7970 getting hot and loud

[brandonb]

Hi all,

I've had my 7970 since pretty much launch. But lately I've noticed a lot of fan spin up while gaming. Games that it never happened before. So I started docking the ATI over clock display (from the CCC) to my 2nd monitor when playing games to monitor the heat/fan output.

I'm noticing that I'm getting to almost 90c with nearly 50% fan speed with just 50-70% usage on the card. I tried under clocking the GPU to see if it would help (down to 700mhz from 930mhz or whatever the default was) and it's still pretty bad. I'm sitting at about 40% fan speed and 80c now.

I took it out to clean it and remove dust and the card was hot to the touch throughout the entire beast of a card, and even the monitor cables were hot to the touch. There was not much dust in the card but I cleaned it up anyhow. Didn't make much of a difference.

Is there anything I can do? I'm about to scrap the card and downgrade to a 7870 or something similar because I can't bear the 40-50% fan speed anymore. Also which cards have the best coolers that are silent?

 

[CakeMonster]

There are plenty of good cards out there with better and more quiet cooling solutions. You don't need to downgrade either, you can get 7970s and 780s which are very quiet.

My vanilla 7970 seems more noisy too these days, but the temperatures are not as bad as yours. It will typically not go much above 40% on the fan, usually at high 30s. But damn, that is still loud. I think it is louder than it used to be, but I can't say for sure.

Any others with vanilla 7970s with this experience?

 

[ruhtraeel]

Hi all,

I've had my 7970 since pretty much launch. But lately I've noticed a lot of fan spin up while gaming. Games that it never happened before. So I started docking the ATI over clock display (from the CCC) to my 2nd monitor when playing games to monitor the heat/fan output.

I'm noticing that I'm getting to almost 90c with nearly 50% fan speed with just 50-70% usage on the card. I tried under clocking the GPU to see if it would help (down to 700mhz from 930mhz or whatever the default was) and it's still pretty bad. I'm sitting at about 40% fan speed and 80c now.

I took it out to clean it and remove dust and the card was hot to the touch throughout the entire beast of a card, and even the monitor cables were hot to the touch. There was not much dust in the card but I cleaned it up anyhow. Didn't make much of a difference.

Is there anything I can do? I'm about to scrap the card and downgrade to a 7870 or something similar because I can't bear the 40-50% fan speed anymore. Also which cards have the best coolers that are silent?

This might sound weird and unrelated, but check to see if your system has any viruses.

I once had a random .dll virus that I got, and it caused my GPU to always be at 100%. I noticed it when the GPU's fans started spinning at 100%, and when I checked the temperatures, they were at around 75-80 (this was with my 5870's).

The computer would start off regularly, but after around 5 minutes, the fans would continue to spin up until they were at max speed.

After I deleted that file and restarted, everything went back to normal.

 

[zebrax2]

I would try replacing the old thermal paste on it

 

[Piotrsama]

As mentioned, check GPU usage to see if you got the Bitcoin virus.
If not, replace thermal paste.

 

[brandonb]

This might sound weird and unrelated, but check to see if your system has any viruses.

I run virus checks regularly, and event root kit checkers. Do these viruses show on the CCC over clock screen and display activity? When I'm sitting at desktop, the % of card usage is always 0. Unless the viruses mask the percentage of card usage?

I will check again when I get back from work.

 

[ruhtraeel]

I run virus checks regularly, and event root kit checkers. Do these viruses show on the CCC over clock screen and display activity? When I'm sitting at desktop, the % of card usage is always 0. Unless the viruses mask the percentage of card usage?

I will check again when I get back from work.

If it shows 0%, I don't know. When I had the virus, in CCC, it always showed my GPU usage as 100%.

 

[tweakboy]

THe fan seems busted. Take fan speed to 20 then put it at 100 percent,,, if your hearing noises,, its probably the fan or fans on the card. RMA it.