Nickinakinu

Hi,
I'm not what you'd call a big poster here at DH or anywhere really, I tend to lurk here from time to time as I find the forums interesting and I like to keep my knowledge up to date.
I'm hoping maybe there's someone out there who might be able to help turn my experience of the 4850 from complete & total disappointment to the unbounded bliss I'd hoped for, or even just a mild sense of having not wasted more money than I can afford to would be nice...
I'd noticed things getting a little on the warm side in my HTPC.
( AOpen i945GTm-VHL, Intel C2D Mobile T7600, Thermalrite Ultra 90 sans fan, 2x1GB Kingston DDR2-667 SO-DIMMs, MSI 8800 GTS320 OC fitted with Zalman VF900-Cu & Thermaltake memory heatsinks , WD 500GB AAKS, WD 750GB RE3, Pioneer DVR116DBK, Hauppage HVR-1300, Seasonic S12 650W, Silverstone Temjin TJ-08 MATX case, 2x Noctua NF-P12s)
Things had been going swimmingly until about 9 months after it was first built and I noticed the 8800 was idling at 66C and the CPU was in the Mid-30s. As my living room is quite dusty and both me and my beloved are both smokers, I put the rise in temps down to a build up of dust and other fag-related clag and so took everything to bits and gave it all a good clean. Temperatures did indeeed fall again though I noticed that I was having to turn up the fan speed on the VF900 to keep the temps down and things were beginning to get a little too noisy for my liking, i.e. I could hear the fans at a distance of 1.5 metres from the machine. Adding this to the fact that I'd noticed the TV frame rate dropping to 'jerky' when burning CDs /DVDs, at the same time as watching TV, I thought maybe I should upgrade the GPU. After checking all my options carefully, I figured the Gigabyte GV-R485MC-1GH was the way to go, as it is fanless and had what I thought would be a very capable 1GB of memory; it also seemed to get good reviews.
So, just yesterday I removed the 8800 and fitted the 4850, and installed the drivers. I was pleased to see the temperatures inside the case drop immediately - the GPU was now at 40c, a drop of 26c and the CPU was also 10c cooler, no doubt due to there being less heat floating around inside the case. BUT the first thing I noticed that I didn't like was that the picture quality I was getting on TV was noticeably poorer than what I had been used to, in fact it is now cr*p, ( grainy and unsharp with blurry motion) to the point where I don't want to watch it. BTW, I don't have the HTPC connected to a TV, what I have is my Sky+ box connected to the Hauppage TV card via the S-Video output and the audio comes into the 3.5mm Audio in jack socket on the Hauppage card from a little gizmo that goes in one of the Sky box's SCART sockets. My 'TV' is a 22" La Cie Blue IV CRT monitor - I am used to getting an excellent picture quality on this arrangement, both for watching live TV and recordings, either from DVD or my own recordings from the Sky box. The other thing I notived yesterday is that my wireless network connection now fails to connect when the machine boots up, something that it never did before, It has NEVER failed to get a connection and I have gone to some fair trouble and expense to make sure I that always get my full 54Mbps helping of wireless goodness. up until tonight I was having to right click on my wireless icon and click'repair' to get a connection. This evening I have updated the driver to Ver 9.1 and things have now gone from bad to worse. Although I do now get a wireless internet connection when it boots up, My TV picture is still poor at best and now when I click on desktop Icons, the applications refuse to open until I've clicked 3 or 4 times. Aspacesimulation program called 'Celestia' will now not run at all, whereas it did yesterday. I would also say that the machine takes noticeably longer to boots up a than it used to and the screen takes longer to update as well. In fact all in all this card has done for the princely sum of £150, is to have provided me with an unnacceptably large step backwards in terms of quality and peformance, instead of the improvement that I'd hoped and paid good money for.
I'd love to hear any suggestions anyone may have about how I could improve the situation - could it be perhaps that it's because my motherboard's PCIE x16 socket isn't a ver 2.0? ( everything I'd read told me the 2.0 cards were backwardly compatible with the earlier PCIE sockets) I've always kept all my drivers up to date, e.g. it has the latest Intel chipset driver, the latest Audio driver and all current Windows updates. I really wouldn't have believed things could have been as bad as this with what is meant to be quite a powerful graphics card unless I'd seen it myself. I would have RMA'd this card straight away but illness has meant there has been a delay between it's arrival and it's being installed - I've been down with a really nasty bout of flu for almost a month, but at this moment in time I don't see what else I can do - the next thing I'm going to do is uninstall these ATI drivers, take this P.O.S. 4850 out, put the 8800 back in and take the computer back to the restore point I created just before uninstalling the Nvidia drivers yesterday. I'm just hoping I am going to be able to send it back or I've lost £150, maybe the retailer will let me exchange it, I hope so - this will definitely be my last ATI purchase - I dislike the Catalyst Control Centre, it's fiddly and clumsy in comparison with NVidias' interface and why on Earth do you need to install .NET 2.0 just to run a graphics driver? ridiculous. I've spent mopst of the last 24 hours in frustration restarting my machine and messing with settings etc and I've now had enough and need to just take it back to when it worked properly even if it was a little on the warm side.
It's no stranger to computers either, I've built my own systems (and a few other people's) for more than 10 years now and have never seen such a bad result as this before

