Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Mac Pro 3.1 + 5870 overheating at 60C?

T

thegreatdivorce

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 23, 2010
205
7
Upper Left USA
Just installed my 5870. Easy as could be. Seems to be flawless in OS X Lion.

Booted into Windows 7 64-bit. Installed the drivers, everything looks great. Fire up Fallout: New Vegas, crank everything up to Ultra. Looks amazing! Great framerate, too.

For about 2 minutes, then I start getting an unbelievable about of stretching polygon artifacts, random snowy pixels, etc. etc. Quit the game and open Catalyst, which informs me that the GPU is at 61 degrees celsius, and the fans at about 27%. No where near too high for the card.

My question is, where is the issue? Faulty card? Do I need to manually set the fans on the card higher (Which would be idiotic... why include the auto fan settings if they're incapable of working)? Is it a driver issue? I realize F:NV isn't the best coded game out there, but I did not expect this.

Any help would be MUCH appreciated.

edit: someone on another PC forum mentioned swapping the power cords going from the logic board to the card. I have the top cord going to the port on the card closest the the front of the case, and the bottom cord going to the port towards the rear of the case ... does that even matter?

ScreenShot227lr.jpg
 
Test another game. I do not have any issues with heat on my 5870 in Win7 64-bit. Catalyst 11.8 WHQL.
As you alluded to 60ºC is actually really cool. The great thing about this card is at Max in something like the new high-res DX11 Crysis 2. My card gets to 70ºC or so and fans at 1600RPM. Super quiet. And still fairly cool. These cards should be able to hit over 80ºC with little fanfare.
You could have a bad card, bad thermal past, etc. See if another game freaks it out.
 
derbothaus said:
Test another game. I do not have any issues with heat on my 5870 in Win7 64-bit. Catalyst 11.8 WHQL.
As you alluded to 60ºC is actually really cool. The great thing about this card is at Max in something like the new high-res DX11 Crysis 2. My card gets to 70ºC or so and fans at 1600RPM. Super quiet. And still fairly cool. These cards should be able to hit over 80ºC with little fanfare.
You could have a bad card, bad thermal past, etc. See if another game freaks it out.
Click to expand...

Do you increase the Mac Pro's fan speeds also, or manually set the 5870's fans higher? What percentage do you reckon 1600rpm is?

Thanks for the response. I'll try another game (which will probably mean buying one, haha, I have no others) and see if the behavior continues.
 
if you have a steam account the first levels of portal are free. it's called portal first slice i think. you can test your card with that. 1600 rpms seem low.
 
No manual throttle. All fans are still set to automatic. 1600 may have been stretching it, that is average for most dx9/ dx10 games. dx11 is another story. But I can say I have never seen it go over 1800RPM. I watch it with ATI tray tools OSD. GPU use, heat, fan speed on screen like fraps at all times.
I thought Portal 1 was totally free now, full game.
 
Take it back. Looks bad to me. And if a new one does this as well, then we look into something else.
 
Shouldn't be the problem

The 5xxx series can hit up to 90c before you should worry about temperature.
around 60c in load sounds good. If there is problem at 60c it probably a defect.
 
phyx said:
The 5xxx series can hit up to 90c before you should worry about temperature.
around 60c in load sounds good. If there is problem at 60c it probably a defect.
Click to expand...

Got a new card today and installed it. Downloading Starcraft II just to test something on the OS X side, before I reboot into W7 to try games there. Fingers crossed that a new card is the solution. Will update.

Also, I watched temps yesterday, and let the games run with the artifacts going nuts, and temperatures still hovered at 65C plus/minus 3 degrees. Completely within normal range.
 
Update!!

quick update: Got a replacement card from Apple, and so far it's functioning flawlessly. This one is exactly what I'm expecting. Not sure what the issue was with the other card, but it was definitely faulty.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back