Confusing Radeon HD 7950 Problem (I might be dumb)

[rjm90]

Hi,

For the past few months when I play pc games I noticed a humming/whining sound coming from my graphics card. I looked into it and narrowed it down to what people were saying was "coil whine."

I ignored it because I didn't really think anything of it and I didn't play games that were too gpu intensive. However, for the last few weeks I've been playing ARMA 3 and counter strike and have noticed that ARMA will crash quite frequently shortly after the gpu starts to whine. I decided to monitor the activity levels in AMD Catalyst Control Center and was seeing that even during main menu on ARMA 3 that the activity level was at 99% and the temp was steadily increasing to 80 C - 90 C.

I am not quite sure what to do to fix this and am not even really sure where to begin. I usually play on medium to high settings on games.

If it helps any this is what is inside my computer

Processor: i5-3570k
GPU: Sapphire Radeon HD 7950
MOBO: ASRock Z77 Extreme4
Windows 8.1 64 bit

I downloaded and installed latest amd drivers as well.

Thanks in advance for any insight or help

 

[Elixer]

Coil whine is a problem with pretty much all mid higher end to high end cards these days.
The most you can do is try to turn VSYNC ON in games or the control panel in CCC (force it on), or, you can overclock or underclock just a bit, and see if that helps.

If that doesn't work, then, you can RMA it, and hope for a card that has less coil whine, but, that hardly happens, unless the coil whine is really, really loud.

 

[rjm90]

Coil whine is a problem with pretty much all mid higher end to high end cards these days.
The most you can do is try to turn VSYNC ON in games or the control panel in CCC (force it on), or, you can overclock or underclock just a bit, and see if that helps.

If that doesn't work, then, you can RMA it, and hope for a card that has less coil whine, but, that hardly happens, unless the coil whine is really, really loud.

Thanks for the advice. I will force VSYNC on. However, I don't really have a problem with the noise as much as I do to my games crashing the activity level showing 99% on when I am only on a game main menu. I am also concerned with the temps

 

[monkeydelmagico]

What's your typical FPS in ARMA 3?
Might want to try settings that allow for > 60fps and enable vsync

edit: oops too slow

temps are OK, not great. Might want to try increasing the fan profiles with a utility like MSI afterburner.

As for crashes, do you have the latest game patches and updates?

 

[rjm90]

What's your typical FPS in ARMA 3?
Might want to try settings that allow for > 60fps and enable vsync

edit: oops too slow

temps are OK, not great. Might want to try increasing the fan profiles with a utility like MSI afterburner.

As for crashes, do you have the latest game patches and updates?

Ok I was messing around with the video settings on ARMA 3 and got fraps so I could get what kind of fps I was getting. I played on standard settings (medium) and I was getting 40-50ish fps with vsync off. When I have it on its the same or lower

 

[Face2Face]

80c-90c is too hot for Tahiti. I would give her a good cleaning and replace the TIM.

 

[Hitman928]

Are you sure the whining is coming from a coil and not the fan(s)?

 

[rjm90]

How do I know if it's the fans or coil?

 

[Hitman928]

How do I know if it's the fans or coil?

Activate the manual fan control within catalyst control center, make the fans go faster and slower and see if there's a correlation. Also make sure the fans are spinning as fast as you'd expect for the given fan level.

 

[h9826790]

80c-90c is too hot for Tahiti. I would give her a good cleaning and replace the TIM.

I also have a Sapphire Radeon HD 7950. In my own test (OC + low fan speed), the GPU won't crash until 95C. Anything between 80-90 should not be a problem at all.

 

[Face2Face]

I also have a Sapphire Radeon HD 7950. In my own test (OC + low fan speed), the GPU won't crash until 95C. Anything between 80-90 should not be a problem at all.

His temps were increasing to 90C, who knows what they were when the experienced crash? If you want to run your card 5C from its shut down point; be my guest.

OP - I would monitor your temps in game with MSI Afteburner + the RivaTuner server with the On screen display.

You can learn more about it here - http://www.anandtech.com/show/8589/anandtech-guide-to-video-card-overclocking-software/6

This should give you a better look at whats going on with your temps while in-game.