Asus HD7770 puzzler

[vbuggy]

I got a DirectCU II HD7770 to put into a casual use PC. The main reason was that it came up in googling as one of the quietest cards around of a reasonable upper-entry power.

Or did I misread it and it said "the quietest AMD cards around"?

Cuz I swear it's noticeably noisier than e.g. The GTX 580 DirectCU II, which doesn't make much sense.

Can I do anything about it?

Thanks

 

[Eureka]

It really shouldn't considering it's a lower powered card, but I suppose that the 580 DCU2 has two fans and a bigger heatsink. Is it noisier overall or just in idle? In idle, I would assume the DCU2 would be quieter just because of the fan and heatsink size.

 

[vbuggy]

Yeah, I assumed the same thing re the two fans, and there are benchmarks showing it to be pretty much whisper-quiet.

Idle in Windows 8 running a Viewsonic TD2340 at FHD. Could it be an 8 driver issue?

 

[vbuggy]

... so yeah - definitely more of a droning base-note to the sound of the PC overall. With a dual-fan DirectCU II the PC was way quieter than e.g. a Mac Pro. Now it's noisier. I just don't get it.

 

[Soulkeeper]

what temperatures are you getting ?
can you adjust the fan speed ?

 

[vbuggy]

No idea. I just installed it and downloaded the latest drivers. I'll have a look.

I mean though... this is all at essentially idle. I do little but run Metro apps on this particular PC.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

... so yeah - definitely more of a droning base-note to the sound of the PC overall. With a dual-fan DirectCU II the PC was way quieter than e.g. a Mac Pro. Now it's noisier. I just don't get it.

Could be low quality fans, or maybe it's just defective.

The cooler looks grossly overpowered for the card itself.

 

[vbuggy]

GPU temp: 28C.
Fan: 1010RPM

 

[vbuggy]

Could be low quality fans, or maybe it's just defective.

The cooler looks grossly overpowered for the card itself.

I've had good-to-excellent results with DirectCU's on NVidia GPU's over reference (few of which are droners to start with these days), and in reviews I've read the 7770 DCII apparently registered very low for noise, which is why I picked it (allied to the bang for the buck, and that I got free Far Cry 3 with it). And the sound is not a failing-fan sound, it's a not-quiet fan sound.

But the DCII reviews for AMD cards seem to be much more hit & miss than for NVidia, and unfortunately my AMD experience is usually limited to whatever piece of undercooled, underclocked or superannuated cards that Apple ships with their piles of crud. So I'm confused.

 

[Soulkeeper]

you should be able to setup your own custom fan profile
have the fan spin as low as possible during idle

 

[vbuggy]

Weirdly it seems to have calmed down a bit without me doing anything. I'm on it now and while the noise level is still higher than with the NVidia dual-fan DCII implementation, it's only a tiny bit higher.

Still a puzzler though. Might mess around with fans as Soulkeeper sez.

 

[jaedaliu]

GPU temp: 28C.
Fan: 1010RPM

I'd look into turning down that fan speed.

 

[vbuggy]

What's the max case for this GPU?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

What's the max case for this GPU?

Dunno what max safe is, but benchmarks/reviews indicate 70-something is normal for load temps.

 

[vbuggy]

And 'nominal' idles?