ATI hotfix issue - HD 4800

I’m looking to buy a HD 4850 card, probably a Visiontek or a Diamond. The fact that these cards run hot is of some concern to me. I’ve got questions for you guys/gals.

Does ATI’s hotfix for the 4800 completely resolve this problem – permit the cards to run at ‘satisfactory' temperatures?:

http://support.ati.com/ics/support [...] onID=31542

Also, I saw this post for the 4870 today:

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=64267

Does this effectively do what the hotfix does?

Please post your comments. I’m wondering if I should buy a 4850 now or would it be better to wait.

Thanks,
angus

The Asus card has a program so you can control the fan and there is also a Profile "hack" for manually setting the fan speed. If you do either of those the temps will be quite decent (from what I've heard, hopefully I will be able to test this tomorrow). As jaydeejohn said, though, the high temps (80-90C) won't hurt your card since they're designed for these temps. I personally am a little nervous about them though, so I got the Asus. I imagine though now I'll just wear out the fan

Though the cards are reported as running hot and the GPU's should be able to handle the temps, one thing people need to know is to have a case with decent cooling. If your card doesn't exhaust out the case, then cooling is even more important.

Doesn't do enough good if the card has a great cooler but the case is a standard midrange tower with only a couple of fans and a heatpipe over the CPU. I switched everything over to an Antec Nine Hundred when I got my card last February, because I just didn't think the old Raidmax could provide enough cooling.

jaydeejohn, I'm afraid my Asus 4850 won't arrive until this afternoon. My MSI 4850 fried on startup. My last working card besides my test 6800GT was a 2900XT. In most games I'm not expecting too huge of a visible jump, but I'm really hoping I'll be able to use AA again. Other than that I doubt my 3DMark06 score will jump too much because of my processor and ram. I am also trying Vista and DX10 for the first time. Whew, today SHOULD be fun

The high temperatures might not hurt your graphics card, but without some decent case ventilation they are not exactly going to make all the other components in your case very happy.

If you don't have intake air running over your hdds or seperate coolers for them, I would be very concerned about this card. Similarly, passively cooled cards like sound cards will run hotter - same with the motherboard chipsets. Even actively cooled components such as the CPU will run hotter as they can only cool to near the level of ambiant, and if that is a few degrees higher it is a big difference. This will lead to higher chances of system failure over time, and quicker component degredation.

Add into this as always seems to happen in summer the people who live in places with high heat and no aircon - they're always having cooling problems - and suddenly you have a receipe for disaster.

This card has the potential to either be dangerous or stupidly loud. They need to sort it out asap - it is ruining the good potential and price that it has.