PowerColor Zerotherm 3870 mini review! warning huge pics!

[KeZzZu]

Hi all! (sorry for bad english!)

So here they are my 3x3870 which are working at 800/1200 as one shop did market them... but techpowerup says stocks are 800/1170


but still card 3 fails even at 1150 memspeed and gives graphic errors also drops out from cf etc..

but... here some unbeliveable pics !
card 1&2


card 3






pic from card 3 and look close this pic and then look card 2 pic which is lower pic... what is missing right there...




WARNING VERY LARGE PICS!

card 3

http://xs123.xs.to/xs123/08025/picture_005247.jpg


card 2

http://xs123.xs.to/xs123/08025/picture590.jpg
CF pic with missing thing...

http://xs123.xs.to/xs123/08025/picture_001587.jpg

Well some +

well two of those somewhat working cards runs very cool
(31c' idle 46~c' load)

well i got toasted... felling quite ripped of with these kinds of things...

will be continued with some 3dmark results. soon...

[heikis]

maybe resize the images ?

[KeZzZu]

maybe resize the images ?

trying should be ok now

[Cooper]

Review?

So what's wrong with the 3rd card

[KeZzZu]

Review?

So what's wrong with the 3rd card

mem cooling plate doesnt have screws on it so loses it cooling capacity... mem clocks are way slower what it should be... and it was bios limited not just program read error... sad but true uploading 3dmark06 review soon and more pics from package and cards

[Apokalipse]

mem cooling plate doesnt have screws on it so loses it cooling capacity... mem clocks are way slower what it should be... and it was bios limited not just program read error... sad but true uploading 3dmark06 review soon and more pics from package and cards

you tried the modified 3870 BIOS?

also, why not just get better mem cooling?

[LaaG]

The PowerColor 3870 PCS is very disapointing. I bought this becuase of the cheap price (stock 3870 is £130, the PCS version was £137) and the ZeroTherm HSF (does a good job, Idles at 45c and loads 59c)

Mine also didnt have screws for the RAM heatsinks, I've seen other PCS have screws on them. Weird.

Some other problems to be noted:
1) The fan is LOUD and spins 100% all the time! Some may tolerate it but I cant.
2) The RAM heatsinks are rubbish. The RAM always overheats and artifacts in games. Even at 1100MHZ, 100 below rated speed!
3) My clocks are wrong. advertised as 800/1170 x2... Mine reads 800/1126 x2 ...WTF is with that?

Becuase there wasnt anything else in stock and the postage costs for returns, I just thought I'd keep the card and live with it.

[KeZzZu]

The PowerColor 3870 PCS is very disapointing. I bought this becuase of the cheap price (stock 3870 is £130, the PCS version was £137) and the ZeroTherm HSF (does a good job, Idles at 45c and loads 59c)

Mine also didnt have screws for the RAM heatsinks, I've seen other PCS have screws on them. Weird.

Some other problems to be noted:
1) The fan is LOUD and spins 100% all the time! Some may tolerate it but I cant.
2) The RAM heatsinks are rubbish. The RAM always overheats and artifacts in games. Even at 1100MHZ, 100 below rated speed!
3) My clocks are wrong. advertised as 800/1170 x2... Mine reads 800/1126 x2 ...WTF is with that?

Becuase there wasnt anything else in stock and the postage costs for returns, I just thought I'd keep the card and live with it.

shame i allready modded one card ! sh** ok can you dump org bios? two of the pcs model got 800/1170 bios btw mem over heat causes from mem voltage which is around 1.97-2.05v... and mem heatsink is maded from alunium... rofl im gonna make copper one today :P well gpu's are running like charm i mean hitted 975 mhz with this modded card :P no probs with temp's at all. 63 c* in load.

[LaaG]

shame i allready modded one card ! sh** ok can you dump org bios? two of the pcs model got 800/1170 bios btw mem over heat causes from mem voltage which is around 1.97-2.05v... and mem heatsink is maded from alunium... rofl im gonna make copper one today :P well gpu's are running like charm i mean hitted 975 mhz with this modded card :P no probs with temp's at all. 63 c* in load.

I just found out today why the memory overheats... The Zerotherm, although good at keeping the Core cool, only blows air sideways NOT to the VRAM, bad design if you ask me.
After fitting in some old 120mm fans to my case, I managed to get 877 Core / 1188 Mem.

The VRAM on the PCS are Hynix Brand. HY5FS123235AFCP-08 - Rated at 1.8v , 0.8ns 1200Mhz. Im going to replace the Vram heatsink with sometihng that isnt just a flat alluminium plate

After some extra cooling I can now play Crysis overclocked without any crashes 3DMark score of 10,932 on a E2180 @ 3.0Ghz, Gigayte P31 DS3L and 2GB RAM @ DDR900 5-5-5-15 Still very noisy though...

[KeZzZu]

I just found out today why the memory overheats... The Zerotherm, although good at keeping the Core cool, only blows air sideways NOT to the VRAM, bad design if you ask me.
After fitting in some old 120mm fans to my case, I managed to get 877 Core / 1188 Mem.

The VRAM on the PCS are Hynix Brand. HY5FS123235AFCP-08 - Rated at 1.8v , 0.8ns 1200Mhz. Im going to replace the Vram heatsink with sometihng that isnt just a flat alluminium plate

After some extra cooling I can now play Crysis overclocked without any crashes 3DMark score of 10,932 on a E2180 @ 3.0Ghz, Gigayte P31 DS3L and 2GB RAM @ DDR900 5-5-5-15 Still very noisy though...

good good , im RMA:ing one of the cards which is pure fail other two... well goot thought... making 3 CU heatsinks for mems when i have back one of the cards. mhm im using 120mm fan too keeps them stablr enought to play crysis


PS: could you dumb the original bios and send it to me? i have 800/1126mhz bios here and also lower speed bios but it got bananed

[LaaG]

mine is also the 800/1126 bios, but i'll PM you it anyways.