OldBuzzard

OK, I bought a pair of used 4870s, and I'm seeing some strange settings in CCC and CPU-Z.

One is a Sapphire 512MB card with the heatpipe HSF.
The other is 'supposed' to be an ATI 512MB with the dustbuster HSF.

Now, in GPU-Z It's seeing the Sapphire card as:
Subvender: Sapphire/PCPartner (174B)
GPU Clock: 750/900
Default Clock: 500/900

It gets weird when I look at the ATI card as it shows:
Subvender ASUS (1043)
GPU Clock: 815/925
Default Clock: 815/925

I have a sneaking suspicion that the guy that had them may have flashed the BIOS on the ATI card, and it's being overclocked.

In my gaming partition, I used CCC Overdrive to clock the Sapphire card to the same levels as the "ATI" card and it seems to be stable in Far Cry 2, Fallout 3, and IL2.

Am I looking at any possible future problems if I continue to run both cards at 815/925, or should I down clock the "ATI" card to 'stock' clocks.

I'm not all that anal about squeezing out that very last 1 FPS. I would take a few less FPS rather than over stressing the cards and having them fail prematurely.

All advice will be considered.

Here is what GPU-Z is showing for the 2 cards:

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When looking for a reason as to why things go wrong, never rule out sheer STUPIDITY

comp_ali

Me myself I am not a fan of overclocking "better lose some FPS rather than the whole card and never play again"
I am with you on resetting the card to the stock !

iPlayer

It's the factory overclocked model.

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OldBuzzard

Actually, the card is an ATI branded one, that seems to have been flashed with the Asus EAH4870 TOP BIOS.

Below is a picture of what it looks like. It's just the standard 'reference card'. I'm almost tempted to flash it back to the stock ATI BIOS, but I think I'll just down clock it back to reference speeds.

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__________________
When looking for a reason as to why things go wrong, never rule out sheer STUPIDITY

H82LUZ

That is actually the Diamond ATI brand 4870.I would take the Top Bios off that card and go get a ATI rev1 or 2 bios for it here techPowerUp! :: Video Bios Collection

BIOS Version 011.010.000.002.029896
That Sapphire BIOS is more stable for that type of card trust me I have one And a Palit both running that BIOS ,Which is the rev2 (aka 4870x2,4870 1gig,also the rev 1 5800 ) bios.It has more stable low power saving features,Both my cards down clock to 250 2d desktop and draw 19 to 20.3 amps idle.

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SeraphicSorcerer

Yeah I was going to say it's clearly bios flashed, You're not getting any odd performance issues are you? You should be fine my 4870 (visiontek) is overclocked to 800 mhz, and running fine.

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OldBuzzard

No issues at all.

In fact I cranked the Sapphire card up to the same speeds as the "mystery" card. I then ran a couple pf passes thru the FC 2 benchmark, FO 3 for a couple of hours, and later IL2 1946 for a couple of hours as well. No issues, and temps were well below what I had expected. With the GPU fans set to 50% i rarely saw them go over 60C (according to CPU-Z). I do have pretty good case cooling. With a waterblock on the CPU that eliminates a lot of hot air in the case, and a fan on the case side that is blowing cool air directly at the GPUs, they are running nice and cool.

I did clock both of them back to the 'reference specs', and I really can't see any difference in game play.

I also ran 3DMark06 and 3DMatk Vantage with and w/o Crossfire enabled

3DMark06 gave me 14460/16640
3DMark Vantage was H5715/H9468

__________________
When looking for a reason as to why things go wrong, never rule out sheer STUPIDITY

iPlayer

How weird of the guy who sold them to only do it on one of them. No improvement in actual game play?

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deBelly

The "Asus" card was obviously flashed. Like H82LUZ said, I would flash it with a BIOS that enables PowerPlay- it should save a lot of power in the long run. Modifying the existing BIOS could be safer, though.