My XFX 4870 1GB idles at 79 Deg C

I got a new XFX 4870 with 1 GB DDR5. It idles at 79 Deg C. But if i increase the fan speed to 60 % instead of Auto, the temperature comes down to 48 Deg. I want to know whether AMD Ati have designed the chip for such temperatures. Because when i increase the fan speed, the noise level increases.

I guess that if AMD has not increased the Fan speed in auto mode despite reaching 79Deg, it has been designed for such temperatures.

its more likely that you have very poor airflow in your case , recently a friend dropped
25* on idle temp by doing some cable management and adding a few scythe fans to his case. now under load its at 80. Before that is what it would idle at and it would go to 100ish under load. We did also reapply thermal paste.

What case do you have post a pic with the side cover opened. Do you have a fan blowing air on to the card from the side panel.

4870 tend to run hot.....the temps are okay with ur card. Keep the fan speed to 40 or so, increase till u are comfy with the noise level

try running ur gpu by keeping open one side of ur cabinet and then monitor the temps...

Though the ATI cards tend to run hot, idling at 79 is not a good sign. What are tempretures at load? The card will start artifacting at around 100-105, basically anything over 90-95 cant be good.

I would say try the steps suggested by Zloyd or increase fan speeds and live with the higher noise levels, better for your card in the long run.

Test reviews had idles temps hovering around 75-58 but at full load didnt go beyond 85. Its coz of the big heatsink. Well it never hurts to test nyway.

Increase ur fan speed you have to decide betn noise and temp so its ur choice ne ways.

Yeah this is pretty common in the 48xx series.I have a Sapphire 4850 which would idle at 75+.I have the stock fans running at 40-50% which brought it down to ~65.I usually set them to 95% while playing games.Awful noise but I use headphones so not much of a problem.
I wish there was a GO for the Accelero twin turbo bringing down its cost to something a bit more reasonable.
This thing can bring the idle temperatures to less than 50 at least with no change in the existing setup and that too passively i.e. without the fans running.

My sapphire HD 4870 idles at 45c and max goes upto 60c. fan speed is default set at 53%.

^
What cabby do you use?

ive antibiotic cabby with two 120mm high cfm 2000rpm as intake and exhaust, plus the usual side panel intake and a top blow hole fan.

Temps seem fine to me... But do improve the airflow in the cabinet...

ATi cards have high default idle temperature. You have to force the fan to 100% if you want it to run cool. The GPUs are designed to run upto 120-130 degrees under load. They assume you're not going to keep it for more than 2 years anyway.

The life of a chip reduced by half for every 10 degrees increase in temperature. So instead of lasting 10 years it probably lasts 5. GPUs are replaced much more frequently than that, so its a good tradeoff between noise levels and temperature.

Mine runs at 108 degrees under load Burnt my finger many times by touching the copper heat plate (the plate slightly sticks out of the casing in this design).

108c

i started remembering those days when old FX 5950 Ultra used to touch 120c, and then XFX 8600GT electric stoves hit 125c.

i wonder why my 4870 runs this cool@ 45c idle. The heatpipes on the side feels really cool whole time even at load.

btw i think the culprit is the blower in reference cooler, while custom coolers uses FANS. Most cards with blower based cooling [be in ATI or nvidia] runs much hotter.
for eg, EVGA GTX 260 stock with reference cooler [with a blower] runs about 15c hotter than palit factory oced GTX 260 or MSI oced ones.

hey dude gets ome themale paste like arctice cooling mx2 and apply it to your gcard and also if possible get a after market cooler that should bring the temps down significantly ,good cable management and a clean cabby goes a long way when it comes to controlling the temps for your g card