Is this normal GPU behavior?

[earwicker7]

A little background... I just installed a new set of GPUs (HD7970) running in Crossfire. I never used Catalyst Control Center until now (I only used the drivers, because I believe there was a compatibility issue with MSI Afterburner and CCC at one point, and I just kind of never jumped back into using it), so this problem may be related to CCC and not my cards.

The behavior that I never saw on my HD5970s (again, I wasn't using CCC, just the drivers) was that when only one card is being used (2d apps), MSI Afterburner and CCC show a temperature of zero degrees, as well as core clock and memory clock values of zero. Is this normal? I'm thinking that maybe CCC shuts down one of the cards completely when Crossfire is being used, and I just didn't see this before, but I want to make sure it's not a defect so that I can return it if necessary.

Thanks!

 

[GhOsT1321]

The 7970 is quite interesting. If one is idle, then it will turn it's fan completely off, it might even power down. I'm guessing that the reports of 0 are inaccurate and should be fixed with a newer driver. The cards do turn off parts of them, this could cause your programs to inaccurately read the card settings too.
Very interesting card...
More info below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVVoaaYlvvI

 

[Sean W.]

Hey Ghost, do you know if there is any feature of the card you have to enable for the fan to turn off at idle? or does it just do it?

 

[GhOsT1321]

Hey Ghost, do you know if there is any feature of the card you have to enable for the fan to turn off at idle? or does it just do it?

If the draw is minimal enough, it will do it by default. Also, 4 crossfired 7970s consume less than 30 watts at idle
For comparison, my card uses about 16 watts at idle, and that's just for one card.