Bitcoin Forum

Hi, I'm just fooling around with my Radeon 4670 to learn about mining, and I let it mine for a few hours yesterday under clocked at 700mhz (stock speed is 750) because it really doesn't have a good heatsink/fan setup and I was worried about the temp.  Anyway, after a few hours, I checked my temp with aticonfig and it was at 105.5C.  That seems like it's way too hot.  Is there anywhere where I can find a list of safe GPU temps or max GPU temps or something?  Thanks!

At 105 °C you're not mining, you're slowly frying that card.
Nobody in their right mind runs their GPUs at those temperatures.
Believe me, when the GPU-mining craze started some miners did. Since then they either buried or RMAd their dead cards and learned the lesson.

Anything over 100 °C for an extended period of time is a failure waiting to happen.
GPU chipsets are done much the same way as the CPUs. The silicon core can't take more than 100-110 °C for long periods and will degrade fast.

Individuals quite fond of their GPUs don't like going over 80 °C.

The 4670, as a lower mid-end model is simply not designed for usage as extreme as bitcoin mining hence the inadequate cooling.
What hash rate are you getting out of that poor-old thing BTW?

Yeah I was just messing around trying to learn more about mining and bitcoin.  I generally get around 30Mhash/S with this sad old card.  The stock GPU speed is 750Mhz and even underclocked to 700Mhz it still runs at 105C.  I reduced the clock rate to 650Mhz and now it seems to hover around 100C-102C which also lowered the MHash/S to 28ish.

I honestly don't care if I fry this card, it's so old and I have 4x 5830's on the way.  You're right about it not being designed for this kind of load, the heatsink/fan combo is so tiny. 

According to the profitability calculator, I'll make $5 a month if I run this card 24/7, which is clearly not enough to even cover the power costs, lol.  But it's just fun to learn about it and play with flags and stuff to see how mining on linux with an ATI gpu can be.

Have fun with the card then!
Give cgminer a try. One program will take care of the mining, overclocking, and temperature control.

I initially tried cgminer but got a low rate of about 11MHash/S, so I switched to poclbm and now I get ~28MHash/S.  Weird, huh?  Also something I noticed: poclbm gets ~28Mhash/S on windows with NO flags but gets only 23Mhash/S with NO flags on linux.  If I add the -w 32 flag on linux, it gets 28Mhash/S. 

Why is windows mining faster than linux?

different sdk, different conditions.

well my simple suggestion is do whatever  you want with that card, it's cheap and doesn't really do a lot of mining. Push it to the extreme and you will have a pretty clear picture with your next gfx :)

I pushed my 5770 to 1000mhz, giving me about 70C and 220 mh/s. at 960mh/s I get about 65C and 201mh/s.

28 MHash/S isn't really profitable. At the very least, lower your clocks so that you'll still be gaining something by mining (no point in getting your gpu destroyed, and not to mention a few other components lying conveniently nearby   ;) ) If you want stability, try to stay under 70C. After that point, I start getting more stales and weird things start to happen with my display  :-\.

Btw, getting about the same results as simon66, except about 10 extra mh/s at 10 degrees lower temp  :D *but even at 220~230mh/s, it takes a long time to get a single bitcoin!

Cut down on the temps - i personally make it a point never go over 80* for all my cards (5850s, 5970) if i wanna continue mining for over 10 hours. At 105 * the card is slowly dying; maybe clean out the fans and so?

the best thing you can do, if you must fry your card, is simple 2 things:
1) remove very shitty gpu heatsink & fan - replace with cpu heatsink & fan (amd ones are nice) just hold it to your board with zip ties or something that will be able to handle ~80`c
2) get a casefan and glue it onto or near your card blowing onto it - i had an old 8600gt with silentpipe (inadequate) and with a casefan reduced temps by 15`c - i cut out a cd spindle cover & put fan into it, cut holes in side for airflow, put fan+stand in bottom of case pointed at card.

105 degrees is too damn high LOL.

I always aim to keep it below 80 and ideally at 60 degrees to conserve card lifetime !