Cat 3.9 seriously overheating Zalman cooled 9800pro

G

gzx

I have a passively cooled R9800pro using Zalman ZM80A cooler. After
upgrading to 3.9 driver from 3.7 and doing one hour of work in desktop
(no game playing) the machine hard locked. It stayed locked for about
3 minutes and refused to boot even after power down/up. Then it
finally booted only to work for another 20 minutes before another hard
lock. It was clear to me something was overheating and needed to cool
down before the machine booted normally. I recalled reading about
dynamic overclocking feature of 3.8/3.9 drivers and reinstalled 3.7.
No wonder the lockups are gone now. ATI really screwed this up. They
overclock their cards which can result in fried GPUs for people who
have tested their alternative cooling setups with prior driver
releases. If anybody from ATI is reading this, could you please
disable this hidden overclocking feature or at least make it an
install-time or run-time option? Thank you.
 
B

Ben Pope

gzx said:
I have a passively cooled R9800pro using Zalman ZM80A cooler. After
upgrading to 3.9 driver from 3.7 and doing one hour of work in desktop
(no game playing) the machine hard locked. It stayed locked for about
3 minutes and refused to boot even after power down/up. Then it
finally booted only to work for another 20 minutes before another hard
lock. It was clear to me something was overheating and needed to cool
down before the machine booted normally. I recalled reading about
dynamic overclocking feature of 3.8/3.9 drivers and reinstalled 3.7.
No wonder the lockups are gone now. ATI really screwed this up. They
overclock their cards which can result in fried GPUs for people who
have tested their alternative cooling setups with prior driver
releases. If anybody from ATI is reading this, could you please
disable this hidden overclocking feature or at least make it an
install-time or run-time option? Thank you.
Click to expand...

Cat 3.9s do not overclock the 9800Pro.

Ben
 
D

Dirty Harry

I highly doubt that they overclock your radeon 9800 pro, I think thats for
the laptop cards or something. I use rage 3d overclocker and my speeds are
always where they should be when I check them.
 
A

Athura

As I believe its only the 9800xt and 9600xt that has the overclock
(overdrive I think ATI call it) feature in new drivers
 
S

Strontium

Yeah, it's called the ****ing driver release notes, dumbass.

-
gzx stood up at show-n-tell, in
(e-mail address removed), and said:
 
M

Mike P

LOL, troll written all over you. Do you have anything to back the claim
that the light goes out when you close the fridge door? HUH? DO YOU?
 
D

DP

Mike P said:
LOL, troll written all over you. Do you have anything to back the claim
that the light goes out when you close the fridge door? HUH? DO YOU?
Click to expand...

Yeah, I put my little brother in there one time to make sure the light goes
out when it is closed.
 
D

Daniel Tonks

gzx said:
I have a passively cooled R9800pro using Zalman ZM80A cooler. After
upgrading to 3.9 driver from 3.7 and doing one hour of work in desktop
(no game playing) the machine hard locked. It stayed locked for about
3 minutes and refused to boot even after power down/up. Then it
finally booted only to work for another 20 minutes before another hard
lock. It was clear to me something was overheating and needed to cool
down before the machine booted normally. I recalled reading about
dynamic overclocking feature of 3.8/3.9 drivers and reinstalled 3.7.
No wonder the lockups are gone now. ATI really screwed this up. They
overclock their cards which can result in fried GPUs for people who
have tested their alternative cooling setups with prior driver
releases. If anybody from ATI is reading this, could you please
disable this hidden overclocking feature or at least make it an
install-time or run-time option? Thank you.
Click to expand...


You'll also notice that Zalman strongly recommends using their optional fan
on the newer HP80C cooler when used with the 9800 series of cards.
Personally I found the HP80A too hot on my 9700 - never mind the 9800 - and
added a silent fan to move some air over it. Helped cool it quite a bit.

- Daniel
 
P

PB

Dirty Harry said:
That score is right on the money for the cpu...
Click to expand...

When are people going to learn, there are NO CPUs on video cards.

Despite the programmability of modern GPUs, they are still GPUs.

</anal_rant_mode off>

DD
 
G

gzx

Roj said:
Do you?

Thought not...

Next!
Click to expand...

OK, I see you have nothing to back your claims. So why have you
bothered to reply? You added NOTHING to this thread. Compared to you I
have a first hand experience.
 
P

PB

Strontium said:
Yeah, it's called the ****ing driver release notes, dumbass.
Click to expand...

What is it with people who think that swearing somehow adds authenticity to
their claims?

3 words:

TAKE A VALIUM

DD
 
G

gzx

Dirty Harry said:
That score is right on the money for the cpu...
Click to expand...

Finally. I was hoping for someone to throw "it's your CPU" at me LOL.
So once again, in case I was not clear enough:

- Machine never refused to boot for 2 years (same mobo, CPU, mem)
- Cat 3.7 -> 3.9
- Machine locked after 1 hour of desktop work
- It seemed dead for several minutes
CRT was in standby mode after power up
- After eventual successful boot the machine locked 20 mins later
- Cat 3.9 -> 3.7
- No locks for several days now

The lockups were not mere software hangups. They could not be resolved
by reset or by cutting the power. Is it just a coincidence that I have
this kind of problems after installing drivers which introduced
overclocking to XT Radeons? I *really* don't think so.
 
G

gzx

Athura said:
As I believe its only the 9800xt and 9600xt that has the overclock
(overdrive I think ATI call it) feature in new drivers
Click to expand...

And I believe ATI was maybe tempted to use this new 'technology' with
older Radeons too. Another quite real possibility is a buggy driver
which activates the overclocking on 9800pro thinking it's 9x00xt.
 
J

J.Clarke

On 13 Nov 2003 00:42:53 -0800
And I believe ATI was maybe tempted to use this new 'technology' with
older Radeons too. Another quite real possibility is a buggy driver
which activates the overclocking on 9800pro thinking it's 9x00xt.
Click to expand...

When you quit "believing" and know for sure then get back to us. This
is not religion where you have to take stuff on faith, this is
technology where you work with hard evidence.
 
J

J.Clarke

On 13 Nov 2003 07:57:28 -0800
Yes, I am aware of that. But the whole point of using Zalman was to
achieve a completely silent cooling.
Click to expand...

If you have "completely silent cooling" then the Zalman will overheat
every time. It needs some forced air. If you have "completely
silent cooling" that would imply that you are trying to run your
machine fanless.
Also note that Sapphire sells the
Ultimate edition of 9800pro which uses Zalman cooler without any
additional fan. I have been running my 9800pro with Zalman for about
six months without any problems until I installed Cat 3.9.
Click to expand...

Perhaps the new drivers work the GPU a little harder? Regardless of
what Sapphire does you need a certain minimum level of airflow past the
heat sink to maintain adequate cooling. Sounds like your machine is
marginal.
 
B

Ben Pope

gzx said:
The lockups were not mere software hangups. They could not be resolved
by reset or by cutting the power. Is it just a coincidence that I have
this kind of problems after installing drivers which introduced
overclocking to XT Radeons? I *really* don't think so.
Click to expand...

BINGO!

"which introduced overclocking to XT Radeons"

You have a 9800 Pro.

Ben
 
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