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7950 Mac Edition Fan Speed

M

Moogintroll

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 15, 2004
35
0
Dublin, Ireland
What's up with the fan speed on the 7950 Mac Edition? Got mine yesterday, lovely and quiet on windows, loud as hell on OS X. Restart, now it throttles down the fan when it gets to the login screen on OSX, Lovely.

Today I start up and it's all spun up again. It's really quite irritating.

Any suggestions?
 
Moogintroll said:
What's up with the fan speed on the 7950 Mac Edition? Got mine yesterday, lovely and quiet on windows, loud as hell on OS X. Restart, now it throttles down the fan when it gets to the login screen on OSX, Lovely.

Today I start up and it's all spun up again. It's really quite irritating.

Any suggestions?
Click to expand...

try a PRAM and SMC reset
 
Is it the fan on the card itself or the expansion bay fan?

I can confirm that the fans on my Sapphire 7950 Flex OC with Boost (11196-17-40G) are behaving as expected in both 10.8.3 and Win7-64.
 
DanielCoffey said:
Is it the fan on the card itself or the expansion bay fan?

I can confirm that the fans on my Sapphire 7950 Flex OC with Boost (11196-17-40G) are behaving as expected in both 10.8.3 and Win7-64.
Click to expand...

This is a good question and once it starts doing it again, I'll let you know. Thing is, once I booted into windows, everything went back to normal and this held when booting back into OSX too but it had been throttling up and down for no good reason.... It's very odd.
 
DanielCoffey said:
Is it the fan on the card itself or the expansion bay fan?
Click to expand...

Interesting, she's doing it again today and indeed it's actually the expansion bay fan. It's currently running at about 1600rpm as opposed to the usual 800.

It could be a dodgy thermistor somewhere or perhaps the card is reporting that it's hotter than it should be. It really seems like some kind of firmware or driver issue since the problem goes away as long as I've booted into windows at least once.
 
Moogintroll said:
Interesting, she's doing it again today and indeed it's actually the expansion bay fan. It's currently running at about 1600rpm as opposed to the usual 800.

It could be a dodgy thermistor somewhere or perhaps the card is reporting that it's hotter than it should be. It really seems like some kind of firmware or driver issue since the problem goes away as long as I've booted into windows at least once.
Click to expand...

let me guess, 2009 Mac Pro 4,1?
If you google PCI-E expansion fan you'll see owners of 2009 4,1 machines with this problem, even with the official Apple 5770\5870. It doesn't happen to all machines but a few.

I also have this issue with a AMD 6870, and AMD 7950, however the Original Apple AMD 4870 doesn't do this. In windows the fan issue isn't there, only when booting OSX. I'm hoping 10.8.4 with new graphic drivers fixes this, or some type of SMC update. It's not a hardware issue since the original 4870 works perfect, so just a SMC\software bug.

To lower the fan speeds just run something graphic intensive (OpenGL Extension Viewer -> Test) usually running that for 20 seconds causes the fan's to eventually spin down to normal (800rpm)
 
Have this with the 6870.

Settles down fairly quickly and doesn't return until a cold start.

No solution is going to be forthcoming as even the official 5870 has reports of this happening.
 
I have never seen this issue with my official 5870 in over two years of use. I fortunately have not seen it with my new EFI-flashed 7950 either.
 
seems to only affect 2009 4,1 machines, I wonder if we could get the 5,1 SMC firmware if it would fix the problem.
I know people who have 4,1 Machines that flashed to 5,1 and the problem is still there, but flashing from 4,1 to 5,1 doesn't update the SMC.
So it seems to me like the issue is in the SMC firmware on 4,1 2009 Machines.
 
GP-SE said:
seems to only affect 2009 4,1 machines, I wonder if we could get the 5,1 SMC firmware if it would fix the problem.
I know people who have 4,1 Machines that flashed to 5,1 and the problem is still there, but flashing from 4,1 to 5,1 doesn't update the SMC.
So it seems to me like the issue is in the SMC firmware on 4,1 2009 Machines.
Click to expand...

