do you get coil whine on the first 3dmark test?

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powruser

Limp Gawd
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My brand new gigabyte gtx 770 4gb card (awesome card BTW) gets coil whine during the first test of 3dmark (the one that runs at super high fps). As far as I can tell I don't get it any other places or in any games or menus. I did a lot of reading and lots of people say they get coil whine ONLY in the first 3dmark test too. So wanted to see if you guys did or not.
 
I got coil whine with my XFX ATi 5870 during bitcoin mining and during game loading. The whine eventually subsides and it goes quiet. But its always present upon initial launch of hard workloads.

I had two 5870's of different manufacturers. My MSI 5870 did not do this. It was only the XFX. Although this is the nvidia sub forum, coil whine exists on both sides.
 
Yeah I've heard it's a side effect of high power draw. I only upgrade every 4-5 years (just upgraded from Core 2 Duo E6400 and 9800GTX - which had no coil whine), and I'm really sensitive to high pitched noises, so I'm considering putting in for an RMA... I might replace my power supply first before I RMA. I'm running a Corsair VX550 which is quite a few years old now. Nvidia recommends 600 watt PSU for the GTX 770. But for a 4770k/GTX 770 rig (not over clocked), 550 watt should be fine. The fan on my old PSU is the loudest thing in my system now by far so I need to replace it eventually anyway.
 
powruser said:
Yeah I've heard it's a side effect of high power draw. I only upgrade every 4-5 years (just upgraded from Core 2 Duo E6400 and 9800GTX - which had no coil whine), and I'm really sensitive to high pitched noises, so I'm considering putting in for an RMA... I might replace my power supply first before I RMA. I'm running a Corsair VX550 which is quite a few years old now. Nvidia recommends 600 watt PSU for the GTX 770. But for a 4770k/GTX 770 rig (not over clocked), 550 watt should be fine. The fan on my old PSU is the loudest thing in my system now by far so I need to replace it eventually anyway.
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Your PSU should be fine. If you're worried about noise, just remove or replace the fan.

...

My 4870 coil whines on AtiTrayTools' benchmark when overclocked, but nothing else.

My old q6600 and Gigabyte EP-43 would coil whine when heavily overclocked. It was more of a sizzling sound than a whine.
 
I just got the exact same card a few days ago and yeah I do get coil whine on the first test. It runs the test at something like 2000+ fps. I've noticed in the past with almost all my cards that I get coil whine in situations where the fps is ridiculously high, such as menu screens and such. I couldn't tell you the reason for this, but I don't think there is anything to be concerned about.
 
Thanks for the responses guys! Sincerely appreciated! Since it's normal and it doesn't happen anywhere but the very first test of 3dmark, I'm going to keep the card. If anyone is considering a GTX 770, I can highly recommend the Gigabyte 4GB model, excellent card and very quiet!
 
Forgot to mention, I will be replacing my Corsair VX550 for good measure. Likely with a Corsair HX750 or HX850. Do you guys think going from 750 to 850 could mean the difference between successfully running GTX 770 SLI?
 
So I returned the card to the retailer and ordered another one. The new card has coil whine as well, actually worse than the first card. Ordered the Cooler Master V850 (Seasonic) last night, should receive it tomorrow. I'll keep you guys and gals updated as to whether this resolves my coil whine issues. If not I'll be RMA'ing the card directly to Gigabyte.
 
Well guys I got the new PSU but GPU still coil whines. Put in for RMA with gigabyte. Awesome PSU BTW (cooler master v850). If the replacement card has coil whine I'll be getting s whole different card. Probably a gtx 780
 
Sucks that they aren't working out for you. Then again, getting a 780 doesn't seem all that bad! And I'm running a cooler master 850w PS and was running crossfire 7970's so you should have no problem with two 770's bc they are less power hungry. Good luck with the next card.
 
My experience has been if one card of a particular brand has coil whine, it is a SKU wide problem generally speaking - with some being worse than others. It has everything to do with the type of caps used on the card, and generally a manufactuer will use the same caps across all of their cards in a specific SKU.....so with that being the case - I don't know if you're still within the return period but i'd get a refund personally, dealing with an RMA with a manufacturer is a complete pain in the neck. If you opt for an exchange/RMA, chances are you'll just exchange one card with whine for another identical SKU with whine. Maybe others have had differing experiences, but with gpu coil whine that is how it has always worked out for me - some 7970 models were particularly bad about this. An immediate refund through the point of sale is really the best bet, and exchange it for a different brand or SKU.

I had a 680 lightning that never had coil whine, the 770 lightning should be the same product with a new BIOS. My 780 also doesn't have whine. That being said, coil whine usually only happens with extremely heavy loads or framerates in the thousands - many people can avoid the issue with vsync. But if you don't want to use vsync, you shouldn't tolerate coil whine. Coil whine has always been a no go and immediate refund for me, there's no way i'm putting up with that nonsense.
 