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If it aint broke rip it apart and find out why

Neshi

I just thought it was worth mentioning that the control panel doesn't have to be installed for the card to work. You can just install the display drivers. The .NET 2.0 is only necessary for the control panel if I recall correctly.

If I read what you wrote I would say you forgot to uninstall the nvidea drivers, but you didn't.. so I don't know what to think about this one. I hope on of the other members can help you out here.

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If one does not attach himself to people and desire, never shall his heart be broken. But then, does he ever truly live?

Life is just too damn short for if's and maybe's

Judas

well the wireless thing should have nothing to do with the drivers at all.

however you shouldn't be getting poor quality video... my only thoughts on the matter is nvidia settings sticking somewhere that aren't working well... extended boot times would suggest some form of corruption occuring or errors, it's hanging.

Power relate? perhaps...

the 9.1's are far better imo.. shouldn't have had problems.

When was the last time you completely wiped and reinstalled windows fresh? 9 months ago? Perhaps something coincidentally occured at the same time.

And as your probably well aware, depending on how heavily you smoke, sometimes a machine won't last more then a single year under continuous smoking conditions.... the residue can cause "bridging" of the circuts which obviously means bad things.


Last resort would be to stick the other card back in and see what happens..... it's usually nightmare going from a nvidia card to an ati card... personally i haven't had any problems going from ati to nvidia though.....

Actually just recently removed a nvidia 6200 pci-ex card and it's drivers, and it took several passes and restarts before the new 3870 ati card would work properly due to the residue left over from nvidia's card.

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Nickinakinu

Hi thanks for the info - I'd suspected that I would maybe need to do a full system rebuild to have the ATI card working properly - I'd been hoping to not have to do that, b*gger! - anyhow for now I've put the NVidia card back in and restored the machine to the restore point I made before uninstalling the NVidia drivers and it's running just fine again. My temps have even stayed down which I now see was due to a thick layer of dust having formed behind the fan on the VF-900 which was badly impeding air flowing between the fan and the heatsink/card - I only noticed this after I'd taken the NVidia card out and was able to see the fan properly. the Nvidia card is now running around 45c, and the CPU is running in the high 20s which is a lot more like it should be.
I'm going to try the ATI card out in my new Core i7 desktop system as although it's physically built, I haven't installed an operating system yet. It will be interesting to see how it works in a fresh install - the only thing is that system runs on a TFT monitor, not a CRT so it might be different anyhow. I've got another 8800 GTS 320 OC ( a BFG as opposed to an MSI in the HTPC) in that at the moment - I don't have to have a bang up to date video card as I don't play games, but still need need something half decent as I do play video & process photos in Photoshop, I also intend to start using Sky HD once the prices come down a little more - the ATI card was a bit of an indulgence. Saying that (and I know it's totally subjective) but I actually much prefer the interface on the NVidia driver - I think the ATI drivers are clumsy in comparison I have a laptop with ATI graphics and they take a ittle bit longer to boot than ones I've seen with NVidia - the laptop plays video just fine though.. I see someone has said I could just put the display driver only in which I'm aware of but then I wouldn't have access to the full functionality of the card, which is preferrable really.
I think when it comes down to it we either just prefer ATI or NVidia, which is only human of us - and there are people who have had good/bad experiences with both - I actually went for the ATI this time as it had fully passive cooling without me having to spend more money fitting it myself which is rare on NVidia.
We're not heavy smokers and I've never heard of residue causing 'bridging' before, at least never ever seen it happen and I've built & repaired a lot of computers, although I guess it's not impossible - I'm not going to worry about that too much as I take extra care to clean the inside out more often, and I'll be more vigilant now I can see the cooling problem came about due to dust buildup in an area I couldn't see without taking the video card out. I don't think power is a worry - Gigabyte state I should be able to run this card happily on a 450W PSU so my quality 650W PSU should have no trouble at all -it's not like I'm running lots and lots of components - oddly enough it's the same amount of power Nvidia said I needed for the 8800GTS.
One other thing that bothered me about this card is that you only find Gigabyte's statement about them not supporting the card when you open the box - they should put that in their advertising or on the outside of the box or both - It has left me wondering what happens if I ever need to put a new BIOS in the card for some reason, God forbid - I only see this as a small gripe, but it does seem sort of like they don't want to stand behind their own product, pity. Well, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it works OK when I put an OS in my desktop system later today, otherwise it's going back

