A while ago my X2 started cutting out, I grabbed a EAH5770 Cu Core and have been greatly impressed with the image quality and performance. However I've just switched to a 1080p monitor and the card is now struggling at max resolution with some games. I'm wondering if re-pasting the x2 would be worth while? Would the performance on a 1080p monitor be that much better with direct x 9 and 10 games? Thanks for any input on this in advance
A 4870x2 is much more powerful than a 5770. 4870x2 cards are comparable to 5870's. If by repasting you mean opneing it up and applying new thermal paste, you should obviously do it.
Thanks Yeah, the card started cutting off, temps raising to above 100c, nothing looks burned out on it so i assume it was cutting out to protect the chips from the heat. I've re-pasted but I'm a little worried as some of the thermal pads looked a bit damaged.
Agreed, a single 4870 1GB is similar to the performance of the 5770. Replace the damaged thermal pads, you dont want to kill anything!
I've been searching for replacement pads to no avail; any idea on where i could get them? None had fallen off but some had torn a little when removing the cooler :/
any electronic store should carry thermal tape. it comes in various thickness. try to get something similar in thickness to those pads. honestly those "thermal" pads that came on the 4870x2's were junk and all they ever did was insulate the heat. this will be your best bet. ive done this to both of my x2's and they are still running to this day. granted the last time i had them in was almost a year ago. but never the less, they still work.
Fantastic, thank you Firestorm. If it isn't any trouble, do you recall the thickness of the thermal tape you bought? Some of the side ones looked pretty thick (about 2 or 3cm) and most of the thermal tapes I'm finding are quiet thin.
not off the top of my head. it doesent have to be the exact thickness, just something close. if you have to, take a couple of the pads with you and compare them to whats available.
Cool, thanks a lot. Just having a look at some of the after market coolers as i recall the stock fan sounding like a jet engine.
I got some off eBay. 0.5 mm to 1 mm thickness is what you want, with highest level of heat transfer properties. Cut them to size, double up if you need in order to make sure you have complete contact on all chips. I've replaced mine and my temps and card are absolutely great.
And as far as aftermarket coolers, not sure if you can still find one like mine, but if so, I highly recommend. Comes with pads, inaudible. Just make sure the vrm heatsinks are fastened firmly and that you have complete heatsink-pad-chip contact. My core temps don't ever exceed 60c and my vrm temps don't exceed 75-80c ever.
Which one do you have? The one I'm looking at possibly getting if the card is still working is the 'Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme'. Thanks for all of the information regarding the thermal pads, will be popping into my local shop for the bits and bobs soon
Yep when that 4870x2 kicks in with Xfire then 100% it will be greatly faster than a single 5770. 5770 = single 4870 4870x2 = single 5870 (more or less in some cases).
That's the one I have. Says to the left. Be warned! Many people ended up frying their VRAMs with this cooler. The reason is that they didn't make sure that there was complete contact between the VRM chips and the VRM heatsink. See, it comes with two small heatsinks for the VRMs which are more or less passive cooling; a bad step on their part. Further more, they don't always make good contact out-of-the-box. So stick 'em on and make sure you're good. Done that and you will be enjoying a great cooler. Oh, and another thing. This cooler doesn't blast the hot air out of teh case; it is just dispersed within the case. Therefore, you'll need sufficient airflow through your case so ambient temps don't increase.
Thanks for the tip, i'll keep an eye on that. I'm going to follow http://www.guru3d.com/article/accelero-xtreme-4870-x2-review-test/1 - hopefully all will go well, just need to pick up those screws. Thanks for all shimyns
Cool. BTW, I think the later models came with longer screws. And if not, you have a bunch of long screws from the plastic stock shroud that you will have removed, which you can use instead; you don't need those little springs on the screws (you'll see what I mean). So you shouldn't need to buy screws. Again, do what you must in order to get good contact between those little HS's and the VRMs. I suggest you use rivatuner (i.g.) in order to monitor you VRM temps; the cores will surely be very cool. VRM's are reportedly fine even at 100c but that's BS. As I said, mine are always under 80c @load. Finally, do not use furmark to stress test. It heats the VRM's to unreasonable levels and has killed many of these 4870x2. Gone for a week, will check this thread after I'm back and see if you faired well.
Hey, thank you for all. It seems to be working fine, but i am a little worried about the VRM's. Idle: GPU1 VRM: 62c GPU2 VRM: 58c Everything else well under 50c. I gave Crysis 2 a whirl windowed up so I could keep an eye on the temps - of course when in window mode the second GPU won't be utilized so I'll check that another time. The fan speed remained the same (did not automatically ramp up during game play) so also keep in mind this is without setting the fans higher, they were running at 26% which is the same as idle. Under Load: What do you think? I'm going to give it a whirl with the fans ramped up, if all checks out then I'll just need to impose a set of rules for fan speeds using some software or possibly a GPU bios flash if need be. Thanks again for you're time and input Edit: Doing the same as above with fans set to max, GPU1-VRM does not peak past 73c. Using 10.8 drivers on Vista as I have Everest on this partition to monitor. In theory temps should be lower in full screen, with the GPU utilization spread between two cores so further testing required As it stands though, I'm tempted to take the card out and give it a little push on the heat sinks - although I thought i gave it as much force as I could safely, and screwed everything in pretty tight.
One of your VRMs is at 84C but its ok. Under 90c is pretty good, some run them well over 100C. I cant recommend that though, it can wear other components out faster and cause big stresses to solder joints, inducing fractures much earlier.
Cool, I'll leave it be then - Argh the x2 and ATI drivers, just looked on gpu-z to see crossfire is considered disabled and according to CCC the second core is disabled. Although windows detects both gpus as fine :/ Drivers are why I did not miss this card lol. Edit: Windows 7 is just fantastic, no issues like with Vista in terms of reinstalling new drivers for the card etc, just uninstall, reinstall, done. Just ran the X3: TC rolling demo benchmark maxed out as I play the game itself. Both cores utilized, very impressive performance too; the above people were spot on and the card itself seems to run much better on Windows 7. The max temps while that was running with fan maxed out: GPU-VRM1: 84c GPU-VRM2: 81c I'll keep a close eye on things but so far everything seems to be acceptable. @ shimyns: I see what you meant about the passive cooling for the VRMs being a design flaw in what is otherwise a very good cooler. Do you think it would be worth re-seating the VRM heat-sinks? Again thanks to all of the above, fantastic people Edit: Urgh, rivertuner reports 'vrm phase' to peak at 103c in crysis 2 maxed out :/ -Acid
