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I been seeing that the ati card are overheating when i'm installing windows. Has any body else having the same problem. Till the video drivers are installed.

IS the Onboard fan disabled until the OS is fully installed and drivers? As until then it should just be doing 2D work.

Which ATI card specifically dm? How do you know it's overheating and what are you using to monitor the temperatures? The cooling fan is set to ramp-up by temp in the video cards BIOS and should not be overheating while in 2D as Greybear suggested. I assume this is a new problem and the card has been working fine up until now? I assume you already made sure the fan is actually working.

I understand what Greyrbear is saying. When you put your hand on the back of the card and almost burn you fingers it is hot. It doesn't matter which card I use 4870, 4850, 3870, 3850, & 2600. The first time I notice the problem was when I got two new 4850 cards. Put the cards into my new computer with drivers already installed and both cards were overheating. Put my two 3870 cards back in and everything was fine. Took the 4850's and put them into another computer same thing happen. I sent them back because I thought there was a problem and they could have been fine.

At that point I started checking my cards when I ever I did anything like install a new OS. I was building a computer for somebody and just used the a 3850 to set everything up and the card was over heating. Got the drivers loaded and the card was fine. When the guy took out the two 2600 cards out of his old computer and put them into the new computer they overheated. The cards would shut the computer down. He took the cards out and put them back into the other computer and they were fine.

Plus I have build two computers this week and same thing on both computers both Abit boards IP35V & AW9D-Max. How I have readed some place Ati knows there is a problem about this and I can't find it again. I'm getting the AW9D back today and I'm going to do some playing around with it. Right now what I do to get around this problem is I have a old cpu fan that runs at 10000 rpm's. Put 4 little plastic feet on it and set it on the back of the video card to keep it cool.

dmdilks wrote:I understand what Greyrbear is saying. When you put your hand on the back of the card and almost burn you fingers it is hot. It doesn't matter which card I use 4870, 4850, 3870, 3850, & 2600. The first time I notice the problem was when I got two new 4850 cards. Put the cards into my new computer with drivers already installed and both cards were overheating. Put my two 3870 cards back in and everything was fine. Took the 4850's and put them into another computer same thing happen. I sent them back because I thought there was a problem and they could have been fine.

At that point I started checking my cards when I ever I did anything like install a new OS. I was building a computer for somebody and just used the a 3850 to set everything up and the card was over heating. Got the drivers loaded and the card was fine. When the guy took out the two 2600 cards out of his old computer and put them into the new computer they overheated. The cards would shut the computer down. He took the cards out and put them back into the other computer and they were fine.

Plus I have build two computers this week and same thing on both computers both Abit boards IP35V & AW9D-Max. How I have readed some place Ati knows there is a problem about this and I can't find it again. I'm getting the AW9D back today and I'm going to do some playing around with it. Right now what I do to get around this problem is I have a old cpu fan that runs at 10000 rpm's. Put 4 little plastic feet on it and set it on the back of the video card to keep it cool.

As far as the HD 4800 series goes, I had two of them and have spent a great deal of time discussing the 4800 series. Both the HD 4870 and HD 4850 idle at a very high temperature because most of the cards have their fan speed set at only 14%-23% to minimize the fan noise in 2D and the cards run hot at idle. I don't know about the 3800 series, but with the 4800 series this is not considered a problem, it was done intentionally by ATI. The only way around it is to use Rivatuner or the CCC to adjust the fan speed manually. I had my cards set for 38% 24/7 and that proved to be sufficient.

As far as putting two cards in an overheating goes this could also be a sign that the power supply is inadequate in the computer that was being used. By inadequate I'm not referring to the wattage of the PSU but the amperage of the +12V rail and the quality.

What I would suggest is improving the Airflow thru the case. Also checking the PSU as suggested, easily checked by installing just a SINGLE card, as SLi is not necessary to Install the OS, which is like using all 4 barrels when just doing 10 miles an hour.

The fan on the cards pulls air but only cools one side. The case airflow is supposed to the cool the other side. If thes side panel is open or not enough flow can cause a problem as it sounds like the fan on the card appears not to accelerate natively due to increased heat but with driver control, which is stupid.

Greybear wrote:What I would suggest is improving the Airflow thru the case. Also checking the PSU as suggested, easily checked by installing just a SINGLE card, as SLi is not necessary to Install the OS, which is like using all 4 barrels when just doing 10 miles an hour.

The fan on the cards pulls air but only cools one side. The case airflow is supposed to the cool the other side. If thes side panel is open or not enough flow can cause a problem as it sounds like the fan on the card appears not to accelerate natively due to increased heat but with driver control, which is stupid.

With cards such as in the 4800 series, they do increase fan RPM speed natively and are set to do so in the video cards BIOS as sited in my post above. Specifically, two of the cards he mentions in the HD 4800 series ramp-up the fan RPM, but do not start to do so until the cards gets etremely warm. What the ATI Catalyst Control Center allows you do to is tweak the fan speed ramp-up which is already set in the BIOS should you find the pre-set fan-speed inadequate. This generally does not create a problem, but in the case of poor air circulation, it may be an issue. So exploring air-flow as you said is a good suggestion as well.

Quite a few card makers are now using second party cooling solutions now which get around this "issue" by not connecting to the temp thermal diode on the card and the fans run at 100% all the time, rather than using what has been set in the BIOS of the card. Generally this "issue" is only with the cards using the standard reference design cooler such as with the Diamond and HIS HD 4870's I previously owned. Also the HD 4850 reference design has a tendancy to run even warmer because it uses a single slot cooler as opposed to the HD 4870 with it's dual-slot cooler which exhausts it's hot air from the rear of the case.

Case airflow has an awful lot to do with these single slot cards getting hot. With my GXT260 and the 9800GTX, which are dual slot cards with the cooling exhausting out of the case, I notice it most with the CPU and System temps being a lot lower than the 3 9800GT cards. I actually had to add 2 case fans to each of the 3 rigs with the 9800GT's in them because with Folding running on both the video card and all 4 cores of the CPU's, I was getting a CPU temp alarm (which goes off at 80c ). With 2 fans in front pulling cool air in and 2 fans in the rear drawing hot air out, I lowered case temps by 15c.

I guess it's not only Nvidia cards that have the default fan speeds set way too low, which is why the EVGA Precision tool is a must to set fan speeds higher. I have all my cards set at 90%, and yes it is a little noisy in my room (I also don't have to use the space heater much in the winter)

But even with the fan speeds ramped up, if I touch the back of any of my cards, it's very hot to the touch. Not burning hot, but too hot to hold your finger for long. Chris.

WOW. The BIOS really needs to be tweaked from the factory to compensate for this....

The worst thing is that these cards should not be getting this hot in 2D mode. Ive blown 3D chips that still allowed for 2D operation.

Thanks for the replys, but with PSU's I have always said they are over rated. I run two 4850's in cross fire with a 500w PSU and at Idle they running at 35c. when playing games they might reach 50c or 55c. I have no problems with the cards after the drivers are installed. It is before that when it is happenning. You can go into ati drivers file and set them to manual and set the speed to what ever you want. Why would ati do something like that when is better run the fan faster at 2D to keep it cool.