X800 XT Going Back to ATI...

[iGary]

So yesterday morning I boot up the machine and it sound like a vacuum cleaner with a rubber band jammed around the drum. I open it up and it's the video card...bah...RMA and back to ATI.

Anyway, I replaced it with my old ATI 9650, and cannot believe how much quieter this thing is. The power source fan is not continually working on high, I can't hear the card fan...

Is this just a bad card or do other X800 users find theirs loud?

 

[Sdashiki]

the 9650 isnt really a powerful card compared to the x800, but I dont have one so I cant say how the X800 sounds.

but the 9650 at work compared to my 9800 pro at home is night and day, eventhough the 9650 is 256MB and my 9800 is 128MB, its still louder with less RAM, cuz it works harder i guess.

ATI cards are always loud, since they started needing fans on the GPUs

 

[w0ngbr4d]

I have a X850 XT, and the fan on it used to run at full blast for no reason. I could be doing something as simple as surfing the web and all of a sudden "buzzzzzzz".

I posted on here and asked if it was normal and everyone said just to let it do its thing.

Either I am used to it now, or it doesn't run full blast anymore. Maybe it was something in the video drivers that caused it that is now resolved.

Other than that, the 850 is a pretty quiet card, in my opinion.

-w0ngbr4d

 

[iGary]

I have a X850 XT, and the fan on it used to run at full blast for no reason. I could be doing something as simple as surfing the web and all of a sudden "buzzzzzzz".

I posted on here and asked if it was normal and everyone said just to let it do its thing.

Either I am used to it now, or it doesn't run full blast anymore. Maybe it was something in the video drivers that caused it that is now resolved.

Other than that, the 850 is a pretty quiet card, in my opinion.

-w0ngbr4d

Yeah, if you don't have the right drivers it will run all day long, which is totally intolerable.

I just notice my power supply is not working hard and there is no fan noise (obviously) from the vid card. I have no intention of sticking with the 9650 (Aperture is almost unbearable without it), but glad I kept it as a spare.

 

[Sdashiki]

how did I double post wtf?

 

[Sdashiki]

the 9650 is a joke, I dont get it.

more VRAM, but crappier benchmarks.

ATI decided, nah we had so many pipelines before, we need less.

I just think a NEWER piece of hardware should surpass its predecessor. And yeah the 9650 vs the 9600 is a difference, but the 9800 and 9800SE and X800 had been out for a while, and ATI comes with the 9650, a huge step back during a time of progression? Gimme a break.

 

[iGary]

the 9650 is a joke, I dont get it.

more VRAM, but crappier benchmarks.

ATI decided, nah we had so many pipelines before, we need less.

I just think a NEWER piece of hardware should surpass its predecessor. And yeah the 9650 vs the 9600 is a difference, but the 9800 and 9800SE and X800 had been out for a while, and ATI comes with the 9650, a huge step back during a time of progression? Gimme a break.

Yeah, it is a night and day difference with the 9650 in - slower redraws, Quartz Effects, etc. - what you would expect, really.

 

[Lord Blackadder]

I can't hear my flashed GeForce 6800GT's fan over the din of My G4's power supply fan. Did you ever own a G4 tower, iGary? I can't imagine you getting along with it - they are so much louder than the G5 in most cases.

The X800XT is not a silent card but in my experience it isn't as loud as the 9800 Pro... I'll be the X850XT is louder.

 

[iGary]

I can't hear my flashed GeForce 6800GT's fan over the din of My G4's power supply fan. Did you ever own a G4 tower, iGary? I can't imagine you getting along with it - they are so much louder than the G5 in most cases.

The X800XT is not a silent card but in my experience it isn't as loud as the 9800 Pro... I'll be the X850XT is louder.

Yeah, I had a dual-proc 1.25 MDD and it was a nice change to the G5, although if the G5 does ramp up, it is way louder than the G4.

 

[Dreadnought]

Putting an aftermarket high performance GPU card in a G5 can get you a louder fan of the GPU. The GPU air intake is getting hot air from your G5. The intake faces the front of the G5. The airflow from the G5 goes from the front to the back, so the air going in the GPU is already warmed up from the G5. Just my 2 cents.

 

[Sdashiki]

Putting an aftermarket high performance GPU card in a G5 can get you a louder fan of the GPU. The GPU air intake is getting hot air from your G5. The intake faces the front of the G5. The airflow from the G5 goes from the front to the back, so the air going in the GPU is already warmed up from the G5. Just my 2 cents.

um actually no.

thats why there is that so called "air deflector" plastic piece AND the aluminum divider between the PCI and CPU "thermal zones"

so NO the air that pulls from front, thru the PCI bay and out the back, is not getting its air from the CPU compartment.

apple spent lots on R&D with the G5 just to keep it cool.

 

[MRU]

Have you ran all the updates, bios fixes etc from ATI's website? My X800XT only whizzes on startup and is then fairly quiet, even under gaming stress.. No louder than my 9600 it replaced.

So yesterday morning I boot up the machine and it sound like a vacuum cleaner with a rubber band jammed around the drum. I open it up and it's the video card...bah...RMA and back to ATI.

Anyway, I replaced it with my old ATI 9650, and cannot believe how much quieter this thing is. The power source fan is not continually working on high, I can't hear the card fan...

Is this just a bad card or do other X800 users find theirs loud?

 

[iGary]

Have you ran all the updates, bios fixes etc from ATI's website? My X800XT only whizzes on startup and is then fairly quiet, even under gaming stress.. No louder than my 9600 it replaced.

Yeah, I did - it actually started a couple of days ago. When waking from sleep, and when starting from a dead stop, it would make a horrendous noise during startup (yes, it normally whirred for about 20 seconds at start up).

It also made weird noises working normally. Got an RMA and sent it back to Radeon today. Hopefully a new one, not a repair.

