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NVIDIA GTX 970 OWNERS THREAD

"i guess there is even lots who just think its the norm " ... unluckily it is a fact of life. It's just that "hopefully" in a lot (most one would hope) cases the sound produced is outside the range audible by the human ear.

I'm sure an electrical engineer would explain it better than me. But the main culprit is if a coil is poorly damped / secured to the PCB. Hence why adding a blob of some sticky substance to the offending coil can either reduce, or change the pitch of the noise (but not totally eliminate it). A manufacturing fault? or quality control issue issue?. But even then, a successful RMA will probably depend on how bad it is.

But the real killer (to quote good old Wikipedia) is:
"or if the resonant frequency of the coil is close to the resonant frequency of the electric circuit." and can't see that there is much you can do about that. This last point is why a different mobo / PSU combination can cause a different result (IE. make it better, or even worse).

If someone with more extensive electronic experience wants to jump in here, by all means.
 
Dude said:
Give Gigabyte OC Guru 2 a go , that has an option to offset the voltage minimum & maximum values.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip but I've tried that and the changing the voltages in OC Guru (max and min) do nothing, voltages stay at default on both cards.
 
mikeo said:
"i guess there is even lots who just think its the norm " ... unluckily it is a fact of life. It's just that "hopefully" in a lot (most one would hope) cases the sound produced is outside the range audible by the human ear.

I'm sure an electrical engineer would explain it better than me. But the main culprit is if a coil is poorly damped / secured to the PCB. Hence why adding a blob of some sticky substance to the offending coil can either reduce, or change the pitch of the noise (but not totally eliminate it). A manufacturing fault? or quality control issue issue?. But even then, a successful RMA will probably depend on how bad it is.

But the real killer (to quote good old Wikipedia) is:
"or if the resonant frequency of the coil is close to the resonant frequency of the electric circuit." and can't see that there is much you can do about that. This last point is why a different mobo / PSU combination can cause a different result (IE. make it better, or even worse).

If someone with more extensive electronic experience wants to jump in here, by all means.
Click to expand...

in my case i noticed it straight away with in minutes of it been delivered to me... and i got straight onto the place i bought it from.. they got me to do some tests on it (heaven/3dmark) once under load it was there, but the chances are lots wouldn't have heard it with the card i got..as my case sits less than a foot away from my ear..on the desk. how audible does it need to be before a change of card or refund is giving i wonder......
 
Smok3alot said:
in my case i noticed it straight away with in minutes of it been delivered to me... and i got straight onto the place i bought it from.. they got me to do some tests on it (heaven/3dmark) once under load it was there, but the chances are lots wouldn't have heard it with the card i got..as my case sits less than a foot away from my ear..on the desk. how audible does it need to be before a change of card or refund is giving i wonder......
Click to expand...

Excuse me if you've tried this. But sometimes stressing the card for an extended period (loop Heaven for several hours) can bed the components in on a PCB. Really just speeding up the natural process that would happen over a number of weeks.

This is not a bad little write up:
http://www.ukgamingcomputers.co.uk/capacitor-squeal-coil-whine-explained-a-63.html

If I was you, I would definitely try your graphics card in another PC and see how it sounds.

Unluckily, your case sounds like it's borderline for an RMA. Though pretty much depends on the company that you bought it from and their attitude to this sort of thing.

Good luck.
 
If you can hear the whine with the case close RMA... or even better if you can hear the whine immediately (as it is the case with 970s) just return it withing the 14 days as by the law no shop can refuse to refund the card.

Nvidia is lucky that AMD has no rival cards out at the same time...
 
almighty15 said:
Yes matey I had an RMA approved and drove down as didn't want to do the 3-4 days wait if I did it by post.
Click to expand...

Ta :)
Still havent received my rma details etc, so have asked bailey if its ok for me to drop in, at a time convenient to ocuk.
Think they will reject it due to this whole "coil whine is normal unless excessively loud" etc
It audible stood by pc, but mainly when closer to pc
 
Trustdesa said:
If you can hear the whine with the case close RMA... or even better if you can hear the whine immediately (as it is the case with 970s) just return it withing the 14 days as by the law no shop can refuse to refund the card.

Nvidia is lucky that AMD has no rival cards out at the same time...
Click to expand...

And then someone else will end up with a whiney card? If is bad, people should RMA it. No reason to let it pass to the next unlucky fella.
 
Trustdesa said:
If you can hear the whine with the case close RMA... or even better if you can hear the whine immediately (as it is the case with 970s) just return it withing the 14 days as by the law no shop can refuse to refund the card.

Nvidia is lucky that AMD has no rival cards out at the same time...
Click to expand...

Wrong. The DSR has been replaced by the Consumer Contract Regulations (CCR), you can return it, but, if it's not a fault then you will be charged a fee from the refund.
 
Last edited:
Wizzfizz said:
Wrong. The DSR has been replaced by the Consumer Contract Regulations (CCR), you can return it, but, if it's not a fault then you will be charged a fee from the refund.
Click to expand...

Problem OCUK have is that it still states a 'Full Refund' on the support page with no mention of CCR, so to someone who looks at there support page will be expecting a 'full refund' as OCUK are advertising it.

So they might have issues with it.
 
WalderX said:
Howbout "force contact voltage" in AB?
Click to expand...

Nope, nothing again. Apparently voltage options in OC software doesn't do anything on a lot of the 970/980 cards. People keep saying "I've added +37mv" but I wonder if they've actually checked the voltage reading in gpu-z, as it makes no difference for me.
 
amigafan2003 said:
Nope, nothing again. Apparently voltage options in OC software doesn't do anything on a lot of the 970/980 cards. People keep saying "I've added +37mv" but I wonder if they've actually checked the voltage reading in gpu-z, as it makes no difference for me.
Click to expand...

Ah ok - I've never tried that option just thought it might be what you were after.

My gigabyte allows +25mV (jumps from 1.225v to 1.250v in GPU-z and afterburner readings). It wont go any higher than 1.250v with the vOP flag kicking in. Stock load voltage is slightly higher than others I have seen, this is due to the ASIC quality of my chip being quite low at 63%.

I had another of these G1 970's with an ASIC quality of 72% and the stock load voltage was lower at 1.218, however the memory didn't like anything higher than 7600 or so which was odd as my current one can do 8100+
 
amigafan2003 said:
Nope, nothing again. Apparently voltage options in OC software doesn't do anything on a lot of the 970/980 cards. People keep saying "I've added +37mv" but I wonder if they've actually checked the voltage reading in gpu-z, as it makes no difference for me.
Click to expand...

have you raised your theory with nvidia (forums or whatever)? i posted on the geforce forums about my probs with d3 but i haven't seen a lot of talk about 'power state' lag anywhere.
 
My MSI seems to flicker to a black screen and back again every so often. I'm not sure what is causing it. I hope new drivers come out so I can see if it is indeed a driver issue.

I have two monitors and a projector attached, running stock clocks.
 
I get black screen every so often on my Gigabyte, mainly when the monitors come out of standby. They come on then go off for a few secs then come back on, minor inconvenience but its there alright !

Surprised we've not had drivers TBH with Borderlands coming out, its usually well supported.
 
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