DUD 5870?

[rancid_elf]

If you notice your card is idling at 400/1200 which is higher than a 5870 normally idles, I'm guessing you have multiple monitors enabled?

Same issue was reported here and here it's intended that it uses more power per connected display as far as I know.

This post has answered it for me thanks superb find.

With dual monitors my GPU Core Clock was never budging from 800 or the memory Clock from 1200. I removed one of my monitors and retstarted the machine and now I have idle speeds of Core Clock 157 and memory clock of 300.

Temps are falling will leave it idle for an hour and see what temps settle at.

 

[Broken Hope]

Dave posted the reason why the idle speeds increase with multiple monitors

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1340257&postcount=203

 

[rancid_elf]

OK let it for about 10 minutes now and its going down

So conclusion...if you use multi monitors you will have a lot higher temps

 

[Dazboots]

Yep m8 i would send it back for Rma.

 

[fornowagain]

You would?

 

[Doppleganger]

I think your card's fine mate - go off and enjoy it.

 

[JediFragger]

Agreed. Make sure it's ok temp-wise with a single monitor & if so enjoy

 

[Big.Wayne]

So conclusion...if you use multi monitors you will have a lot higher temps

That's interesting? so why does multi-monitor use break Power-Play ?

hopefully that's a driver bug!

 

[Broken Hope]

That's interesting? so why does multi-monitor use break Power-Play ?

hopefully that's a driver bug!

This has always been the case with PowerPlay. To change memory speeds you do it within a VBLANK of the panel, but to do that with two panels is difficult as the panels can be timed differently and hence you'll see flickering on at least one when the speed changes.

 

[r0cky]

Pleased I saw this thread. So with three monitors, I'm not going to get low power?

Definitely going to wait on Nvidia now before upgrading.

 

[Martini1991]

I get 28C idle at 40% fan.. there's obviously a problem with the GFX.

 

[Broken Hope]

Pleased I saw this thread. So with three monitors, I'm not going to get low power?

Definitely going to wait on Nvidia now before upgrading.

Pretty sure nvidia doesn't go into low power mode with multiple monitors either.

 

[LoadsaMoney]

I get 28C idle at 40% fan.. there's obviously a problem with the GFX.

There isn't, as its already been solved.

 

[drunkenmaster]

Pleased I saw this thread. So with three monitors, I'm not going to get low power?

Definitely going to wait on Nvidia now before upgrading.

it doesn't go into its LOWEST power mode, 400Mhz is low power.

The fact is its to stop people complaining about an almost non existant flicker, that will happen once, for a split second as the memory speed changes.

Its pretty simple, save 2 default profiles with different names, idle, full speed, go into the folder that has them and adjust the speeds at various powerplay numbers, voltage and mem speeds you want and save. Now all you do is right click the ATI logo in the system tray and one more click for a profile and you're done, enable full speed before you go into a game, enable lowest power mode when idle.

its the way to go anyway as various games which might not load the gpu significantly can switch speeds on you, very frequently windowed games won't go into full 3d speed, so simply saving a profile with all 3 powerplay modes at the same speed saves you a lot of hassel.

Nvidia have many/most of the same issues.

 

[r0cky]

The fact is its to stop people complaining about an almost non existant flicker, that will happen once, for a split second as the memory speed changes.

Yeah, I think an option somewhere to allow that would be nice, as I could tolerate the flicker, as long as I knew I had control over it!

Its pretty simple, save 2 default profiles with different names, idle, full speed, go into the folder that has them and adjust the speeds at various powerplay numbers, voltage and mem speeds you want and save. Now all you do is right click the ATI logo in the system tray and one more click for a profile and you're done, enable full speed before you go into a game, enable lowest power mode when idle.

its the way to go anyway as various games which might not load the gpu significantly can switch speeds on you, very frequently windowed games won't go into full 3d speed, so simply saving a profile with all 3 powerplay modes at the same speed saves you a lot of hassel.

Thanks. So I can set a profile for the lowest possible speed/voltage and force the thing to use as little power as I want?

I don't mind switching profiles before I launch a game; most of my use is non-gaming, so noise & power usage (cost + heat) are my main concerns.