Sapphire 6870 Dirt3 - are the fans meant to be this way?

[Lysander]

Morning all,

I bought a Sapphire 6870 Dirt 3 edition off ebay a few days ago. It works fine in games but the fans are rather noisy at times, it's a dual fan card. When turning the PC on they run loudly for about 30 mins and then are quiet for the rest of operation, even during gaming they're mostly quiet, though they will sometimes come on again at intervals. Also after a looong gaming session yesterday they ran for about 30 mins loud when the computer was idle afterwards. Temps are all really good though - 39-42C when idle and max 70C in games.

Is this normal behaviour? I was theorising that this is one of Sapphire's weird ways of doing things, e.g. getting the coolant to a specifically low temp so the card can run largely fanless in games? But the noise when idle AFTER gaming for about 30 mins was weird. If it is meant to be this way I'll live with it, alternatively, have the card fans just seen better days? I've had a good look inside and there's hardly any dust, though the card has clearly been used.

I only paid £13 for the card after all. If I got an aftermarket cooler it looks like it would cost more four times the card!

OS is Debian 10, if that helps.

 

[Jacky60]

The fans shout a lot at the beginning of the races then the engine noise tends to drown them out until the end of the race. Never heard their noise 30 mins after race ends but never left PC idling that long.

 

[Tetras]

You could try a different driver or a custom fan curve? I never had a 6 or 7 series, but with the older or more recent Sapphire cards I've owned they have always ramped down, or turned off pretty quickly (within 5-10 minutes or so) after gaming.

 

[LtMatt]

Morning all,

I bought a Sapphire 6870 Dirt 3 edition off ebay a few days ago. It works fine in games but the fans are rather noisy at times, it's a dual fan card. When turning the PC on they run loudly for about 30 mins and then are quiet for the rest of operation, even during gaming they're mostly quiet, though they will sometimes come on again at intervals. Also after a looong gaming session yesterday they ran for about 30 mins loud when the computer was idle afterwards. Temps are all really good though - 39-42C when idle and max 70C in games.

Is this normal behaviour? I was theorising that this is one of Sapphire's weird ways of doing things, e.g. getting the coolant to a specifically low temp so the card can run largely fanless in games? But the noise when idle AFTER gaming for about 30 mins was weird. If it is meant to be this way I'll live with it, alternatively, have the card fans just seen better days? I've had a good look inside and there's hardly any dust, though the card has clearly been used.

I only paid £13 for the card after all. If I got an aftermarket cooler it looks like it would cost more four times the card!

OS is Debian 10, if that helps.

Last official drivers for that GPU were released in 2013, and from memory that OS is not supported.

 

[Lysander]

The fans shout a lot at the beginning of the races then the engine noise tends to drown them out until the end of the race. Never heard their noise 30 mins after race ends but never left PC idling that long.

You could try a different driver or a custom fan curve? I never had a 6 or 7 series, but with the older or more recent Sapphire cards I've owned they have always ramped down, or turned off pretty quickly (within 5-10 minutes or so) after gaming.

Thanks guys, yesterday it was weird how after 20-30mins the fans just totally quietened down. I'll do an experiment tonight and see if it happens again. Uptime is 7 mins so far and still going, let's see if that changes. I'll think about a different driver too, even though I'm using the AMD proprietary ones.

I've taken the card apart and given it a good clean and reapplied the paste in case it was that, but it's still happening but who knows, it may be intentional.

Last official drivers for that GPU were released in 2013, and from memory that OS is not supported.

Indeed, but they normally bundle these things in with the Linux kernel. I'm getting great FPS in Skyrim, so it runs great, it's just the fans. But I take your point.

This was interesting from another forum:

I can’t stand noisy systems so I made my video card fan variable speed and for everyday web browsing and office stuff it performs fine at the lowest setting.

I occasionally forget to turn it up high when I start to play a game and usually it’ll play fine for a few minutes and then stutter and hangup if a lot starts happening on screen. I can usually crank the fan up then and it’ll recover in a minute - but once in a while it’ll lock up the system and force a reboot.

I could manually adjust the fan speed for web browsing/games, and monitor temps in the initial stages.

 

[Grandmaster Fap!]

Have you taken the cooler off for a good clean a new thermal paste? might make the world of difference.

 

[greatash]

I had a 6950 sapphire dirt edition and it was one of the quietest cards I've owned. Since you already reapplied the paste ( I thought that would be the issue with a fairly old card ) maybe try a manual fan curve, it might have low fan speed until it hits a certain temp like 70c then blasts the fans

 

[Lysander]

I had a 6950 sapphire dirt edition and it was one of the quietest cards I've owned. Since you already reapplied the paste ( I thought that would be the issue with a fairly old card ) maybe try a manual fan curve, it might have low fan speed until it hits a certain temp like 70c then blasts the fans

You're right, I'm going to have to work out how to write a custom fan script to do this. I've found a GUI application that may work but it's seven years old and might depend on outdated packages [the newer one only works for HD 7000+, agh, so close!]. Thanks for the suggestion.