Manual Fan Speed Control on the Radeon HD 4850 Graphics Card

[Apoptosis]

I was looking for a way to manually control the fan temperatures on the ATI Radeon HD 4850 and 4870 graphics cards and came across this post over at Hexus. Figured it was worth a shot and tried it out for myself.

AMD's Radeon HD 4000 series graphics cards are impressive on most fronts, but, they're a touch hotter than most users would like - particularly the single-slot Radeon HD 4850.

The heat-factor isn't helped by AMD's lacklustre automatic fan control. Up until now, users have been unable to manually control the speed of their fans.

That, however, is no longer the case as a forum user going by the name of bretware over at Guru3D has provided a useful workaround that'll let users manually control their card's fan speed, and consequently lower temperatures.

According to bretware, a user needs to follow these simple steps:

1. In Catalyst Control Centre, make sure clock and memory settings are correct and turn on Overdrive
2. Create a Catalyst Control Centre profile called "fanspeed"
3. Navigate to C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Local\ATI\ACE\ and you'll find an XML file titled "fanspeed", open the file in Notepad or your preferred editor. The file should resemble the following:

<Feature name="FanSpeedAlgorithm_0">
<Property name="FanSpeedAlgorithm" value="Manual" />
</Feature>
<Feature name="FanSpeedRPMTarget_0">
<Property name="Want" value="0" />
</Feature>
<Feature name="FanSpeedPercentTarget_0">
<Property name="Want" value="65" />

4. As shown above, change the "FanSpeedAlgorithm" value to Manual and the "FanSpeedPercentTarget" value to 65 (or your preferred fan speed in percentage)
5. Save the file and reload the "fanspeed" profile in Catalyst Control Centre.

If you're unable to locate the XML file, you may be required to set your operating system to show hidden/system files.

Bretware adds that "you may have to select the profile everytime you start the computer, but it will work until there is a fix or better info so i can figure how to change the auto target temp".

Long story short is that it works and it works very well.

auto_fan_speed.jpg (86.15 KiB) Viewed 44387 times

I started out with the card on automatic fan speed (the factory default setting) and found it to peak at 85C... The fan is only spinning at 41% and doesn't go any faster than this.

manual_fan_speed.jpg (95.18 KiB) Viewed 44376 times

With the fan speed manually set to 100% the temperature dropped from 85C to 61C, which is a 24C temperature drop by just making a custom profile. The fan is way too loud at 100% though, so I grabbed the decibel meter and found it to be at 77dB at 100% rotation (the fan is spinning at 8,000 RPM, which is hella fast)... Just figured I'd post this up as other Radeon HD 4850 and Radeon HD 4870 owners might be looking for a way to lower their temperatures or increase the fan speed on these Radeon cards. Having the fan set to 60-70% seems to be the sweet spot, if you are wanting a nice mix of cooling and noise.

[Jakey The Avatar]

Did you have any problems getting ATItool to run with the 4850? Doesn't seem to like my fiancées new card. Crashes immediately on loading.

[skier]

60-70% on the single slot or both, because i've had a single slot card(1650 PRO) and a dual slot card (x850XT) with single slot, 90% is a bit much, but not extreme, and dual slot, @ 30% and higher, its downright unbearable, and for some reason, the fan doesnt even change from like 4.5%(autoset) unless it gets quite hott

[Apoptosis]

60-70% on the single slot or both, because i've had a single slot card(1650 PRO) and a dual slot card (x850XT) with single slot, 90% is a bit much, but not extreme, and dual slot, @ 30% and higher, its downright unbearable, and for some reason, the fan doesnt even change from like 4.5%(autoset) unless it gets quite hott

Per the title of the thread.... I'm talking about the Radeon HD 4850 only here and that is a single slot card.

[Apoptosis]

Did you have any problems getting ATItool to run with the 4850? Doesn't seem to like my fiancées new card. Crashes immediately on loading.

Nope not at all... Fires up fine for me on Vista Ultimate 64-bit.

[musman]

I have tried what the above post suggest, creating a new profile and everything & I find profile file just fine but when I open the file in note pad or anything else it does not look anything like it's suppose to.

Here is the content of the file or profile I created.

<Profile>
<Caste name="Graphics">
<Groups />
<Adapter name="PCI_VEN_1002&DEV_9442&SUBSYS_0502100 2&REV_00_4&24AE49A5&0&0008A">
<Aspect name="Overdrive3">
<Feature name="Enable3D">
<Property name="Enable3D" value="False" />
</Feature>
<Feature name="EnableLogon">
<Property name="EnableLogon" value="True" />
</Feature>
<Feature name="CoreClock">
<Property name="CoreClock" value="63100" />
</Feature>
<Feature name="MemoryClock">
<Property name="MemoryClock" value="100100" />
</Feature>
<Feature name="Temperature_Feature" />
<Feature name="AutoClockConfig" />
<Feature name="Accelerated3D" />
</Aspect>
</Adapter>
</Caste>
</Profile>

It should look something like this.

Feature name="FanSpeedAlgorithm_0">
<Property name="FanSpeedAlgorithm" value="Manual" />
</Feature>
<Feature name="FanSpeedRPMTarget_0">
<Property name="Want" value="0" />
</Feature>
<Feature name="FanSpeedPercentTarget_0">
<Property name="Want" value="65" />


Thanks for any help!

[DaddyRabbit]

A note for the manual fan speed issue. It's been stated that you may have to re-apply the profile on a reboot, If you go to Advanced when saving the profile there is an option to "Launch From: a shortcut on the desktop", this will create a desktop shortcut which you can copy into your Startup folder and voila! Works great for me.

[Kougar]

Interesting fix!Might be best to just use a good aftermarket cooler though, good cooling and no noise issue...

Did you have any problems getting ATItool to run with the 4850? Doesn't seem to like my fiancées new card. Crashes immediately on loading.

Ya don't have a leftover Rivatuner installed or anything do ya? That can cause it. They really really need to update ATI Tool though...

[Sporg]

Thanks for that, it helped out a bit. I want to get a 3rd party cooler, but nothing has jumped out. That Coolink GFXChilla is on back-order until Aug 21 (from the link in your article). Looks like Arctic Cooling has a "twin turbo" coming out sometime soon but nobody has a review of it yet. Anyway, this should get me by until something solid becomes available. Thanks again.