How noisy are 5870s?

Vertigo · 12 Jan 2010 at 11:16

How noisy are these cards? More importantly, do they produce an annoying whine when the fan cranks up to full speed under load?

I'm currently contemplating going back to air from water cooling at the moment, as I can't be doing with the hassle of it any more and the novelty value has worn off a bit. My main concern however, is how much racket an air-cooled high-end graphics card will produce as the racket generated by my GTX280 is what finally drove me to water in the first place.

DeadMan · 12 Jan 2010 at 11:17

They can be noisy but so far its been fairly silent

Alex R · 12 Jan 2010 at 11:44

Quieter than my old 3870x2 that's for sure!

To be honest I think it is very quiet, it doesn't seem to get that hot.

R088ieS86 · 12 Jan 2010 at 12:05

Got a 5870 running in a Coolermaster RC-1000 and you can barely hear the whole thing let alone the card!

antran · 12 Jan 2010 at 12:10

is pretty quiet, cant even here it in the living room.

AgedIdiot · 12 Jan 2010 at 12:35

Vertigo1 said:
How noisy are these cards? More importantly, do they produce an annoying whine when the fan cranks up to full speed under load?

Have found mine (xfx 5870) very quiet - much better than the 260GS or the 4870 I had before.

On start up it will occasionally run @ 100% which is noisy but the drivers soon calm it down. I have not found the fan noise at all distracting/noticable when gaming. I have not checked , as I have not felt the need to check , the fan speed - certainly not heard it!!

Not felt need to overclock so cannot comment on effect of clocking on fan speed/noise.

lionheart766 · 12 Jan 2010 at 12:39

Agree with all above, my 5870 is really quiet; barely hear it.

ebilcake · 12 Jan 2010 at 12:40

It's quiet under normal conditions, once you overclock the fanspeed does pick-up allot.

Soylent Red · 12 Jan 2010 at 12:49

I can't hear mine over the whirr of my Noctua NH-U12P SE2.

My 5870 fan only ever hits 100% when the card is about 85 degrees C during an intense burn session of Furmark.

Nick1881 · 12 Jan 2010 at 13:35

What are the drivers like for these now? Any bugs?

Soylent Red · 12 Jan 2010 at 14:43

mr_x_plosion said:
What are the drivers like for these now? Any bugs?

From my limited experience of my new 5870, the hardware seems buggier than the drivers.

unknownsock · 12 Jan 2010 at 17:17

Never had any problems since release

And under normal conditions its fine.

bobert50 · 12 Jan 2010 at 17:20

When i had my saphire 5870 i was really surprised by the lack of noise!

I thought it was pretty quiet, a lot quieter than them stupid fans on some 8800gt's and lets not even joke about the old x1950xt's :eek:

Even under heavy load on crysis etc, any noise you can hear isn't an annoying whine either..can't see it being a problem to many people tbh.

Kind of makes the vapour-x a bit pointless this time around imo...

Vertigo · 12 Jan 2010 at 17:41

See a lot of people saying it's fine "under normal operating conditions" or similar, and that it's only loud when booting and the fan is at 100% for a short period.

Question is, what exactly are normal conditions. Do you mean it's fine until you start playing a game which works it hard, then it gets loud, or the fan never gets near 100% even under intensive gaming?

(Thanks for replies so far

)

Soylent Red · 12 Jan 2010 at 18:05

Vertigo1 said:
See a lot of people saying it's fine "under normal operating conditions" or similar, and that it's only loud when booting and the fan is at 100% for a short period.

Question is, what exactly are normal conditions. Do you mean it's fine until you start playing a game which works it hard, then it gets loud, or the fan never gets near 100% even under intensive gaming?

(Thanks for replies so far )

Unless you play the game muted you shouldn't hear it

Vir · 12 Jan 2010 at 18:24

I hope it's less noisy then my 4870, they can be very loud.

Nick1881 · 12 Jan 2010 at 19:11

Vir said:
I hope it's less noisy then my 4870, they can be very loud.

You should hear a 4870X2, like a helicopter taking off.

Vertigo · 12 Jan 2010 at 19:29

Soylent Red said:
Unless you play the game muted you shouldn't hear it

I tend to play games with headphones on as there are others in the room and it's annoying them with loud whining fans that concerns me

arc@css · 12 Jan 2010 at 20:13

mr_x_plosion said:
You should hear a 4870X2, like a helicopter taking off.

They don't call them leaf blowers for nothin'.

coxmattycox · 12 Jan 2010 at 20:17

Can't say it's any louder than my 8800gtx, although if you manually set the fan speed to 100% it is like a jet taking of!