ATI HD4890 - VDDC@42A [email protected] - Instability Issues

M

MrkXCeL

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jun 11, 2004
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OK, hear me out on this for a moment. I've picked up a HIS ATI HD4890 card to do a last ditch effort to stretch the life of my Shuttle SN25P wAMD x2 [email protected]. I also couldn't resist the NewEgg deal that was on here recently. Now I know I'm CPU limited, and I'm nuts by trying this, but that's what [H] is all about and I'm too broke to build a new QuadCore.

Need to know:

Running HD4890 w/ External PSU hooked up with 4 Molex leads feeding the card.
The PSU is a Antec True 480W unit with 12V rail rated at 22A
Used above since I was afraid to melt Shuttle PSU, they're tough, but not this tough.
Running 1680x1050 res, gaming at 2xAA or 4xAA

So here goes my problem:

Within several minutes to an hour, screen goes black, game sounds either continue, and or get stuck in a loop. ATI VPU recovery kicked in once, just once.

First occurence, ran the Street Figher IV benchmark. Tried over and over to see how high I could get in FPS @ Native res, got to 220, Ryu did a special move, and poof, screen went black, sound in loop/continuing.

Reset machine, the card goes in a loop, Fan On/Off/On/Off with 3 Red LEDs on side flashing each time. I shut power off to everything, give it a second, power up, system boots fine.

Load up Folding@Home GPU GUI Client, instant screen shut down, VPU recover kicked in.

Here's something I gotta check again, I swear on the last crash, my Antec PSU was dead, fans off, I wasn't sure since I shut everything down pretty quickly. I'll recheck this, but at the moment, card won't crash for over and hour playing COD5 Zombie mode.

This brings me to the last part and screen cap below. This is GPU-Z 0.3.4. I'm not 100% positive, but doesn't the HD4890 take about 180W+ @ Max Load? ( I may be way off )

Why is the VDDC Amperage @ 42A
Why is the other Amperage @ 18.5A (presume 12V = 220W)

4890a.png


edit: Last update, above screen, Folding@Home GPU running. Just noticed, Anted PSU squeeling, it's not vid card, it's PSU. Is the Antec being overloaded, is there a problem with my card? 22A @ 12V should be enough to power a Vid Card if my above wattage estimate is correct. Amperage at idle, while typing this, 1.4A to 4.1A.
 
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22a on the 12v is not nearly enough, the card requires 35-40a? on the 12v to supply your whole system. so that 12v is being shared by your vcard, and every other 12v device in your system =)
 
Use the ATX PSU wire trick and use your shuttle PSU to power the system and the TP480 only for the card.

First off, I have done this many times before to power video cards that were out of the range of my system PSU and its 100% safe.

Take the TP480 off the shuttle and hook the shuttles PSU back up normally.

Disconnect the TP480 from the HD 4890 ( do not turn the shuttle or anything back on yet ).

Okay, take a piece of the heaviest gauge wire you have at your disposal or even a paper clip but copper wire is highly preffered. Connect the wire from the green PS_ON connector on the 24-pin connector to anyone of the black grounds ( masse ). This will turn the PSU on without being hooked up to a system. Once the PSU is on flip the powr stich on it to turn it back off.

Now, hook the TP480 up to your 4890, flip the power switch and get power going to the card first, now turn your shuttle on normally and VOILA !!! Dedicated GPU PSU :)

9_ATX-Stecker_(24-Pin).gif
 
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Digital Viper-X- said:
22a on the 12v is not nearly enough, the card requires 35-40a? on the 12v to supply your whole system. so that 12v is being shared by your vcard, and every other 12v device in your system =)
Click to expand...

Op said the 22A was from a psu strictly running the video card.
 
Hard and Confused: I believe he already did that.
Posted via [H] Mobile Device
 
Thx for replys, though I've already dedicated the AT480 to the HD4890 via green wire trick.

I've left the card underclocked @ 750 core to see if it would survice a session of F@H overnight, it didn't, I didn't have logging anabled on GPU-Z, forgot to tick the box, but the bar graphs showed max-amp draw of 20.5A, that above it's usuall 17.6A or 18.5A draw, so something like that spike is what killed it again.

I'm just stumped that 480W PSU can't run this deng thing! I'm almost ready to toss that out and try the 350W Shuttle PSU!!! Ha Ha Ha!!! That thing is tough, but I'm seriously afraid of melting wires at this point, as I'd have to do one of two things...

Use single molex(yes single) to split into 4 then back down to 2 PCI-E 6 Pin connectors
-or-
Use the SATA HD Power cables, convert those over to molex, that will at least lessen the load on cabling, solder points in the PSU.

Other than that, dunno what gives, I could buy another PSU I guess. I'm just curious whether PSUs don't like to be driven with only their 12V rail used, additionally driven harshly since it's basically off/on-full load many times per second as the card kicks in and off during rendering / F@H. What I'm saying is the AT480 basically has very little load on average, maybe 10-15W and all the sudden the 4890 subjects it to 180-220W loads instantaneously. Then again, people have done this trick and there are dedicated GPU PSU that have been out on the market.
 