I've had a crappy technology year.

 

[Dreadnought]

um actually no.

thats why there is that so called "air deflector" plastic piece AND the aluminum divider between the PCI and CPU "thermal zones"

so NO the air that pulls from front, thru the PCI bay and out the back, is not getting its air from the CPU compartment.

apple spent lots on R&D with the G5 just to keep it cool.

You are absolutely right! Just looked at my PM G5 and there is an airdeflector. I thought it was in the same compartment as the CD/DVD player/burner, but that's a compartment above. Hmmmm, this was holding me back to put an aftermarket GPU card in to replace my 9600 pro with only 64MB. Thanks for correcting me!

 

[Laslo Panaflex]

My first x800xt melted becuase the fan stopped working, and I sent it into ATI to get replaced. Like you, I kept the my original card (ATI 9600) to put back in while the other was out. The 9600 was silent, and was nice, but the performance in Motion sucked.

Yes, the card is loud, but for me it is a fair tradeoff for performance.

 

[Mord]

i'd replace the fan when you get it back, it'll run cooler and shouldn't fail and will be allot quieter, something like an ati silencer (a little modding required check xlr8urmac) or a zalman cooler, the mounting holes are the same as the pc card.

 

[NoNameBrand]

Have you ran all the updates, bios fixes etc from ATI's website? My X800XT only whizzes on startup and is then fairly quiet, even under gaming stress.. No louder than my 9600 it replaced.

I just wanted to add that this has been my experience with the X800 card too.

When I first put it in and booted up it was horrendously loud, but I installed something or other (from ATI or Apple) and rebooted and it's been quiet ever since (several months).

 

[Dreadnought]

My I ask what you guys paid for your X800 and where did you get it from?

 

[nihilisticmonk]

Which rom?

Hi guys,

Which rom are you people using?

there is an august 2005 "universal rom" for all ati cards including the x800 here

https://support.ati.com/ics/support/KBAnswer.asp?questionID=20026

and also a june 2005 rom specifically for the x800

https://support.ati.com/ics/support/KBAnswer.asp?questionID=19102

I'm guessing the August one is the way to go, with the latest ATI drivers, but just wondered what other people were using?

 

[Zenith]

I wanted to share my experience with my dual 2 Ghz G5 (late 2003) and X800 XT as well. I bought my X800 in February this year, and until then I had the OEM 9600 Pro with 64 MB. I really noticed the difference in sound output from the fans after installing the X800, and eventually I discovered that it all came from the PCI fan. I can only hear the X800 during startup when it's fan is spinning at full speed. There's a couple of times when I can hear it running at slow speed when I'm using 3D intensive apps, but apart from that it's totally silent.

The PCI fan is another story though. It's working much harder now when a more power hungry graphics card is installed. The speed of it goes up and down according to the workload of the graphics card, but after about half an hour it settles on a certain speed. Luckily, the speed of it generates a static and low hum which isn't noticeable.

What confuses me is that the PCI fan is able to maintain a slow speed after a while even if I'm using 3D intensive apps or games which normally would've made the fan go much faster. Why couldn't the fan be locked to this certain speed initially at startup?

 

[howesey]

ATi and NVIDIA have always bought out crap 3D cards with high model numberss. Apple are bad for it, look at the iMac's, X600XT in the old G5 iMac 20", X1600XT in the newer model. X600XT is only slightly faster than the R9600, X600 that's in the 17" is slower than the old R9600.

Janurary 2006 ATi drivers

ATi update drivers every month. Apart from the last two as they have had to design universal drivers which has slowed development down somewhat.

 

[Abulia]

i'd replace the fan when you get it back, it'll run cooler and shouldn't fail and will be allot quieter, something like an ati silencer (a little modding required check xlr8urmac) or a zalman cooler, the mounting holes are the same as the pc card.

Hector, what's your experience been with this mod? Is it worth doing? I've been tempted...

To the OP, my X800 does make some noise, but in the grand scheme of things it's very little. In some graphic-intensive apps (WoW for example) I can sometimes hear it spin up. I suppose it's relative to where you have your PM sitting.

The X800 makes noise but IMO within an allowable range.

 

[Mord]

i've never done it with a G5 card, but i've replaced many graphics card fans, for the G5 thier is very litter clearence behind the card thus with an ATI silencer thier is a big ass plastic clip on the back you need to remove, or you could get a zalman cooler which is easier to install, personally i'd go with the silencer seeing as it's cheaper and better, check out http://www.xlr8yourmac.com for more details.

 

[nihilisticmonk]

ATi and NVIDIA have always bought out crap 3D cards with high model numberss. Apple are bad for it, look at the iMac's, X600XT in the old G5 iMac 20", X1600XT in the newer model. X600XT is only slightly faster than the R9600, X600 that's in the 17" is slower than the old R9600.

Janurary 2006 ATi drivers

ATi update drivers every month. Apart from the last two as they have had to design universal drivers which has slowed development down somewhat.

Hmmm, Not sure if you're on a beta program or something, but the latest ATI drivers for my x800 are ancient, and your link states "UNAUTHORISED DOWNLOAD" at

http://www.ati.com/online/403/leech.asp

Why ATI has leech protection on drivers for products people have to have actually purchased to have use of is beyond me......<sigh>

 

[diddy]

Yeah, I did - it actually started a couple of days ago. When waking from sleep, and when starting from a dead stop, it would make a horrendous noise during startup (yes, it normally whirred for about 20 seconds at start up).

Mines been making the rubber-band in a vacuum cleaner sound too. Just started a couple weeks ago. It seems that whenever the machine wakes up from having cooled down, I hear WrrrRrrrRrrr. Fans shouldn't make that noise.
If they are replacing yours, I'll call them too.