?

In windows I'm running the card with some "AtiTrayTools"-Settings. Voltage is stepped down a bit, makes the card perfectly quiet in idle.

This configuration should work via hardware too, right?

 

What do you think?

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Roger that. Thing is that you might have to flash your card if you really want those lower voltage step downs to make the card perfectly quiet at idle. Thing I don't get though is that why at 48ºC is the card so noisy? Mine is sitting at 58ºC because I'm pushing dual monitors so it does make the card work a bit harder to push the pixels. Try setting the voltage in win then booting over to OS X and see if it carries over but I'm not entirely certain if it will as I've never done it but it's worth a shot. I dunno if you could step down the voltage unless you physically modded the gpu which I wouldn't suggest.

 

How's the Win-idle without the volt step down? Same as in Lion-idle and BIOS-idle I suspect right?

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Thing I don't get though is that why at 48ºC is the card so noisy? Mine is sitting at 58ºC because I'm pushing dual monitors so it does make the card work a bit harder to push the pixels.

 

Maybe it's just noisy for me. It runs next to a SSD and in watercooled environment. (Yes, I know - I could watercool the gpu as well, but thats a lot of work, and with lower voltage it runs perfectly quiet.)

 

Now I'll check windows idle temps and compare. If its about the same its time to get familiar with bios-flashing.

 

I'll report. Thank you mate.

 

EDIT: Ok, now I'm back in windows and the temp in idle is at 50°C, that is way higher than the meassurements in Lion, though the fan pretty much is as loud as in Lion, too.

 

Right now I'm looking up how to flash the bios, people say it's not possible to flash ati 6000-cards without having bluescreens.

I really don't get why theres no such tool like "ATI Tray Tools" for MacOS. Is it that hard to code?

 

Any ideas?

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Running a WC setup eh? I think that might be why you hear the gpu then because on my end I have around 11 case fans that drown out the sound of the gpu along with the music that is playing. :P

 

If you're not gonna add it into the loop then I guess a viable option would be going down the flashing route because I'm not aware of any tools that would allow you to hardcode values to a gpu in OS X unfortunately.

 

I never really liked the idea of flashing a gpu like that but hey who am i to talk, I flashed my BIOS to the Cartri BIOS sometime ago and never reverted back.

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