Why do nvidia's drivers dislike to increase fan speed under heavy load?

[Anarchist420]

I was running the latest version of furmark and the temp increased to 70C after 3 minutes and the fan speed didn't go higher than the minimum of 40% (it may have gone to 42% but it didn't go above that).

I tested it again at 55%, and the temps were much lower (with an 8 minute run), although it was pretty loud. Is that why the drivers don't like to increase the fan speed (still, allowing the card to get up to 70C with barely increasing the fan speed is silly IMO)?

Also, can someone give me a guestimate as to how much running at constant 55% would reduce the life of the bearings? I thought the MTBF for ball bearing fans at their default speed was 50khrs. However, I don't know whether the increasing the fan speed decreases the life of the bearings closer to linearly or closer to exponentially or about inbetween.

 

[Arkadrel]

I had simular problems (with a 5870).
The best solution for me was bios edit

I got "RBE" and "ATIwinflash" and just manually adjusted things abit.
Worked like a charm (solution for 5xxx cards on AMD side).

If your overclocking, and you know the safe core/mem speeds you want (from useing software overclocking and testing for hours), and want to play around with fan settings, its easy done in a bios edit.

This also had the added benefit of me still being able to use powerstages, with my 5870. It clocks down to 150mhz core/300mhz on the ram, when in idle (this didnt work with me just useing CCC to OC).

My first time bios editing a graphic card, had a great outcome for me.

(still, allowing the card to get up to 70C with barely increasing the fan speed is silly IMO)?

Chip can handle 70C without any issues, its first around 90C+ that your going into dangerous zones.
Thats probably why the card doesnt get fan speed up.

I like you didnt like the high temps either, after bios adjustment, my furmark tops out around 74C.
Its a tiny bit more noisey than it used to be, but not much and it ll only reach those noise levels when Im gameing so it doesnt really bother me, and I like knowing its not gonna fry.

 

[Anarchist420]

I had simular problems (with a 5870).
The best solution for me was bios edit

I got "RBE" and "ATIwinflash" and just manually adjusted things abit.
Worked like a charm (solution for 5xxx cards on AMD side).

If your overclocking, and you know the safe core/mem speeds you want (from useing software overclocking and testing for hours), and want to play around with fan settings, its easy done in a bios edit.

This also had the added benefit of me still being able to use powerstages, with my 5870. It clocks down to 150mhz core/300mhz on the ram, when in idle (this didnt work with me just useing CCC to OC).

My first time bios editing a graphic card, had a great outcome for me.





Chip can handle 70C without any issues, its first around 90C+ that your going into dangerous zones.
Thats probably why the card doesnt get fan speed up.

I like you didnt like the high temps either, after bios adjustment, my furmark tops out around 74C.
Its a tiny bit more noisey than it used to be, but not much and it ll only reach those noise levels when Im gameing so it doesnt really bother me, and I like knowing its not gonna fry.

Thanks How long have you had your card's fan speed higher than the default?

 

[amenx]

Because 70c is still in the relative cool zone for a GPU. I would presume keeping the card quiet is the reason for the low fan speed at that temp.

 

[Ferzerp]

You don't say what model card you have, but spinning up a fan and making noise in a safe thermal zone would be silly. You don't have to have your parts running at the lowest temp all the time. They only spin the fan up when there is a need to keep temps down. on a gtx 480, the fan doesn't start to speed up to noisy levels until 80+. Furmark makes it sit in the low 90's (it actually peaks in the mid 90's and the fan profile brings it back down a bit and stays on 100% until the load drops) , but it does spin up fast enough to stabilize, and the card is designed to run at that temp (or rather that temp is within spec for that card).

 

[Anarchist420]

You don't say what model card you have, but spinning up a fan and making noise in a safe thermal zone would be silly. You don't have to have your parts running at the lowest temp all the time. They only spin the fan up when there is a need to keep temps down. on a gtx 480, the fan doesn't start to speed up to noisy levels until 80+. Furmark makes it sit in the low 90's (it actually peaks in the mid 90's and the fan profile brings it back down a bit and stays on 100% until the load drops) , but it does spin up fast enough to stabilize, and the card is designed to run at that temp (or rather that temp is within spec for that card).

