Video Card sound level chart?

[riversend]

Anyone know if there is a site that does noise comparisons for video cards? I know that individual reviews will often show noise as compared to certain other cards, but that usually does not help when compared against an older card.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Bench here has noise levels for many older cards. Old reviews will have noise levels for old cards.

Idle noise level has improved dramatically for midrange and high-end over the last few years, as both AMD and nvidia have added more and better downclocking of the cards when not under load.

Load noise is going to vary more by card and by reference vs. custom coolers.

 

[Fallengod]

The problem is, it would be very complicated to do so.

Since all brands can have different fan setups for even a single model video card, it gets pretty convoluted.

Then you have to consider, video card fans have completely different noise levels depending on what percentage they run at, so you would have to take that into account. On top of that different brands can have the fans set to different default speeds as well.

Essentially if someone did this, it would be a huge task and probably still not be completely accurate. Some video cards are very quiet at low fan speeds but very loud after a certain speed. Others are always loud and some have better heatsinks which allow fans to run quiet 24/7. Some video cards have one fan, some have two or three, it just depends.

 

[riversend]

Yeah, I figured it would be quite painful, and also that in general the companies are doing a better job with their cooling solutions so that they are quieter. I found a comparison at techpowerup of all the current model cards they have reviewed, but nothing there with the older cards.

I'll have another look at the Anand benches and see if I can glean anything from those.

Thanks.

 

[BrightCandle]

In general noise is directly proportional to the heat being cooled. Some fans are slightly better than others or produce a nicer sound but practically the volume is driven by the heat output. All else equal choosing a lower power consuming option will reduce the noise.

The other way is water cooling, which allows you to spread the heat over many fans and thus allows you to run them slower and quieter.

 

[Fallengod]

In general noise is directly proportional to the heat being cooled. Some fans are slightly better than others or produce a nicer sound but practically the volume is driven by the heat output. All else equal choosing a lower power consuming option will reduce the noise.

The other way is water cooling, which allows you to spread the heat over many fans and thus allows you to run them slower and quieter.

That is of course true, but also remember you dont have to necessarily let hardware control fan speed. Many tech savvy people run software programs like MSI afterburner that allows the user to completely control the speeds of fans in all circumstances. This pretty much nullifies the idea of heat controlling fan speed.

This is another reason why benchmarking video card fan results would be somewhat irrelevant and more complicated.

 

[Leyawiin]

TechPowerUp does review a good number of cards, both third party and reference. W1zzard places a big emphasis on quiet cards and has a chart in each review.