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4850 One Week On

Associate
Joined
26 Jan 2007
Posts
901
Location
Newcastle
Had this in the a week now, upgrade from an 8600GT. Marked improvement as one would expect but damn, this thing is (was) way too hot for my liking. COD4 with absolutely everything maxed out played absolutely superb, but yielded a core temp of 103°C, yes y`all heard right :eek:

Now, I bought a passively cooled gpu as my 8600GT (also a Gigabyte) had the Silent Pipe 2 set up and it was always cool, MB temp stayed under 35°C at all times but I`m quite astonished at how crap this array is on this particular 4850. Maybe it needs reseating, but in the meantime (and kinda defeating the object of a passive array) I stuck (actually blu-tacked it on!!) an 80mm fan directly over the fins as central to the chip as I could. Hehe, temps down to 63°C under severe load so I`ll ditch the array and get a decent cooler ... any suggestions as to what as always welcome :)

Main thing though, same set-up ([email protected], 4Gb Geil PC2 6400 @940) upped my 3DMark 06 up from just under 6K to 12444K so that`s double in anyone's money :D

I am deffo gonna CF this at some stage but probably not until future games start to lag. Crysis at high settings (I tried v.high for daftness, quite playable until there`s loads going on then there`s a deff slowdown) with 8x AF 1680 x 1050 is good in anyone`s book I reckon :D

1st ATI card I ever owned, cool :)
 
Case cooling is fine, 2 x front intake (which blow in between my HDDs directly onto gpu), 2 x top exhaust, 1 x side intake directed at RAM, 2 fans on PSU, absolutely no clutter in there (took me 3 hours to reroute cabling etc) Zalman CNPS9700-LED CPU Cooler, plus all the passive cooling c/w ASUS P5E

I don`t have a big name case, just a generic very large case I bought on eBay but like i mentioned, passive 8600GT was sweet and indeed, did it`s thing :)
 
what do you expect hot card + passive cooling = big temperature.

I expect that the manufacturers quote that it brings the temperature of the core down by 7°C compared to a fan is good enough reason to buy it, especially that I had the same brand Nvidia card without problem.

Hey, I`m not whining here, I`m simply observing (maybe in the hope that someone else has an identical card and can agree/disagree) and reporting back :)
 
I had the gigabye 6600GT passive cooled card, that would sit about 55c idle and about 83c (I think) full load in an old cheiftec scorpio with 2x 80mm intakes and 2x 80mm exausts.

I want another passive card, although I dont like high idle temps. My darn 8800GT sits at 60c idle in my antec p182 with very tidy cables, and its not even passive!
 
Funny thing though fobose, idle temp hasn`t changed, only load. Idle is 39°C, I`ll live with that :)

Jeez, my passive 8600GT was always ca. 50°C @ idle, never over 65°C on load ...
 
Hey, thanx Les :)

"Installed this today on my new 4850.
Was running at 80C, now at 40C."

Canny review ;) Bonny rig, thanx again :)
 
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