New build crapping out periodically when gaming

[Robscix]

Make sure your sound drivers and chipset drivers are up to date. You should look into a separate audio card. A[so make sure the game isn't trying to do any audio processing like EAX etc..

[MacJunky]

Shadowmeph, make sure you have the latest version of RivaTuner. The best to use with the 38x0 Radeons is v2.08 or newer.
Then see this for manual fan control:


I think it was on the dev's forum that they were talking about the HD3850/3870 BIOS issues and how to setup RivaTuner's registry editor(in the PowerUser tab) to keep the fan speed at basically a 1:1 ratio with the GPU temp. I have mine setup like this and it works well.


I can't remember the max I see with this stock single slot cooler but it is not even close to the max I was getting before and keeps my cooler quieter than if I was manually setting fan speeds or going up in 5-10% steps.


*Edit
Oh! Oh!
Does that board have any jmicron PATA hardware on it?(I can't quite remember). If so, do you have any PATA drives connected to it?
If you said yes to the above uninstall the jmicron drivers for the PATA controller, windows has better ones that eliminated the audio issues on my P5K with jmicron crap on it. Even if you don't have any PATA drives I personally would be keen on uninstalling the jmicron PATA drivers anyway. :P

[Shadowmeph]

Originally Posted by MacJunky

Shadowmeph, make sure you have the latest version of RivaTuner. The best to use with the 38x0 Radeons is v2.08 or newer.
Then see this for manual fan control:


I think it was on the dev's forum that they were talking about the HD3850/3870 BIOS issues and how to setup RivaTuner's registry editor(in the PowerUser tab) to keep the fan speed at basically a 1:1 ratio with the GPU temp. I have mine setup like this and it works well.


I can't remember the max I see with this stock single slot cooler but it is not even close to the max I was getting before and keeps my cooler quieter than if I was manually setting fan speeds or going up in 5-10% steps.


*Edit
Oh! Oh!
Does that board have any jmicron PATA hardware on it?(I can't quite remember). If so, do you have any PATA drives connected to it?
If you said yes to the above uninstall the jmicron drivers for the PATA controller, windows has better ones that eliminated the audio issues on my P5K with jmicron crap on it. Even if you don't have any PATA drives I personally would be keen on uninstalling the jmicron PATA drivers anyway. :P

I don't think there pata drivers I don't see anything that says pata anywhere. as for the rivatuner I am using v2.08 I am in the low lev system/ fan area but I cannot make any changes except the low lev fan control slider the stuff below ( pvm stuff) I cannot change I found a site Guru3D.com Forums - View Single Post - AMD HD 3850/3870 fan controller database but it only says something about a reg tweak. wow this thing idles around 48 degrees isn't that a little hot?

[MacJunky]

Hum, I think it might have been under SCSI and RAID controllers or IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers in device manager. Been a while, can't recall correctly, never had to do it since. But yea, I am not the only one to have audio issues with those jmicron drivers installed and my audio has been fine since letting windows take over.

Aw crap.. sorry, not the power user tab, it is in the fan tab in the low level tweaks. You were correct with that link. My memory is all over the place atm.

Anyway, that link did not fully work for me even though it did for many others. There _is_ another post somewhere that you should look for incase the one you found does not work. It was made by someone I think with a 3870 and v2.07 that was not quite working with the info you linked to so the dev or w/e got involved and made some changes for v2.08. Might be incorrect on that though. Heh, it was not the dev's forum but the dev himself that was getting involved. >_>

Seems I am being wrong more often than normal lately..

[Shadowmeph]

this is what is on that link it doesn't make any sense to me because I am new to this

AMD HD3850/3870 display adapters use proprietary internal VPU fan controller and unfortunately there is no public datasheet available for it, so in this thread I’ll collect all info about this controller, which I could find out.

