Coil whine with GTX 670 FTW?

[Cyborg]

So running WEI, I noticed high pitched noise when the GPU gets fully loaded. Have had this card for five days now. Just noticed it though (maybe was there before as well, don't know). I've heard this may be what people refer to as a "coil whine". Core temp goes up to 61 deg C.

Anybody experiencing this issue with this card? Not sure if this issue is concerning enough to warrant a return.

 

[Termie]

Yes, that's probably coil whine, but unless it does it in games, do not return or rma it. Any card will do that in WEI. It forces a very high synthetic frame rate.

 

[blackened23]

Yes, that's probably coil whine, but unless it does it in games, do not return or rma it. Any card will do that in WEI. It forces a very high synthetic frame rate.

No, any card will not do that in WEI. I've had quite a few cards and most of them do not emit coil whine, and if you have a card with coil whine it will generally always whine when you turn vsync off. I would RMA it and get a non reference card, it is certainly not something to put up with for a 400$ investment.

 

[cmdrdredd]

the 670 ftw is already non-reference as far as 670s go, using the GTX 680 PCB and fan.

I don't have coil whine on my card though, but do you notice it in any other situation with vsync off?

 

[Termie]

No, any card will not do that in WEI. I've had quite a few cards and most of them do not emit coil whine, and if you have a card with coil whine it will generally always whine when you turn vsync off. I would RMA it and get a non reference card, it is certainly not something to put up with for a 400$ investment.

Well, most of mine have in WEI as well as furmark, but never in games.

My point is that whine in WEI alone is not a valid reason for RMA'ing.

 

[toyota]

I had absolutely zero coil whine with a gtx670 ftw.

 

[blackened23]

Well, most of mine have in WEI as well as furmark, but never in games.

My point is that whine in WEI alone is not a valid reason for RMA'ing.

If you get whine in WEI you will get whine with vsync off. Every menu screen will have it, and older games with high framerates will have it. Sure you can get rid if POSSIBLY with vsync but what if you have a 120hz screen? What if you dont like vsync? Why put up with that crap for 400$? If a GPU causes coil whine it will happen with high framerates, and that definitely will not be limited to only WEI. I still play a bunch of older games that have 100+ framerates, and on such a card that would cause whine.

 

[blackened23]

the 670 ftw is already non-reference as far as 670s go, using the GTX 680 PCB and fan.

I don't have coil whine on my card though, but do you notice it in any other situation with vsync off?

Not reference? Its still the same crap blower fan that all reference fans use but it is a few cm wider. Big deal. When I think non reference I think of actual REAL aftermarket cooling such as TF4, gigabyte windforce, etc.

 

[Cyborg]

So after doing a little more testing, I have determined that the coil noise is emitting from both power supply (corsair hx 750) and the 670 FTW - this whine is coupled. This makes it harder to say whether the PSU or GPU is initiating it. The whine seems louder on GPU. And the frequency of the whine varies based on the exact algorithm that WEI is running when assessing the graphics.

If I get the GPU exchanged, not sure that will fix the issue. But not all FTW owners seem to notice this. So either they aren't noticing it, or I am one off.

 

[blackened23]

So after doing a little more testing, I have determined that the coil noise is emitting from both power supply (corsair hx 750) and the 670 FTW - this whine is coupled. This makes it harder to say whether the PSU or GPU is initiating it. The whine seems louder on GPU. And the frequency of the whine varies based on the exact algorithm that WEI is running when assessing the graphics.

If I get the GPU exchanged, not sure that will fix the issue. But not all FTW owners seem to notice this. So either they aren't noticing it, or I am one off.

Do you notice it when you turn vsync off in games? On loading screens and such?

I'd get a new PSU first off, and then revisit the question. I'd assume you would still be in the GPU return window by the time you get a new PSU.

 

[Cyborg]

Not reference? Its still the same crap blower fan that all reference fans use but it is a few cm wider. Big deal. When I think non reference I think of actual REAL aftermarket cooling such as TF4, gigabyte windforce, etc.

How does fan factor in here with the coil whine? Core temp is barely over mid 60's and the fan isn't even running 50%.

Aren't both FTW and gigabyte using the reference 680 PCBs with different cooling?

I am wondering if they both also use the same caps and inductors as well as reference 680. If its a design flaw and they both have the same power components, this issue may still be present.

Or I just got a component or two that are sub par in mine.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Not reference? Its still the same crap blower fan that all reference fans use but it is a few cm wider. Big deal. When I think non reference I think of actual REAL aftermarket cooling such as TF4, gigabyte windforce, etc.

Do you even know what a Reference GTX 670 is? You attitude and description tell me no.

Also here's a little hint: the fan doesn't have anything to do with coil whine.

OP: the components on the GTX 670 from Gigabyte's Windforce card are probably mostly the same but they may use different caps and small parts. You'd have to have them side by side to tell for certain. Having said that it is possible to have coil whine on any card and not find anyone else who experiences it or only find a couple mentions of such an "issue" if it really bothers you then you can probably return it, if it doesn't and you can live with it it's not anything to be concerned about.

I think your PSU would be replaced under warranty if it's not very old too.

 

[Cyborg]

Do you notice it when you turn vsync off in games? On loading screens and such?

I'd get a new PSU first off, and then revisit the question. I'd assume you would still be in the GPU return window by the time you get a new PSU.

I just started to notice this last night with WEI after a fresh windows install.