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Xoleras,

Thanks for the feedback. The weird part about this is that I still get coil whine even if I have vsync on. I would just get a refund but taking a restocking fee hit would suck :(
 
powruser said:
Xoleras,

Thanks for the feedback. The weird part about this is that I still get coil whine even if I have vsync on. I would just get a refund but taking a restocking fee hit would suck :(
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Doh :( That does indeed suck. Sorry to hear that.

I wish more reviewers would bring this to light, I know of reviewers that have noticed such issues but they don't always state it in a review. Apparently the 7990 was REALLY bad about coil whine, and I did see that crop up in a few reviews.

Anyway, whatever you do....hope it works out for you! I know the annoyance, i've dealt with it before.
 
3dmark tests used to make a lot of my cards whine when loading.. I think it's pretty common.
 
revenant said:
3dmark tests used to make a lot of my cards whine when loading.. I think it's pretty common.
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Hmm, I guess it depends. Every card i've had with coil whine symptoms would only do it while vsync was turned off.

I suppose if I had a card only exhibiting coil whine during 3dmark, I could live with it...but that hasn't been my experience with coil whine. On the other hand, I haven't owned an nvidia card with coil whine in a long while (not since the 400 series). I guess it just boils down to what someone can tolerate versus not tolerate :) I know I could never tolerate it during real world use. 3dmark only though - probably not a big deal.
 
I had a BFG GTX 285 that whined so loud on loading a few different programs (including 3dmark03) it actually worried me. It reminded me of a movie sound effect of something about to overload (well, except the coil whine maintained a stable frequency).
 
3Dmark coil whine? Check. WEI coil whine? Check. Heaven exit-screen coil whine? Check. Every GPU I've ever owned has done it in those 3 spots, but the vast majority of them never have a problem in games.
 
xoleras said:
Hmm, I guess it depends. Every card i've had with coil whine symptoms would only do it while vsync was turned off.

I suppose if I had a card only exhibiting coil whine during 3dmark, I could live with it...but that hasn't been my experience with coil whine. On the other hand, I haven't owned an nvidia card with coil whine in a long while (not since the 400 series). I guess it just boils down to what someone can tolerate versus not tolerate :) I know I could never tolerate it during real world use. 3dmark only though - probably not a big deal.
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maybe so, with regards to vsync off... I know I run those with it off for sure. My 260s did it bad while loading certain tests and my 470s did also, and never a peep out of them on anything else.. but again maybe because vsync is typically on when I game.

I'll try it on my 770 4G cards...


PS: I think STALKER clear skies made my 260s whine...
 
Thanks for the responses guys. Waiting for Gigabyte to approve RMA. I can deal with whine as long as it's just in 3dmark/WEI/etc, but can't do if it's constant, especially if vsync doesn't fix it.

@revenant - Would love to know if your 4GB 770's whine, especially if they're the Gigabyte version.
 
yep, they are, with the windforce coolers.. which version of 3dmark are you using?
 
revenant said:
yep, they are, with the windforce coolers.. which version of 3dmark are you using?
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The latest one (Just called plain 3dmark). The first test is called Ice Storm. Using the free version. Let me know if your cards whine. Thanks!
 
Well Gigabyte approved my RMA. But the guy did say i might get a like-new "refurb" card in return, that it depends on their stock. Something tells me this is going to be a lonnng process.
 
so.... wait, if it only whines during 3dmark, why replace it again? sounds like a PITA and only happens during 3dmark.. I dunno.. I am about to test 3dmark now..

I am running ice storm now and zero coil whine.. but my cards are barely working at this res... I can't change shit on the settings for this demo version either. :p
for anyone interested my psu is a 7 year old enermax galaxy dxx 1kw..

edit: zero coil whine throughout the whole batch of tests... I got
25588 on ice storm
26437 on cloud gate
11763 on firestrike

firestrike was the only test that got my gpus working hard.
 
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It whines in all games, at all times, vsync or not. Not just in 3dmark.

Congrats dude you got really lucky w/ 2 x GPUs that don't coil whine.
 
Unfortunately no. I get hit with tax at newegg and even amazon so I bought from superbiiz.com (ewiz). They said as long as its defective they'll be no restocking fee. I just hope they count obnoxious buzzing as defective or I'm gonna be taking a nice hit.
 
powruser said:
It whines in all games, at all times, vsync or not. Not just in 3dmark.

Congrats dude you got really lucky w/ 2 x GPUs that don't coil whine.
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I guess I did.. I got more curious and ran 3dmark2011 and didn't hear a peep. Then I started messing with the intel extreme tuning util.. Well, I am glad I did that because I ran some more benches and then temp tested my cpu under prime just for grins.. it used to load at 60 and it's going over 80 now.. sheeeit. I must have bumped my 212 evo when I installed the new cards or something.. time to reseat and put down some new AS5.. it's only hitting 50c while gaming but those prime loads are scary.. :eek: :eek:

sucks about you getting two bad cards in a row. 3rd time's a charm, though. :)

PS: I got 2 bad motherboards (Abit i9N 32x max) in a row that emitted a super high pitch from the digital VRM that I could not take... that was a pain wow... all the swapping and waiting.. gah. finally went with a gigabyte n680sli.
 
