Potential Problems with Radeon HD 4870/90: Additional Information

Last week we were reporting about the potential issue of the voltage regulator modules installed installed on Radeon HD 4870 and 4890. In summary, some benchmark procedures bypass all protections installed by the manufacturer and automatically push all components to their limits. As a consequence, the GPU automatically switch off after some time to preserve its integrity. AMD was not expecting such procedures and did not install any additional systems to block such usage as no games nor GPGPU are currently requiring so much computing power.
Such benchmarking procedures might push manufacturers in the future to select component, especially VRM, with a higher quality level to ensure that future GPGPU requirements do not put graphic cards and GPU on their knees.