Turns out 4890's are flammable

[MickyMcD]

G'day all,

So, as said, turns out the Sapphire HD4890 is flammable. Who'd have thought. Both were running fine with their new lovely HK Full cover nickel plater waterblocks, then pop. One PWM VREG blew out, blowing molten who knows what onto the card below it, shorting out and frying the lot. I'd show you all pictures, but in my dissapointment they have been disposed of....

...in a bigger fire.

So, here's the deal. I need some graphics processing, and I have my eye on the ATI 5870. It looks like a great piece of hardware, and the specs speak for themselves. My concern is that I could also pick up a GTX295 for a lower price, but may be able to have similar benefits. So is DX11 really something to be excited about? Newls, you know the insider info in the gaming hardware industry, and seeing as all I do is look at switches blinking their network traffic goodness all day I don't really know the gaming industry at the moment. I do like ATI quite a bit, and the 5870 looks pretty hardcore, but....?

And opinions go.

Cheers,

Mick

[newls1]

Lookie lookie lookie here!

I have played with the GTX295's for awhile, great card, BUT ONLY WHEN THE DRIVER supports the needed SLI profiles for a certain game. If SLI is buggy/not compatible/etc... with whatever game your wanting to play, performance will be the same as a GTX275 which is WAY below a 5870 level. Personally, I've had SLI for YEARS, and for benching its great, for 100% stability, NOOOOOO WAY! Same goes for x-fire as-well. As i've grown up with this stuff, and learned by spending many grands on hardware throughtout the past years, if there is a STRONG performer, and your goal is NOT TO SQUEEZE every last bit of FPS possible, the stick with a single GPU. So much work behind the scenes on the driver level goes into making SLI / X-Fire work on games, and all games dont like the same profiles, so you WILL ALWAYS run into stability issues. I can't tell you how many PC's i've built for bleeding edge performance for customers that have unlimited pockets of cash, and I always am blown away with the look on the eyes of the buyer that when he is here looking at his new build that has 2 GTX295's in it (QUAD GPU's obviously) and performance is FASTER with only 2 GPU's enalbed, then all 4. SO MUCH over head needed to make 4 GPU's work correctly. Dont get me wrong, some games like COD4 like quad gpu's, and others, but there VERY FAR AND FEW BETWEEN.

Im rambling on, sooooo to get back to the point, YES, personally I would get a 5870, and not look back. 1600SP's, DDR5 ram @ 5GHz or something close is insane. That 1 card is nearly faster then a 4870x2 (as the specs state it should LOL)

Does any of this help ya?

**EDIT***

the DX11 feature for me TBH with you should NOT BE A SELLING POINT FOR THIS CARD. By the time DX11 games FULLY are accelerated on this new API, and by the time DX11 is the "NORM" This card will be LONG GONE. The 58xx series cards are just awesome! ATi really hit the sweet spot t his time around, and NVidia is running under the bed FAST!!! To those of you out there that are familiar with Nvidias GPU's, THE DAMN G92 GPU can only go so far!!!!! There 300 series GPUs might not hit consumers hands for another 6-8 months, so ATI just has a flat playing field right now.

Edited November 10, 2009 by newls1

[MickyMcD]

Thanks buddy, that does clear a lot up. I did have stunning performance with the two HD4890's, but I am after something similar without the instability. Getting the two cards to work properly took a long time with a lot of customisation. Going on your advice there, a single 5870 looks like it will do the trick for me. I did think about the 5970, but I don't like the idea of two extremely hot cores on that single sink. I could easily push past 85 with a HD4890, so I wouldn't want to run the gauntled there.

Thanks matey.

Cheers,

Mick

[newls1]

no problem sir, thats what im here for!

[MickyMcD]

Sorry to dig up an old thread, but I thought I'd just say thanks for the heads up Newls. The HD5870 is purring away, crunching my EASE Loudspeaker Focusing data like nothing at all. Does everything I need it to. And no Crossfire scaling issues and microstutter like the 4890CF rig it replaced.

Thanks again champion.

Cheers,

Mick

[treossi]

wow that's crazy what happened! wish i could have seen the pics

[JZeFF]

I just got a sapphire 4890.... gulp

Should i be seriously concerned? i have pretty good air circulation...

[MickyMcD]

I just got a sapphire 4890.... gulp

Should i be seriously concerned? i have pretty good air circulation...

Man, until they gave up the ghost, I was gobsmacked by the 4890. Grab the TechPowerUP GPU tool, as the 4890 has the VOLTERA chip that allows software GUI control of memory and core voltages. Running 1.45V to the core and 1.5v to the memory, I had the core clock at 1050MHz and the memory at a blazing 1200MHz. They really ripped up man.

My cards just didn't like the watercooling conversion. Possibly a short, ESD damage, who knows? They were on fire, good enough answer for me. Enjoy your card man, they really are good cards. Clock like hogs.

Cheers,

Mick

[JZeFF]

I think im gonna let the Newegg return period of 30 days run out before i overclock it, haha.

But damnit...now you got me all excited to do it. =D

I might be pming you for some help when i do decide to do it, hopefully you wont mind. haha

Edited December 29, 2009 by JZeFF

[Boon]

Must be something in our AC power down under... seems Audigy 2 ZS's are flammable too!

I sent that to Creative and asked why my card wasn't working...

They wrote back saying 'the card is burned and can no longer be used'

I replied 2 days later 'never mind, got it working again'