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How to get a cooler Radeon HD 4870 with manual fan speed control
Want a cooler running Radeon HD 4850, 4870, or 4870X2? Orestis Bastounis shows you a neat way to manually specify its fan speed.
ATI’s Radeon HD 4800-series graphics cards have been a big success for the company, and deservedly so - they've devilered excellent performance for very competetive prices. If you’ve bought one, you’re probably not disappointed.
However, all the 4800-series cards operate at high temperatures, particularly the HD 4870 and HD 4870X2. If you hover over the ATI Overdrive option in the Catalyst Control Center (CCC), you’ll see how hot the GPU is. Even at idle, 79C isn't uncommon for a HD 4870. You might think the only way to reduce this temperature is by purchasing a third-party cooler, as currently there’s no option to increase the fan speed in the ATI Driver. However, with a handy hack – just editing an XML file in notepad - you can bring the temperature right down to earth.
This fix is very simple, takes no more than a second, and doesn’t even require a reboot. It wasn’t discovered by us, and has been reported on numerous forums
STEP 1 Start by bringing up Catalyst Control Center in advanced mode and open the ATI Overdrive menu. In our example, we have a single HD4870 running at stock speed and currently idling at 77C. Before you can make any changes you need to unlock the ATI Overdrive settings, or any changes you make to the fan speed will be overwritten by the factory settings.
STEP 2 You must create profiles to allow you to select different performance modes. Open the Profiles Manager, type a name into the box at the top and save it to create a profile. We’re using two profiles: one for the default fan speeds and one for fast fan speeds. Make sure both are saved, then close the window.
STEP 3 To make the adjustment to the fan speed, you need to open the XML file associated with your newly-created profile. This file can be found in an ATI settings folder your user directory. On Windows Vista, this path is usually:
C:UsersYOURNAMEAppDataLocalATIACE
In this directory will be another folder called Profiles. In there will be an XML file for each profile you have created. Open Fast.XML in notepad. There are two lines to edit that will allow you to adjust the fan speed of your graphics card.
The first is:
To allow manual adjustments of the fan speed, change Automatic to Manual.
Then you need to adjust the speed of the fan itself. There are two lines that allow you to adjust your fan speed:
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Hi right for cooling this card easy with out keep selecting the profile that you don’t need to make just unlock the over clocking then show all hidden files. Go to your user directory then AppData/local/ATI/ACE then just open the profiles file go to the bottom change it from automatic to manual then change the fan speed from 22 to you comfort
Comment by bloodduty at 5:53am 28th September 2008
I cant use rivatuna on vista64 without disabling driver signature or something, will leave as is. I don't really need the fan fix though, idle is 66c at 500/900 and doesn't rise much on load, maybe 71 load, fan will peak at 30%. I also underclock the card for surfing the net with AMD GPU clock tool, I have it underclocked then to 200gpu and 300mem clocks. Temps are then 41c with fan at 600+, this is then cool, quiet. No difference in performance browsing etc.
Comment by Dambuster101 at 12:06am 26th September 2008
Dambuster - download the latest version of rivatuner and then adjust the rivatuner\fan\autofanspeedcontrol setting to 3. Then you can edit the autofan options to automatically increase fan speed as temp increases. Mine started out at 21% for 55oC, 23% for 60, 37% for 65, 34% for 70, 38% for 80, 50% for 95, 74% for 97 and 100% for 100oC! Temps stayed below mid 70s even with a good overclock and fan noise was quite bearable :-)
Comment by matt___ at 10:48pm 25th September 2008
Dambuster - download the latest version of rivatuner and then adjust the rivatuner\fan\autofanspeedcontrol setting to 3. Then you can edit the autofan options to automatically increase fan speed as temp increases. Mine started out at 21% for 55oC, 23% for 60, 37% for 65, 34% for 70, 38% for 80, 50% for 95, 74% for 97 and 100% for 100oC! Temps stayed below mid 70s even with a good overclock and fan noise was quite bearable :-)
Comment by matt___ at 10:48pm 25th September 2008
@ Dambuster101: It doesn't increase, but 30% is fine to stop the card overheating. I overclock mine to 780/1100 and have it on 37% and it never goes above 62 degrees...
Comment by _Unknown_ at 6:27pm 25th September 2008
For me 40% was way to noisy, even 30%. Once it gets above 1000rpm then i find that intolerable. My system is reasonably quiet. Also Im not prepared to set manually, I mean if i set to 30% will it increase as temps get hotter? If it doesn't, one day I may set to 30%, forget that I've changed to manual, temps rise and bam, dead card because its still on 30%, so does it change?
Comment by Dambuster101 at 2:21pm 25th September 2008
It's free and controls and overclocks.
Comment by CyberpowerUK at 2:15pm 25th September 2008
..... on how to get a backslash displayed in a web page! :-)
Comment by cjagusz at 1:45pm 25th September 2008
If you think 35% is loud, try changing the speed to 100% - the noise is deafening and if your case doesn't have adequate air intakes its likely to implode!
Comment by matt___ at 8:51am 25th September 2008
I set mine to 35% the other day, sounds like a helicopter is in the room. 30% is only just bearable. I use 28% for idle and 33% for my overclocked profile when playing games.
Comment by steeli at 7:58pm 24th September 2008
A few years ago I bought a Radeon V9550 Guru which had 2 bioses - but that's by the by - it had software included to overclock the GPU and VRAM, but also to both set your desired fan speed and set off an alarm if a certain temperature was exceeded or if the fan slowed beyond a certain point. That was 4 years ago - why they don't have it with every card is a mystery to me.
Comment by Xonerater at 7:08pm 24th September 2008
I haven't got the 4870, but I've always just used programs like RivaTuner to set my own speeds for different temperatures. That way, when you load a game or 3D app you don't have to worry about changing profiles or your card overheating.
Comment by TWeaKoR at 6:48pm 24th September 2008
If you have the *4870* with the default cooler (doesn't matter if it says sapphire or some other name) then simply search Google for 'Asus TOP Bios 4870' and that bios enables you to OC your card to much higher speeds and when its activity level goes above different percentages, it will automatically speed itself up (which is better than going in CCC every 5 mins to change profiles...)
Comment by NikoBellic at 5:15pm 24th September 2008
I used this hack at first, but when the updated version of RivaTuner came out created a nice little profile that increased the fan speed as the the temps rose... I got bored of that and decided to watercool it using an XSPC full cover block from Aqua-PCs :-)
Comment by matt___ at 5:01pm 24th September 2008
Been running this hack for since i got my 4870 in July - at 40% fan speed mine idles at arounrd 42c - 65c at full load - 4870's being a hot card is just a myth brought about by crap bios fan profiles....
Comment by philheckler at 4:52pm 24th September 2008
I use rivatuner to set the card fan @ 43% at startup. It is still quiet and the card will idle @ 38C-42C. This is on my 3870. Playing COD4 it gets to about 75c max with the fan set @43% all the time.
Comment by toonook at 4:10pm 24th September 2008
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