Thanks Chris,

I did run into the ATItool program on an overclockers website. Strange that
I did not find this utility on the ATI site nor on the Gigabyte site. It may
be there, but not obvious.

Running the utility showed that the card was set to the default values, so
that did not explain why the fan was running so fast. There is no heat
problem involved since the fan runs fast right from the start. It only stops
completely several times during the boot process, but then it goes full
speed. I did solve my problem by replacing the fan with a much quieter unit
I happened to have (from a old CPU cooler). I let the board run for several
hours and the heat sink still feels warm but comfortable to the touch. Still
don't know why the fan was on full - perhaps the board has a defect in the
fan control circuit, but this was a quick and easy fix.

Peter
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-----Original Message-----
From:    Peter Shkabara <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: ATI video

I have a Gigabyte GV-RX60X128V video card that is based on the AIT Radeon
X600 core. There is a fan on this board that runs at a high speed and is the
noisiest part of my computer. Some reviews I read say that the fan is almost
silent. I did note that the fan turns on and off during the boot cycle, so I
suspect it is controlled by the card.

----------------------------------
Peter, there is a great tool for this purpose specifically for ATI based
video cards called ATITool. You have the ability to underclock both the
memory and core freqencies (as well as overclock). This may help to quiet
the card fan. I suspect that the hardware monitoring the card supports might
be telling the fan to run at a speed that is causing it to be a little
louder than you would like. On another note, the fan on the card is small
and probably needs to turn at a higher RPM in order to move enough air over
the heatsink. Do you have any way of installing another case fan to help
draw cooler air into the case? I can't imagine there being a heat problem,
but it might be getting warm inside your case causing whatever themal
monitor is on the card to react accordingly. You are correct in that the fan
is controlled by the card and is supposed to adjust itself depending on
whatever range the manufacturer has determined to be operating temperature.
You may be able to quiet the card by underclocking but you will have to find
a setting that suits you as you will obviosly take a performance hit when
doing this. (Not much of a factor unless you're playing Doom3 or HalfLife2
;^) Here is a link that leads to a pretty detailed page for ATITool.
http://www.techpowerup.com/atitool/

Chris Ryan

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