Fan controller parameters

Lookup entry 0 .. 7 – lookup for thermal table based automatic fan control mode. Each pair define ASIC temperature threshold and target fan duty cycle for it. The controller must be switched to thermal table mode (PWM mode = 3) to use this lookup table.
PWM mode (0 - 7) - defines fan control mode (fixed, automatic etc). The controller supports 2 different automatic control modes defined by values 2 and 3, it is strongly not recommended to use other PWM modes because they serve for fixed fan speed adjustment and for PWM controller testing modes. PWM mode 2 enables automatic temperature transfer function mode, PWM mode 3 enables automatic thermal table mode.
PWM hysteresis (0 – 63 PWM ticks) - defines hysteresis for resulting duty cycle generated by the fan controller. PWM hysteresis is a part of fan controller’s acoustic management system. Hysteresis effect is used by the controller to get rid of unwanted duty cycle fluctuations and all duty cycle changes within [Duty cycle – PWM hysteresis; Duty cycle + PWM hysteresis] range are filtered by the controller as unwanted noise. In other words, if PWM hysteresis is equal to 10% and duty cycle is currently set to 50%, fan speed will be restricted to change to anything within [50-10=40%; 50+10=60%] range.
PWM ramp on (0 – off, 1 - on) – controls PWM ramp mode. PWM ramp mode is also a part of the fan controller’s acoustic management system. It serves for implementing soft changes of output fan duty cycle for improving acoustic characteristics of cooling syste.
PWM ramp (0 – 255 PWM ticks) defines ramp for duty cycle changes. When PWM ramp mode is enabled and duty cycle needs to be changed (either by temperature table or by transfer function), the controller softly increases/decreases current duty cycle by ramp value instead of directly setting new value. In other words, if duty cycle is currently set to 50%, ramp is enabled and set to 2% and duty cycle must be set to 60% (for example, according to transfer function) then the controller will increase duty cycle by ramp value (i.e. set 52%, then 54% etc until desired duty cycle is reached) per each sampling period.
Duty cycle 100% (0 – 255 PWM ticks) – defines amount of PWM controller’s ticks per each PWM frequency period. All duty cycle related parameters (e.g. Duty cycle min) are internally defined in the controller in PWM ticks, so this value directly affects amount of possible duty cycle gradations (i.e. Duty cycle 100% = 3 means that fan controller is able to set duty cycle to 0 ticks (0/3 = 0%), 1 tick (1/3 = 33,3%), 2 ticks (2/3 = 66.6%) and 3 ticks (3/3 = 100%).
Duty cycle min (0 – 100 %) – defines minimum fan duty cycle for temperature transfer function automatic fan control mode.
Spinup cycle (0 – 100 %) – defines fan duty cycle for fan engine spinup period. Spinup period is required because due to fan engine nature it is impossible to start it on any desired duty cycle. Minimum fan duty cycle allowing the engine to start is called spinup duty cycle. Fan controller always performs fan spinup cycle when it is being started (e.g. when leaving passive mode in automatic fan speed control mode).
Spinup time– defines spinup period length (in internal time units).
T min (0-255 °C) - defines minimum ASIC temperature. When temperature is below this value, the controller stops the fan and system is cooled passively. Please take a note that each ASIC sample has different thermal characteristics and during manufacturing minimum allowed fan PWM output seem to be is fused into each ASIC. In other words, it means that fan controller will ignore all attempts to set duty cycle to value below ASIC's fused minimum. So fans on such display adapters may spin even when automatic fan control circuit is stopping the fan (i.e. when duty cycle is set to 0%) or when duty cycle is manually set to 0%.
T max (0-255 °C) - defines maximum temperature for both automatic modes and fixed mode. When ASIC temperature exceeds this value, fan control circuit is forcibly set to fixed 100% duty cycle.
T slope (0-100 % per °C) – defines temperature slope ratio for temperature transfer function automatic control mode. This value represents desired increase/decrease of duty in percents per 16 °C.
T hysteresis (0-7 °C) – defines temperature hysteresis for T min value. The controller starts the fan when ASIC temperature exceeds T min and stops it when ASIC temperature drops below T min – T hysteresis.

Automatic fan control principles

The controller periodically samples ASIC temperature and calculates target duty cycle per each sampling period depending on the selected PWM mode:

If PWM mode = 2 (i.e. temperature transfer function mode is selected) then target duty cycle is generated using the following equation:

Duty cycle = Duty cycle min + (T – T min) * T slope / 16

If PWM mode = 3 (i.e. thermal table mode is selected) then target duty cycle is the closest duty cycle from the lookup table (defined by Lookup entry 0 .. 7).

Target duty cycle generated per each sampling period is processed by fan controller’s acoustic management system:

If absolute difference between currently selected and target duty cycle is less than PWM hysteresis, then the controller doesn’t apply any changes to current duty cycle. Otherwise, if PWM ramp on = 1 the controller increases / decreases current duty cycle by PWM ramp value, else the controller explicitly sets target duty cycle.

Fan controller tuning recommendations for beginners

If you’re going to use temperature transfer function based automatic fan control mode, it is recommended to start from programming 1-to-1 transfer function (Duty cycle = T) by specifying the following parameters:

PWM mode = 2
PWM hysteresis = 0
PWM ramp on = 1
PWM ramp = 1
Duty cycle min = 0
T min = 0
T slope = 16
T hysteresis = 0


After doing that, you may experiment with tuning these parameters for your needs.

If you’re going to use thermal table based automatic fan control mode, it is recommended to use the following parameters:

PWM mode = 3
PWM hysteresis = 0
PWM ramp on = 1
PWM ramp = 1
T min = 0
T hysteresis = 0


After doing that you may fill your own desired lookup table then experiment with the rest parameters.

Known bugs in fan control in AMD 3850/3870 BIOS images and bugfixing recommendations

1) Some BIOS images combine T min = 0 and T hysteresis = 4 settings. The controller doesn’t support negative difference between T min and T hysteresis, which results in generating constant Duty cycle = Spinup cycle fan speed. To fix it ensure that T min is greater or equal to T hysteresis or just set T hysteresis to 0.
2) Some BIOS images combine abnormally high PWM hysteresis value (>10%) with abnormally low PWM ramp value (<1%). This makes fan duty cycle adjustment granular and really slowly responsive to the temperature. To fix it decrease PWM hysteresis or just set it to 0.

P.S. All these parameters and formulas apply to RivaTuner v2.08 and higher. RivaTuner v2.07 edits T slope in PWM ticks, so temeprature transfer function looks a bit different with it.

Last edited by Unwinder : 03-10-2008 at 10:24.