Nope. I have it as well. Mac Pro 5,1 (2010 not flashed) 6-core 3.33GHz. EVGA GTX 680 for Mac. OpenGL throttle fixes it after a 1300-1600RPM wheeze-fest. Not every boot. But the cold ones. A reboot from Windows seems to keep OS X quite. Never had this problem for 2.5 years with my original ATI 5870. Might put it back to see if the problem subsides. Bet it does. Also have an amazingly fun random single user boot as well. Like the OS dumps the kext at first. This coupled with the 10.8.3 upgrade I was forced into and I am pretty unhappy aside from Windows gaming where everything is perfect. 10.6.8 was absolutely problem free by comparison. Only good news is others with all makes of cards having this issue keeps me from possible RMA.
 
I've had 5870 for 3 years now and it makes a lot of fan noise. I'm sure I just need to clean the fan up somehow physically but I don't want to risk opening it manually.

Any way possible for me to reduce the fan noise for 5870?
 
LEOMODE said:
I've had 5870 for 3 years now and it makes a lot of fan noise. I'm sure I just need to clean the fan up somehow physically but I don't want to risk opening it manually.

Any way possible for me to reduce the fan noise for 5870?
Click to expand...

Remove the card and use compressed air.
 
derbothaus said:
Nope. I have it as well. Mac Pro 5,1 (2010 not flashed) 6-core 3.33GHz. EVGA GTX 680 for Mac. ............
Click to expand...

Got a GTX680 Mac edition this week and can confirm the same issue (same Mac Pro 5,1 here...)
It's always from cold boot getting a fast PCI-E fan.

Need to write a startup script with a GPU intensive routine .
Any idea someone ?
 
Unfortunately it helps to hear similar experiences.
I use OpenGL Extensions Viewer 4.0 > Tests > Iron Fist Boxing Kings.:D
Not sure if scriptable or not. Quick google didn't turn anything up. I am super busy right now to look too far.
Maybe 'osascript' it if applescript-able and set as loginHook? OpenGL command line stress would be a nice hands-off approach.
 
Ah these fan problems. I am still holding on to my 2008 Mac Pro, but I'm a bit disappointed how apple handles GPU possibilities and not very good to hear that recent cards still can have this issue. Coupled with the fact that we still don't have OpenGL 4 in the world's most advanced operating system, I might only buy mobile products from apple, where expansion is a non issue.
 
Matrixfan said:
Ah these fan problems. I am still holding on to my 2008 Mac Pro, but I'm a bit disappointed how apple handles GPU possibilities and not very good to hear that recent cards still can have this issue. Coupled with the fact that we still don't have OpenGL 4 in the world's most advanced operating system, I might only buy mobile products from apple, where expansion is a non issue.
Click to expand...

I am leaning towards blaming the 3rd party solutions as they probably should not have come to market without either cracking this or providing an explanation.
 
texem said:
Got a GTX680 Mac edition this week and can confirm the same issue (same Mac Pro 5,1 here...)
It's always from cold boot getting a fast PCI-E fan.

Need to write a startup script with a GPU intensive routine .
Any idea someone ?
Click to expand...

did you write to evga support to have a solution for this issue?
 
My similar experience : Mac pro 4,1, upgraded 5,1 under 10.8.3, with w3690 + evga gtx 670 2Gb. Evrything run smoothly untill 2 days ago, without any notice (as far as i know, no system upgrade. PCI-e fan always at 800 rpm, and now around 1500-1600 rpm. Pushing with a gpu intensive application at 2000 rpm has the effect to unlock this high fan speed, otherwise it is stuck to 1500 rpm and never lower !
I did pram reste --> no effect. I did smc reset, twice, no effect ! I have my system backup on a external drive. I noticed that at the first boot on this backup disk on FW, the fan speeds are all OK around 800 rpm (booster and PCI the others at 600 rpm). But the next boot the PCI fan speed goes back to 1500 rpm.
Very strange ! I do not see a cause to this. For me it is not a Hardware change and I do not think it is a hardware failure wether the graphic card nor the computer or internal components I have in (6 SSD + 4 HD + 2 velocity solo x2, + 1 esata card).
So i suspect is is software, but i do not have the courage to test another osx version startup disk ...
 
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