Try running a wire from the grounds(black) on the two power supplies and see if that helps with the spikes. They should already be connected through the board but there may be some separation.

Also just because it says 22A rated doesn't mean you'll get that. It's still likely drawing a fair amount of current through the slot and not the extra connectors. Depending on supply voltages the card could be trying to draw most of it's power through one supply and not balancing nicely.
 
I'd bet the group regulation on the power supply is preventing such use. You'll need some load on the 3 & 5v rails for it to work correctly.
 
Either the PSU can't handle the ramp up in amperage (transient load?), it's not distributing the load, or it's faulty. Try plugging in your HDD's to the external PSU and spinning them up before booting to even the load out on the external. If you've never jury rigged HDD's like that, they need to be powered on for a second or two before they'll detect properly.

Also very likely is that you have a bad HIS card.
[rant]
I gambled on my X1950 Pro (RV570) by going with HIS and regretted it. Took like 4 RMA's to finally get a "working" card which only "worked" until it was just on the edge of warranty and HIS didn't honor the warranty like 4 days past expiration, which is crap because I wasted like ~3 weeks and tons of shipping charges to get a "working" card.

I'd sooner buy a Sapphire card AND cut my left nut off then willingly purchase a HIS card again.

I even bought that particular HIS card for the factory OC and the IceQ 3 which had gotten decent reviews around the web.
[/rant]
Oh well, live and learn.

btw, we're going off that your thermals and drivers are good, correct? You seem to know what your doing well enough to have checked that first.

My money is on a bunk HIS card personally.
 
I can speak from experience when I say a Shuttle PSU is actually sufficient for a 4890 since I ran it for about a month, the system in specs. 400 watt PSU. I even overclocked.

I ran that system with no optical drive though, I used that molex to plug the second eight-pin into the video card to fufill its two eight-pin power requirements. Actually got about 14K in 3dmark06, it was a good system.

Unfortunately a thunderstorm came by and ate the PSU alive when I left it on while I was at work. I came home to blinking clocks and a completely silent and dead Shuttle. Lasted me 30 months, it was a good system... upgraded all the way from the 1950XT I had originally, through a HIS ICEQ3 to the Sapphire 4890, and had no issues until that fateful day of thunder. Now it is sitting in pieces on my dining room table. :(

Probably will resurrect it in a new form, better, faster, and more powerful than ever.
 
why are you dicking around? try a known good vid card in the shuttle, or swap out the antec for another psu. if you dont have any money/parts, you must have some friends with parts.


i just logged my vddc and ??? currents during several minutes of tf2 using gpuid, and my highest vddc was 6.8 amps, and my highest ??? was 21.0 amps. i removed one of my hd4890 and ran solo, with a 1kw psu. so 42a sounds a tad highish. my vddc and ??? voltages are exactly the same as yours, but your temps are around 20c higher than mine. the highest my fan spun was 30%.
 
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@ vanilla_guerilla
Click to expand...
Yea, I am doing too much BS trying to make this work with a system that's too many generations old.
Anyway, I know the Shuttle is stable, it had a HD3870OC (+30Mhz OC on top of that) and it was stable in games and good at factory OC in F@H. This was on built in PSU, no external. I've swapped out the Antec PSU, bought a BFG 550W single 12v rail PSU @ Frys the other night. It's gottem me more stable, but still not 100%. I'll get F@H crashes often, system shuts down, VPU recover, or F@H core failed error, etc. That's at stock clocks, underclocked, overclocked, all kinda clocks. I can't get F@H to run proper. Not sure what to make of the vddc readings I get. Compared to yours, they are way off. I'll load up TF2 tonight and report back what I get.

@ Jalidi
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Hey that's the best thing I've heard all week! (and no, I don't mean the part about your Shuttle dying, I'm real sorry to hear that)
I'm amazed the 4890 worked in your Shutte, are you sure you didn't have the SN26P? SN25P also only had 350W PSU. Did you upgrade PSU at one time? Sounds like you had a PCI-E connector in there, the SN25P does not, I only have two molex to work with and two spare SATA power connectors. Thay are fed seperately, as in not all daisy chained off one set of 12v/5v/ground cables. So I'll be giving that a shot once I get the proper adapters from Fry's.

@ DemonSoul64
Click to expand...
Yep, I am getting a sh**ty feelin about this HIS card after seeing two things, similar reviews with similar issues, and the fact someone (NewEgg, ZipZoomFly, Ewiz) had it on sale even cheaper few days after I got my deal. Something like $139+ship AR when I bought mine, it was $169 AR
 
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gonna have to warn you, make SURE that you never turn on the Videocard PSU without powering up the system too, or you will fry your card.
 
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