I have the evga 560Ti 2GB.

 

[Seero]

I was running the latest version of furmark and the temp increased to 70C after 3 minutes and the fan speed didn't go higher than the minimum of 40% (it may have gone to 42% but it didn't go above that).

I tested it again at 55%, and the temps were much lower (with an 8 minute run), although it was pretty loud. Is that why the drivers don't like to increase the fan speed (still, allowing the card to get up to 70C with barely increasing the fan speed is silly IMO)?

Also, can someone give me a guestimate as to how much running at constant 55% would reduce the life of the bearings? I thought the MTBF for ball bearing fans at their default speed was 50khrs. However, I don't know whether the increasing the fan speed decreases the life of the bearings closer to linearly or closer to exponentially or about inbetween.

Why is it silly to have a fan not blowing like a leave blower when the temperature of the GPU is perfectly fine again?

 

[peonyu]

70c isn't hot for a gpu, thats like a cool breeze to one. 80c+ is when the fan turns into a Jet engine. My 580 would be sort of quiet until 80c then start to ramp up and wake up the neighborhood afterwards.

 

[Seero]

70c isn't hot for a gpu, thats like a cool breeze to one. 80c+ is when the fan turns into a Jet engine. My 580 would be sort of quiet until 80c then start to ramp up and wake up the neighborhood afterwards.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdExkuvGySE

Clearly, they ain't joking about how some people actually like the sound of it.

 

[skipsneeky2]

Adjusting the fanspeed on my gtx560 non ti to 50% my card hasn't hit over 59 cel yet at full load .

3 case fans in a antec 300 at medium fan speed temps pretty low.

Is the gtx560ti that much more demanding power wise?

 

[ImpulsE69]

Considering all the years I had a floor fan blowing into my cases, a GPU fan at 100% does not bother me..especially if you put the PC to your left where the GPU is pointed away from you and blocked by the rest of the case. I have it set to ramp to 100% any time it hits 50C. This also helps keep CPU temps down.

 

[bryanW1995]

Wow, that's a bit, um, aggressive, don't you think???

@OP: 70c is nothing on a high end gpu. Most of them have default fan profiles that don't really ramp up until 85-90c.

 

[tweakboy]

I was running the latest version of furmark and the temp increased to 70C after 3 minutes and the fan speed didn't go higher than the minimum of 40% (it may have gone to 42% but it didn't go above that).

I tested it again at 55%, and the temps were much lower (with an 8 minute run), although it was pretty loud. Is that why the drivers don't like to increase the fan speed (still, allowing the card to get up to 70C with barely increasing the fan speed is silly IMO)?

Also, can someone give me a guestimate as to how much running at constant 55% would reduce the life of the bearings? I thought the MTBF for ball bearing fans at their default speed was 50khrs. However, I don't know whether the increasing the fan speed decreases the life of the bearings closer to linearly or closer to exponentially or about inbetween.

Any video card OCer knows you never let nvidia take care of the fan. You put the fan manually. 30 percent at idle, and 100 percent on load to handle your OC... you have to manually put 100 percent fan , with EVGA or MSI software...I want loud 100 percent GPU fan, I wear my Megalodon hp's anyway...gl

 

[MentalIlness]

I've had my 6870 fan speed at 70% for the last 10 months.

 

[Idontcare]

This is one of those proofs of the idiom "damned if they do, damned if they don't".

The conservative schedule in ramping up fanspeed with temperature is obviously due to Nvidia listening to customers whine and whine about noise. So they opted to optimize for lower noise at the expense of higher operating temps.

And then customers find another way to complain about the same danged thing :|

FWIW OP, I set my fanspeed to 80% which is right below the point where I can actually distinguish the GPU fan noise.