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Yeah I'll get a good card eventually. Just is a big hassle as u know. BTW prime usually does show artificially high temps. I get WAY higher temps in prime than I do in real life stuff like gaming.
 
yeah... while gaming it's hitting 50c avg.. which is totally fine. but wow.. it was loading at 60c in prime and now like 85c.. wtf, over? I think I remember using some off brand thermal paste... maybe it dried out and I bumped the cooler... idle temps are fine. but load wow.. and not a lot of heat is coming out of the cooler so something isn't making good contact.

good luck on the card lottery this round. fingers crossed for ya!
 
You can try to use some higher quality thermal compound, that might help to the tune of a few degrees C. Also re-seat the CPU cooler, making sure to clean off the old thermal compound from the CPUs heatspreader and the base of the CPU cooler with alcohol. Besides that, there's not really much you can do to reduce temperatures in synthetic loads like Prime95. I believe that Sandy Bridge-E CPUs use solder under the heatspreader, so there's no need (or benefit) to de-lidding.

Graphics card wise, I believe I'm going to go back to the Asus GTX 770 DirectCU II. My misguided belief that I needed a 4GB card over a 2GB card is what started this whole mess! The Asus card I had was quiet as a mouse, with no coil whine at all. Plus it has an awesome backplate and the red color scheme matches the rest of my system.

Cheers!
 
Oh yeah.. will do all of the above this weekend. I think the cheap paste I used dried up and I bumped the cooler.. the 212 evo has some wiggle room even when torqued down. I was thinking about an h100 or h80 maybe.. hitting fry's today.

Yeah, I too am underwhelmed by my system's use of the beyond 2G mem area on the 4G cards.. even at 5670x1080 I rarely see it go past 2G and never seen more use than 2.6G... while playing alien vs predator of all things.. and doom3 with tons of AA and SS sikkmod and loads of texture packs.. lol. oh well. I guess it's there if I need it. (the extra mem).

if I had to buy these over again I'd get the 770s with the titan blower cooler on them. I still am not liking all the heat dumping in my case.. I thought that might be contributing to the increased cpu temps but while prime95ing the cards were idle and cool.. so that's not it.

again, good luck on your next card!
 
Yeah the reference cooler is nice in that the heat is exhausted out of the case. I put my hand over the fins on the Gigabyte GTX 770 while in a game and WOW there's a lot of hot air being introduced to the case. Almost wish I had a case with a fan on the side panel so I could do something with that air. Too bad the reference cooler commands such a price premium. Unfortunately I heard the reference style cooler can be a bit louder than the aftermarket solutions. Thanks again for the well wishes and enjoy your system! :)
 
Update:

Ended up RMAing the card directly to Gigabyte. Just got email from them that they've shipped my card out to me. I emailed them to ask whether they were able to repair it or if a replacement was needed and this was their response:

"Dear customer,


The BIOS was updated for better support and the video card tested fine prior to shipping.



Thank you"

*facepalm*

A BIOS update for coil whine? ... Not holding my breath that the coil whine will be resolved. Tracking shows the card will be delivered this coming Monday, so I'll keep you guys updated as to the results.
 
doesn't sound promising but the proof will be in the puttin..
 
powruser said:
My brand new gigabyte gtx 770 4gb card (awesome card BTW) gets coil whine during the first test of 3dmark (the one that runs at super high fps). As far as I can tell I don't get it any other places or in any games or menus. I did a lot of reading and lots of people say they get coil whine ONLY in the first 3dmark test too. So wanted to see if you guys did or not.
Click to expand...

Yes, on my 780, its because the test runs at such a high framerate. Framerates in the hundreds or even thousands will cause the coils to resonate(whine). If you set V-Sync to on, you will likely not hear it anymore.
 
powruser said:
Update:

Ended up RMAing the card directly to Gigabyte. Just got email from them that they've shipped my card out to me. I emailed them to ask whether they were able to repair it or if a replacement was needed and this was their response:

"Dear customer,


The BIOS was updated for better support and the video card tested fine prior to shipping.



Thank you"

*facepalm*

A BIOS update for coil whine? ... Not holding my breath that the coil whine will be resolved. Tracking shows the card will be delivered this coming Monday, so I'll keep you guys updated as to the results.
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There's nothing defective about coil whine so you will likely get a card back with the same issue.
 
Unfortunately my card whines even when the frame rate isn't in the hundreds or thousands and even when vsync is on. That's unacceptable to me.
 
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