GTX970 Coil whine issue continues to grow[PCPer]

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Mem

Lifer
Apr 23, 2000
21,476
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Leyawiin

Diamond Member
Nov 11, 2008
3,204
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at the moment the main card with coil whine issue and MAIN topic of this thread is 970.

Nice try but no cookie ;) .

FotM is the reason why. /shrug My HD 7950 (R9 280) has it. Wear headphones while gaming so its pretty much unnoticeable.
 

Mem

Lifer
Apr 23, 2000
21,476
13
81
FotM is the reason why. /shrug My HD 7950 (R9 280) has it. Wear headphones while gaming so its pretty much unnoticeable.


I don't wear headphones,I've 5:1 speaker setup and PC is right next to me,if I did get coil whine issue on any card I would not keep it since I like a quiet PC.

Getting back to main topic I'm still surprised how this slipped through QA,lots of 970 owners seem to have serious whine issue on both sides of the pond,yes some don't but that does not help those that do.

Side note:I don't remember reading any coil whine issues from the major website reviews of 970.
 
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Cerb

Elite Member
Aug 26, 2000
17,484
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FotM is the reason why. /shrug My HD 7950 (R9 280) has it. Wear headphones while gaming so its pretty much unnoticeable.
AKG 271 mkIIs are not enough, for mine. FotM is not the reason. That it's really bad on some samples, and not easy to avoid by avoiding certain models, is the reason. I've been aware of and avoiding such noise for many years, and it's usually not hard to do, based on vendor and series of card. If, for example, the whine was bad with the Zotac, and you could just get an Asus, it wouldn't be nearly the fuss it is (and, that's the situation the Radeons were in, with Asus' and Sapphire's fancy-pants models being more or less clear of whining, generally, on models where it was fairly common).

My GTX 460, now reinstalled, makes some noises when syncing the display, and going from idle to full clocks, and the reverse. It makes no audible noise, aside from the fans (grrr), outside of those small rare fractions of seconds, even if I put my head right near it, much less in a closed case some feet away. It can use a little more power than an official-TDP GTX 970.

My inner cynic says they need ten times more copper, and it will, overall, cost less than a few dozen RMAs, and/or nothing (if the card needs to be $5-10 more at retail, that's not going to sway buyers away, at $300+).

Side note:I don't remember reading any coil whine issues from the major website reviews of 970.
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2014/09/19/nvidia-geforce-gtx-970-review/14

That's the only one I know of. But, review sites likely got cherry-picked pre-production samples.

I've also read before that in the big cities over in HK and Taiwan, there are no quiet places, and that they won't even hear this stuff (scary). But, if it truly is that bad, sound proofing is not magic, and that is a completely fixable problem. Selling to the West, it is also an important problem to deal with. They got away with it back when we were constantly after the next fastest component, due to nothing being truly good enough for even basic tasks, but those days are long past, and environmental concerns matter.
 

Mem

Lifer
Apr 23, 2000
21,476
13
81
It can't be that hard to make a whine free card even if they add a bit more money to the card,most people would prefer a quiet card to a loud one even gamers.

So where do we point the finger at?
 

CP5670

Diamond Member
Jun 24, 2004
5,691
794
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I get the coil whine at high framerates on a reference Gigabyte 980. I always use vsync, but it's common in games that run at a constant 120fps. Most of my past cards did this too though, and it doesn't sound any worse to me than those did. It's also a pretty steady sound and doesn't change pitch depending on what you're doing in the game, as some of the old cards did.
 

Madpacket

Platinum Member
Nov 15, 2005
2,068
326
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AFAIK could whine goes back many card generations. I've had several cards (Radeon, Geforce) cards exhibit annoying whines and have mostly put up with it. I suspect what's happening now with all of this new zero fan tech coupled with 120 / 144hz monitors it's much harder to mask the noise now, so people are noticing and complaining.

Anyone really annoyed should send their cards back and refuse to buy new cards until the AIB's smarten up and fix the issues. The only way this really gets fixed is if we vote with our wallets.