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If it aint broke rip it apart and find out why

Judas

well any machine running that kind of video card i usually make sure that no less then 36amps (or 15-18amps per 12v rail) for the PSU

as for the drivers..... to each thier own true.... i just can't conceive how the nvidia driver is any better at all, it's clumsy and slow at best... not to mention much harder to navigate vs the "advanced" ati CCC... it loads in about 1/4 second and it's pretty slick just clicking the specific thing you want to do.. all right there... the default however is just as clumsy as nvidia's.

Good thing your not heavy smokers... it also depends on the brands of smokes your smoking... as i've seen some cases that have come in from some smokers with little to no evidence of smoking.... and then some horrible it actually stained the black plastics a yellow brown and shorted circuts on the board.... looked like some of the "tar" litterly ran down the length of the board in places... utterly disgusting.

Hopefully on your Core I7, you'll be running vista.... perferably x64.... the 9.1 drivers are excellent.

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Nickinakinu

Well I'm really glad to say that a full rebuild of the HTPC has brought about a big improvement in the situation - Also gave me the opportunity to put the new WD RE3 HDD in - the TV is on many hours dailly so I thought it would benefit from an HD that's built to run 24/7 - it's slightly noisier than the AAKS but still inaudible from 1 metre + . Video quality isnow as good as the NVidia was - but there's still a problem in that the Avivo Video settings have no effect on the Hauppage TV viewing application. This is a shame as it works OK when playing a video in VLC / Mplayer Home Cinema / Power DVD 7. I'm going to try installing Media Portal and watching TV through that and I'll see if it makes any difference. I had thought about putting Vista 64 in the Core i7 rig but I'm sticking with XP Pro for now, no big deal as I only bought 3GB of RAM, I may go for 6GB later but I think I'll want to see a second service pack for Vista coming out before I invest. I did the same thing before moving to XP from 98SE and my patience paid off - I know XP is perhaps a little old now but its still an excellent, stable OS. There's no particular hurry for me - I'm not into gaming so DX10 has no particular power of attraction over me. I was really disappointed with Vista when I bought a laptop that came with it and was very relieved to have been able to revert it to XP - call me a luddite but I'm happy with XP

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If it aint broke rip it apart and find out why

Judas

likely that laptop was the worst experience for vista you could have been introduced to.

An orginal copy of vista far exceeds most of the mangled copies of vista you'll find preinstalled on manufacturers laptops/desktops and the like.

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procupine14

I have to agree with Judas. Fresh, clean copies of Vista are good. Dirty tainted copies of preinstalled Vista are BAD. That's why I finally reformatted my dv6000 hp

My laptop, HTPC and Gaming rig all run on vista the latter two running 64 bit Ultimate and the Lappy runs the 32 bit Ultimate.

