Shouldn't a 3870 slow down when idle?

[OrphanBoy]

I recently got a Powercolor 3870, and despite being still annoyed by the fan, I've also noticed that the thing never reduces its clocks when idle. Shouldn't this new powerplay lark do this?
The card always sits at 796 MHz on the core, 1170 MHz on the RAM regardless of what's going on. Both the CCC and RivaTuner can cofrim this. I've not overclocked the card, so I don't think it's that I've 'forced' the clocks to these speeds.

Any ideas?

 

[ACESHIGH]

I recently got a Powercolor 3870, and despite being still annoyed by the fan, I've also noticed that the thing never reduces its clocks when idle. Shouldn't this new powerplay lark do this?
The card always sits at 796 MHz on the core, 1170 MHz on the RAM regardless of what's going on. Both the CCC and RivaTuner can cofrim this. I've not overclocked the card, so I don't think it's that I've 'forced' the clocks to these speeds.

Any ideas?

This is normal for the Powercolor 3870 Extreme if thats what you have. Do a forum search and check out related threads.

 

[OrphanBoy]

Cool, thanks.
(I had assumed that searching for '3870 too fast' would yield too many results!)

 

[OrphanBoy]

Hi again, sorry but I can't really find anything about WHY there is no 2D clocks step-down on this card. Yeah other people have this too, but there doesn't seem to be anything more than that!

 

[silversurfer]

The fan isnt speed controlled maybe which means you should hook it up to a fan controller or plug it into your motherboard fan sockets and control it through speedfan maybe

 

[kylew]

Hi again, sorry but I can't really find anything about WHY there is no 2D clocks step-down on this card. Yeah other people have this too, but there doesn't seem to be anything more than that!

I'll take a guess that it's to do with the BIOS that powercolour has put on their pre-overclocked cards. I assume that if you were to flash it with a stock bios, powerplay would come into action.

 

[tumtums]

Yea. I've got the same problem.

Lesson learnt, never get a Powercolor(leaf blower) branded graphics card.

To solve the loudness of the fan I decided to get :

Thermalright HR-03 Rev A with a Zalman ZM-F2 92mm

 

[silversurfer]

If the fan is 2 pin it has no speed sensor wire so cant be controlled (automatically) afaik? If its 3 pin then the bios idea might work

 

[pfk]

My GeCube branded (factory overclocked) card does this too (i.e. has no powerplay feature). It's a shame really because that was one of the reasons why I purchased it.

 

[-iceblade^]

the OC edition 3870? that card?

i have it and the fan doesn't ramp up to 100, no matter what i do... antec fan in the front makes more than enough noise for me to hear.

 

[pfk]

the OC edition 3870? that card?

i have it and the fan doesn't ramp up to 100, no matter what i do... antec fan in the front makes more than enough noise for me to hear.

Yep, except mines the 3850 OC edition and the fan on it does ramp up to 100 (albeit occasionally).

 

[carrot1401]

I got the Gecube pre-overclocked 3870xt and then fan on mine never ramps up to 100%. It just does its normal stuff, occasionaly becoming a bit louder after some firefights in CoD 4, but nothing serious.

Mind, on 100% it does sound like it can power a small aeroplane.....

 

[OrphanBoy]

My GeCube branded (factory overclocked) card does this too (i.e. has no powerplay feature). It's a shame really because that was one of the reasons why I purchased it.

Cool, glad someone else gets this! I also bought the card hoping for the power saving when the thing's idle. However I'm not so sure that powerplay is disabled - I'm also getting that condition where the gpu usage (in the CCC and RivaTuner) constantly jumps back and forth between 50 and 100% in game play for no reason...yet the clocks aren't changing with this!

Starting to get more and more annoyed with this card...

 

[Jakus]

Clock speeds will make little power saving, It's the vcore that cut's power and Heat...which all 3800's run with there multi phase Power Play