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Coil Whine Query

starting to think i need a list of non coil whine cards !

ASUS DC 7970 - get the TOP version so the voltage control is unlocked
MSI Lightning

Very rare chance of coil whine, with all the others it's hit and miss, as they are effectively "reference" boards either fully or to a very large degree.
 
Yes it can, and it does go away with time as well, running Heaven speeds this *bedding in* process up.
3 nights (10 hours each time) of heaven bedding in made no difference to my 2nd VTX3D.
The 1st card was even worse, but I only put up with it for 5 days, so not a great deal of time admittedly.

They both might of got better over time, but wasn't willing to take the risk, and certainly neither sounded like they would.
 
I found that the noise got quieter with past cards I had, one card reduced to being silent after a couple of weeks of normal usage. The noise, when it did occur, only happened with high fps rates.

I deliberately avoided the 7970 because of this issue though it was my first choice for this gen. I had never encountered this kind of thing until I had a GTX 285 and am surprised such a thing happens with such expensive gear.
 
To check:

Do you play games with headphones on? Surely if you do, you can't hear it when it's whining anyway unless you take them off and listen for it?
 
Thought I would give an update, still buzzing away.:(

Not looking good in regards to swapping for a 7970 anyway.

Lol, what varnish do you recommend Dave?

Grab an MSI 7970 OC tommy. Looking around at reviews of them on retailer sites here and in the us there seems to be no mention of coil whine and they seem to be on the whole, very good clockers.
 
To check:

Do you play games with headphones on? Surely if you do, you can't hear it when it's whining anyway unless you take them off and listen for it?

It's a sort of stepping frequency, hard to explain, but the pitch of the whine changes with different loads on the gpu ingame.

I use both headphones and speakers, while gaming you can't hear it with headphones on, but it's more a concern whether the whine will progress through time to be either a higher pitched whine that will annoy the hell out of me/others, or if the frequency changes further.

If I'm using speakers, the wrong frequency will still get through no matter how loud the speakers are(in comparison to what's comfortable to my ears).

However, it's not just games Rusty, HD movies are doing it too, you don't want to hear a whine during silent parts of films and when the ball and chain realises there's a whine, then I will have another 'whine' to deal with.

Actual performance of the gpu has been ok, generally down in 2D gaming, but up in a few titles in 3D, so it's a mixed bag there.

Zero core is well broken, it goes along the line of spin down/spin up/spin down, etc, which is actually louder than spinning away at idle, but whether I have a background program interfering(so I could be being harsh on it) idhac, as I'm leaning on sending it back, I don't think I'll investigate further though.

Grab an MSI 7970 OC tommy. Looking around at reviews of them on retailer sites here and in the us there seems to be no mention of coil whine and they seem to be on the whole, very good clockers.

Probably keep what I have tbh and wait and see what's next on the horizon from both teams.
 
its insulating varnish,its what they use? but yeah rma would be declined if they spotted it,best to dsr it for another card save messing?
 
Coil whine will lessen over time if it's caused by the GPU. If it's because of a PSU/power issue it won't, and it'll probably do it on every replacement card. As was suggested earlier from Gregs link, add a little volts and overclock so the electrical frequency is different to see how it effects the whine.
 
Sorry matt, to be clear, keeping a hold of the 69's.:)

@Dave,

Thanks, if the WF was coming in at the same kind of offer as the 480 SOCs last year, I would add the volts quite happily as I would be getting a killer gpu for the price, since it's more or less full price, imo the whine is devaluing the cards worth to what I think I should get for my value for money, if you know where I'm coming from.:)



In an earlier post, I said I was 100% sure it wasn't the PSU, due to my 69's pulling more power than a single 7970, I may be off the mark as there is a possibility the PSU can't deliver the power required for one card that singularly pulls more W's, than what one 6950>70 pulls.

That then leaves me in the position of 'maybe' having to pull out a perfectly good 760W Seasonic-X to replace it with another psu that can deliver enough juice-which isn't going to hapen.

By the way thanks for all the info/help guys.
 
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