Sonics weblog

Sincs mid december 2008 I purchaced an ATI Sapphire HD4670 budget video card. Budget because it is cheap (at this moment ca. 65 euros) nevertheless at 1280x1024 I can play the latest games on a decent framerate (games like fallout 3, callofduty 5, farcry 2).
It's power consumption is also low; so relatively cool.
Playing on higher resolutions it is wise to spend more on a faster card.

My previous card was a Nvidia 7600GT silent. So I'm used to silence
Well, there is the problem with my HD4670. It is not silent. Not neccesary in 3D mode, but I want the thing to be silent in 2D mode (or at least very low noise)
I found out that on default the fan is running at 25% in 2D mode. arrrr not nice.
Little google search and previous experiences let me install Rivatuner where I could set the fan speed as I wish.
I managed to get the card silent indeed in 2D mode (or low 3D mode like the 3D vista aero theme or google earth). somehow rivatuner made the fan near silent below the lowest treshold temperature given (55C -> 17% fan speed).
Huray for Rivatuner but...
I want this for linux as well, so I wanted some program to flash the bios and make the changes permanent.

google, google.. and there I found this two nice programs: Raedon bios editor and Winflash.

It gave me all I needed.

As you can see I canged the lowest treshold to 20C with 2% fan speed. Changing it to 3% or higher results in fan noise. Changing it to 0% will heat up the card in 2D mode to the next treshold of 55C.
At 2% fan speed the card is stable at 48C (room is 20C). Vista Aero / google earth, so low duty 3D applications will stay below 55C so no noise

I have to say I got a reasonable good airflow in my casing.

As with all flashing a warning: Do not turn of the flashing program / power while flashing!

If you do bye bye videocard!