I have been very pleased! Admittedly I was scared to change

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HTPC/file server: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit - AMD Phenom x4 9850 - 4GB OCZ DDR2 800 (2x2GB) - 1TB WD Black - 4 x 1TB Hitachi DeskStar in RAID 5 - ATi TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner - HIS Raedon 4850 512MB - ASRock N68C-S UCC mobo - OCZ ModExtreme Pro 500W PSU

GF's Gaming PC: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit - AMD Phenom 9850 - 4GB OCZ DDR2 1066 - 500GB Western Digital GP - HIS Raedon 5770 1GB - ASUS M3A78-EM - Zalman 650W PSU

Media Streamer: Win 7 Pro 64-bit - AMD Athlon x2 3200+ - 4GB SuperTalent DDR2 800 - 250GB SeaGate Barracuda - MSI K9N6PGM2-V2 - ASUS Raedon 5450 SILENT - FSP group 250W PSU

Blacklash

I have two of these fanless cards in Crossfire.

GIGABYTE GV-R485MC-1GI
Newegg.com - GIGABYTE GV-R485MC-1GI Radeon HD 4850 1GB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards


I got them because they are absolutely quiet and have decent performance.

In my SilverStone case they idle and load as below.

Top card 31c idle, 55C load-
ImageShack - Image Hosting :: card1e.jpg

Bottom card 47c idle, 70c load-
ImageShack - Image Hosting :: card2a.jpg

Obviously the close proximity of the top card to the bottom is heating it up.

If you want a fanless quiet cool card, this would be the ones. If you run Crossfire the bottom card will be warmer.

My experience with them has been wonderful. I'd imagine they would do very well in a case like a Cooler Master HAF too. Don't stick them in a case with questionable airflow and expect them to excel.

BTW my load temps I am reporting are from three hours of playing AoC @ 1920x with 8xAA|16xAF, bloom enabled, full shadows, max ground quality detail radius, SM 3, and the rest set to "high".

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Nickinakinu

Well After a couple of recent & unexpected power cuts ( I live in a rural location where we occassionally get them, they can go from being momentary to up to an hour in duration - I've got a UPS but haven't got around to setting it up yet) the card is misbehaving again - this never happpened with the NVidia card btw.
I also just bought a new TV/Monitor, an LG M2394D which is a dual-purpose monitor / TV and the ATI card just wasn't looking too good on this either, so I've rebuilt the system AGAIN and reverted to the NVidia card and all is well again - it can also control colour/sharpness/noise settings in video playback and in Hauppage's TV2000 V.6, unlike the HD4850, the AVIVO settings made no difference either in colour, or edge sharpness/noise control settings, whereas the NVidia works perfectly.
As far as my experiences went with the HD4850 in my HTPC, they were not very good at all; for me personally it caused a lot of frustration & disappointment, not to mention the money that I feel has been wasted. I'm wondering if it's anything to do with the mobo having a first-generation PCI-ex slot, and the HD4850 being a PCI-ex 2.0 item? I thought there was meant cross-compatibility between them? perhaps not, perhaps it's only limited or maybe it just varies from one system to another.
I'm going to try the HD4850 out on my Core i7 system but I've got a feeling this will be the last time I use ATI cardson anything that is important to me - I've started a thread in another section with regard to an AIW 9800SE I happened to happen across, which is a different matter as it only cost me £10 and I know it will be more powerful than the 64MB GeForceMX4000 card that was the only other option at the time.
I can't yet speak for the newer generation of NVidia cards with built-in PhysX and CUDA etc, but the various incarnations of the 8800 GTS that I've had have all worked really well, with no kind of issues at all; unfortunately this isn't something I can say for my own experiences with ATI :O(

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If it aint broke rip it apart and find out why

BlueMak

You live in an area with frequent power cuts, you have a UPS but you haven't installed, and now you have a hardware problem. Seriously?


I have a UPS that I have never "installed" but I don't get powercuts.
It's a shame you don't like the ATI card, but you know, people are people. I have two desktop systems, one with a 8800GTS 640MB, and one with a Radeon 4870X2, their IQ look good in both.

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