Mike,
I have the same setup as you. Just a few suggestions to try and help you out. If you already did this then sorry.
I had to put in a 850 Watt PSU for the 4870 to work correctly. Takes a lot of power. CS4 puts the hardware to the test!! 500 Watt was not up to par with everything going on.
Also check to make sure that there are no wires touching the 4870 cooling fan as that will slow it down and cause it to over heat. (I had a sata cable rubbing my fan so I just had to reposition the sata cable)
I assume you have seen the new cooling fan RPM change addition with the 8.10 drivers in the over drive section on the CCC? I have my RPM set at 40 percent. The card works nice and cool at 35c.
What about your computer case cooling fan wise?
Run the directx diagnostic tool.
..NET up to date? When I first put my 4870 in the CCC would not display correctly. I updated .net and it works fine.
Also there is a new Directx run time SDK listed on Microsoft. The update may not be for your system, and you know it will tell you so, but it won’t hurt to try it.
Refresh rate set at 60? Mine was at 59 when I installed the 8.10 drivers. Had to change it to 60 in CCC.
Defrag helped me a lot too. I don’t use vista defrag. I use Iobit Smart defrag. It is free and is for vista 64 bit too. A lot faster.
Event viewer in computer management may record what is going on too.
Windows defender, advance options, I have CS4 as do not scan. I have not noticed any thing good or bad.
I don’t have the issues you do. I hope this helps a little.
Hi Dave,
Thank you for a thoughtful reply ; so refreshing!
Yup – been through all those things (especially 59 – 60 refresh) but the issue still arises. It is odd that deselecting OpenGL solved them.
I am going to try more tweaking later this weekend.
Fortunately, I buil my own PCs and always go for far more power than I can reasonably need and stick fans in every orifice 🙂
Might give the DirectX / .NET a pop though – nice lateral thought (not sure it affects OpenGL but worth a try).
Best regaqrds,
Mike
Yes, the 4870 is power hungry, but it is useful to know how much. Power varies among the various board implementations, but at the high end is one from Sapphire whose loaded power draw is 320 watts. Knowing the rest of your systems power requirements this will let you estimate your required power supply capacity. Even with an adequate PS the cooling has to be quite effective or you will see problems.
Paulo
Mike,
I build my own too. Lots of fun.
When you downloaded the driver set did you right click on the icon, go to general settings and unlock it? Some of my software recommends this.
Have you heard of driver sweeper?
www.phyxion.net
Works on 64 bit. Small software that removes all traces of Ati and nvidia drivers. It is free too. However, some ATI DLL’s will remain but it effects nothing. It gets rid of all the lingering ATI stuff.
Down load, unlock it, run as administrator, then reboot.
After reboot, remove the ATI drivers as normal, but don’t reboot. Open the removal tool software, check ATI-Display, then in options ensure registry and files are checked in the selection, then run it. (Like I wrote above, some DLL’s will remain but it effects nothing) Reboot computer, Reinstall your driver package, reboot. ta-da!! done.
I assume you already know about CCleaner too? Cleans a lot of crapola off your computer plus it is free.
Paulo,
I agree with you on power consumption. I have the 4870 X2 on my gaming machine with a 1000 watt supply (great investment). When I turn the beast on it is fun to look out my window at night and watch my neighbors lights dim….. lol kidding. System is stable. But it eats a lot of power!!
Has anyone run CS4 on a machine with the 4870 X2 in it?
I’m holding off a couple months on upgrading to CS4 for other reasons, but I’d like to know about any problems if there are any beforehand.
Basics of system are:
Phenom X4 9950 BE (not overclocked)
4GB DDR2 RAM (soon to be 8)
400+ GB primary drive
650+ GB secondary drive (both 7200 RPM; raptors were not in stock when built) Vista Home Premium 64-bit
Thanks!
Jcates,
When I was reading about CS4 on the adobe site it stated that only 1 GPU on that card will work with CS4 and the other will not be recognised. I have a 4870 512 MB that works. Slow rendering in some situations but, in my opinion, I can live with it. Have no choice…. lol
There is a 1 gig 1 GPU 4870 card, at a sweet price, listed on a few online retail sites.
I don’t think brute horsepower (or the lack of it) is the key to happy rendering.
So will I have to disable one of the GPUs on the card when using Photoshop? Or will it just see one and ignore the other?
I’m aware of the 1GB card, but I wanna play games on the same machine better than what the 1GB card offers. 🙂
Oh, and the system is already built and running, 4870 X2 installed. I’ll buy CS4 in January probably; I’ll miss out on the free shipping (big deal), but I’ll still get the discounted upgrade price since I’m upgrading from CS2 (which I haven’t bothered to install on the new machine).
jcates,
It will just ignor it.
I was reading on the net this morning and found a artical that stated that the next 8.12 ati driver set due in December will focus mostly on the 4800 series.
No mention of opengl driver updates. We shall see.
Good to know. Thank you, David. I’d hate to have to go into any settings to change them just for one app.
I’ll keep an eye out for the 8.12.