The whine is there with or without vsync. Haven't tried any games yet after this last install and since when I noticed this issue.

 

[Cyborg]

Do you even know what a Reference GTX 670 is? You attitude and description tell me no.

Also here's a little hint: the fan doesn't have anything to do with coil whine.

OP: the components on the GTX 670 from Gigabyte's Windforce card are probably mostly the same but they may use different caps and small parts. You'd have to have them side by side to tell for certain. Having said that it is possible to have coil whine on any card and not find anyone else who experiences it or only find a couple mentions of such an "issue" if it really bothers you then you can probably return it, if it doesn't and you can live with it it's not anything to be concerned about.

I think your PSU would be replaced under warranty if it's not very old too.

I just built this pc earlier this week from entirely brand new components. My only major concern with this issue is that it seems to be power related under high load. If there is a whine in the acoustic range, just means that there is some kind of electrical or electro-mechanical resonance in 5-20 kHz range. This could affect the quality of power supplied to the GPU (can't tell without scoping it). But since I hear this from both PSU and GPU, I can only really find the problem if I get replacement for both and try the four combination to see which unit is the noise source.

Just a painful process to return and wait.

 

[Cyborg]

Here's the same coil whine I heard but on a Gigabyte GTX 670. Guess its not an isolated incident.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HxFBHdtvGI

 

[cmdrdredd]

It can happen. My 6950 did it before sometimes too but not loud enough to be a big deal to me.

 

[Majcric]

I just built this pc earlier this week from entirely brand new components. My only major concern with this issue is that it seems to be power related under high load. If there is a whine in the acoustic range, just means that there is some kind of electrical or electro-mechanical resonance in 5-20 kHz range. This could affect the quality of power supplied to the GPU (can't tell without scoping it). But since I hear this from both PSU and GPU, I can only really find the problem if I get replacement for both and try the four combination to see which unit is the noise source.

Just a painful process to return and wait.

Any chance you might have another GPU at hand, something with similiar power draw. If I were diagnosing this I'd want to be absolutely sure my ears weren't playing tricks on me. In other words, the GPU is all at fault, or vice-versa. While it could be both it seems more than likely it's one or the other.

I couldn't listen here at work.

 

[taltamir]

Well, most of mine have in WEI as well as furmark, but never in games.

I managed to get coil whine in a game, neverwinter nights 1 opening screen is a 2D image rendered in 3d and with vsync off according to game engine.
This resulted in FPS in the thousands and caused coil whine.
Forcing vsync on for nwn.exe in the driver solved the issue.

My point is that whine in WEI alone is not a valid reason for RMA'ing.

I agree.
If it happens in a game or a program, then don't put up with it.
If it happens in bench-marking then meh. Coil whine is just an annoying sound it does not (necessarily) mean the card is about to fail.

 

[The_Golden_Man]

Coil whine sucks. RMA the card.

 

[taltamir]

Coil whine sucks. RMA the card.

It ONLY happens to him in WEI.

 

[Cyborg]

The card's only a week old. I bought another set of the same PSU and GPU to diagnose this problem. Will try to see if this happens to all of them. At the least, I will find out if its a design flaw or component flaw. Or just a normal operation under high frames/sec for this combination of PSU/GPU.

As its related to high frame rates, obviously won't occur in most new games where frame rates are limited based on high-end game settings.

Its a different sort of stress test, hah.

 

[digitaldurandal]

I have had 4 FTWs and one has coil whine. I am keeping it because it is not that bad and only happens for me above about 150 FPS or so and because I already had to wait to replace my first two - I do not feel like waiting agian.

 

[Cyborg]

So I got the second card, and it turns out it has the same coil whine at the same volume. I guess it's either part of the design or it's the PSU. My second PSU is coming tomorrow so I will be testing that out then.

On a side note, I wanted to see how these two FTW cards compared. The new one came clocked 54 MHz faster than my original. So I boosted my original card's GPU clock by the same amount so they would both operate at the same clock frequency. When benching with Heaven, both cards scored almost exactly the same (1316/1317), but the new card was drawing 5% additional power. Both ran with the same fan profile as well. Guess I will be keeping my original.

 

[Rvenger]

So I got the second card, and it turns out it has the same coil whine at the same volume. I guess it's either part of the design or it's the PSU. My second PSU is coming tomorrow so I will be testing that out then.

On a side note, I wanted to see how these two FTW cards compared. The new one came clocked 54 MHz faster than my original. So I boosted my original card's GPU clock by the same amount so they would both operate at the same clock frequency. When benching with Heaven, both cards scored almost exactly the same (1316/1317), but the new card was drawing 5% additional power. Both ran with the same fan profile as well. Guess I will be keeping my original.

As you will with every high end card you will buy. I could have told you that all my cards as of late had coil whine on WEI. I owned a HD 5850, EVGA GTX 460, EVGA GTX 480, Vanilla EVGA GTX 670, MSI GTX 670, EVGA GTX 670 FTW, Gigabyte GTX 680, Asus GTX 680, MSI HD 7970 OC, Sapphire HD 7970 OC. The AMD cards were the absolute worst having coil whine in every game. The Nvidia cards were only present on WEI. It had a siren type of pitch when WEI was run.

I have never owned a card that didn't whine on WEI or in some gaming instances.

 

[cmdrdredd]

I haven't noticed any but maybe I can't hear it over my fans