• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

R9 290 making high pitched noise.

Associate
Joined
26 Oct 2013
Posts
365
This developed after 1 day of installing the card. It is most prevalent if i try to run 3DMark 'run all tests', and starts almost immediately.

I just ran bf3 for 5 minutes, and the sound appeared at a lower volume, and not as high pitched. This also does not seem to happen in FurMark burn in test at 1080p with 8xMSAA or AA off.

Any ideas? IS this coil whine? Is it due to my power supple not being sufficient? Would a sound sample help anyone diagnose this? Thanks!
 
coil whine, it's normal but if it's bothering you that much then return it for another one.

The noise usually gets worse at high fps, e.g. game menus.
 
turning on vsync helps

in game menus its pretty much the norm,but shouldn't be heard in actual gameplay
 
Well, it seems it only happens on the first 2 tests in 3dmark basic. So I would assume this seems to happen when there are stupid amounts of fps going on, which would also explain menus.
 
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-7990-review-benchmark,3486-2.html
AMD explained it to me as an artifact of oscillation between heavy and light workloads, where current draw spikes and dips, causing ceramic capacitors and the PCB itself to vibrate. The volume and tone of this phenomenon vary according to the task you’re performing, but it was noticeable enough during our real-world game testing with Bakersfield-based volunteers that several asked me to explain what was happening.

The solution is to turn on v-sync, capping the frame rate and preventing those highly variable loads. I don’t think it’s particularly ideal to have to use v-sync, but there it is.

There's not much you can do if you get an affected card (reference ones are commonly affected due to cheaper parts but non-reference are by no means immune), people say it can disappear but I've never experienced it... perhaps they just get used to it and manage to blank it out.

I doubt it developed either you probably just didn't notice it on day 1.
 
Last edited:
All reference cards I have owned did it. The only cards that didn't were

7970 direct Cuil
VTX3D 7999 2012 edition.

I regret selling that VTX3D 7990 tbh.

This new 290x dies it but it's much less apparent
 
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-7990-review-benchmark,3486-2.html


There's not much you can do if you get an affected card (reference ones are commonly affected due to cheaper parts but non-reference are by no means immune), people say it can disappear but I've never experienced it... perhaps they just get used to it and manage to blank it out.

I doubt it developed either you probably just didn't notice it on day 1.

It literally only happens at unusually high frame rates atm. Eg 1000+ in ice storm and cloud gate
 
Back
Top Bottom