my new gtx260 whines

[Homer Simpson]

got a new xfx gtx260 black edition. first game i fired up was crysis. the card starts making this high pitched whine. odd. i start a new game and during the non interactive intro, screen goes full gray and the computer is locked up hard. no sound, no hdd activity, nothing. soft reset results in gray screen, no POST. flick the PSU switch then turn it back on and all is well. i try again loading a saved game. plays fine again until a non interactive scene and it does it again (dark red this time). i download gpuz and temps seem normal. ~73 under load. i then google some more and see others with the issue. coil whine if i recall. i enable vsync in crysis as suggested and it doesnt lock up now or whine. so far, farcry2, gta4, l4d, cs:s, rainbow6 vegas2 all play fine (with or without vsync) and none whine. actually, i do get whine in cs:s video test with vsync off though (265fps).

i was not able to get a clear answer in my search as to whether this is typical and most disregard it or its an issue and i should exchange the card. crysis was the only game that hard locked my computer but vsync seems to have fixed it, everything else ran great. should i ignore or exchange?

 

[ronnn]

Did you use driver sweeper to clean out old drivers?

 

[AdamK47]

Ever since I got a PC Power and Cooling power supply my two GTX 280s have been whining. If you think it's annoying with one card, try two. It doesn't harm anything or cause stability problems. I game with headphones on so I don't hear it. Enabling vsync significantly cuts down on the noise. You can read all about it here.

 

[error8]

The whining came up since my 8800 GT. My 4870 does it to an even higher level and it's mostly annoying when I'm watching movies, since the fan doesn't speed up and all I hear is the whining. I guess that we just have to live with it.

 

[HexiumVII]

When my GF wines, i give her a nice slap. If that doesn't work for you, try a Zalman fanmate so you can manual adjust.

 

[Dkcode]

All my video cards have made a whining noise in certain games. Most common is the UE 2.x waiting screen when one connects to a server, this is very common in Red Orchestra and the mods.

As for the lockup in Crysis, it may be a driver bug or it could be a PSU issue. The whining noise could be caused by insufficient power. I would keep your eye on it focusing your attention on stability in other games. Download Furmark and run it for a couple of hours, running a CPU intensive utility like Prime95 or Orthos with Furmark would be a good way of seeing what your PSU can handle.

 

[Homer Simpson]

psu should be fine. its a corsair 620. the sound definitely is from the vid card, not psu. the corsair handled my current system with a 8800gtx fine. 3dmark vantage runs its benchmark fine and i gamed most of the day yesterday without issue. just crysis had issues but went away with vsync set. sounds like i should just keep the card and not waste my time exchanging it then since whining is "normal". and no, i didnt use driver cleaner/sweeper. i had nvidia drivers already installed (no ati stuff) and always just use the nvidia uninstaller. never had problems before.

 

[Dkcode]

I have the Corsair 620 with a GTX280 and have no stability issues. Theses PSU's are well engineered so there should be no problems regarding power shortage.

Sounds like your ok then, if you gamed all day without no problems.

 

[Quiksilver]

Sounds like the usual coil whine. There is no fix other than to just deal with it; some cards will do it more than others.

 

[Tempered81]

Originally posted by: HexiumVII
When my GF wines, i give her a nice slap.

:laugh:

 

[roid450]

mines only doing it over 1000FPS and intro videos to games.

does anyone know if prolonged whine can damage the card at all?

 

[Homer Simpson]

hmmm. it just froze the whole computer again playing L4D. just like crysis. gray screen. soft reset no worky. had to kill power to get it to come back. i may exchange this thing after all.