1080 SLI Fans "revving" back and forth

clayton006

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jan 4, 2005
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So first thing, the cards work great at 1440p.

Secondly, during gameplay I hear the fans revving every couple of seconds or so. It will go up for about 5 seconds, then come down for a while.

I tried applying a manual fan in the EVGA precision X tool and the manual fan will work, but I'll still hear it rev to what sounds like 80% for brief stint and come back down.

Any thoughts on this one? For now, I set everything back to default, then rebooted and made sure that no EVGA tools were running.
 
I am experiencing this with a single FE 1080. Temps and clock are perfectly stable and within the appropriate envelope, but every bit the fans will instantly jump from ~2000RPM to ~3000RPM for a couple seconds and then drop back. It's amazingly annoying.
 
Have you had the log open to see what your GPU is doing while gaming/benching?
 
I have. When I have the reporting tool open it doesn't show the fans spiking when I looked at fan percentage. I should probably monitor RPMs in the OSD next time to see if it shows it there.
 
I was monitoring clocks and temps, but that's it. I just got the card installed a bit ago so not much time with it yet. I doubt it matters but mine is MSI.
 
Oh, lol that does suck hard. I'm sure a driver update or a VBIOS update will fix that. But man, it's probably going to take a bit and be extremely annoying!

Revenge of the Nvidia Strikes Back. I'm glad I went for EVGA's 1080 FTW, they won't ship til mid-june, but at least the bugs should be ironed out by then.
 
So first thing, the cards work great at 1440p.

Secondly, during gameplay I hear the fans revving every couple of seconds or so. It will go up for about 5 seconds, then come down for a while.

I tried applying a manual fan in the EVGA precision X tool and the manual fan will work, but I'll still hear it rev to what sounds like 80% for brief stint and come back down.

Any thoughts on this one? For now, I set everything back to default, then rebooted and made sure that no EVGA tools were running.

Have you changed the temp target to say 90degree and then set the fan to be around 68% at 80degrees?
It could be in response to hitting the ceiling.
Cheers
 
I'm seeing it with temps at like 76 degrees, so it shouldn't be an issue with temp bumping the line.
 
I'm seeing it with temps at like 76 degrees, so it shouldn't be an issue with temp bumping the line.

Yeah that is strange.
Also weird that reviewers did not notice this alternating behaviour and I did not hear it on Jayztwocents open bench when listening to his videos, like you say that sort of fan behaviour definitely would be noticeable and annoying.

Maybe some interaction with other tools *shrug*
If you have MSI Afterburner, maybe try the new 4.3.0 Beta 3 download created for 1080/1070.
MSI Afterburner 4.3.0 Beta 3 Download

Even if not using afterburner, the new version for Pascal might help to resolve the issue as it the utility has fan profiling.
Or look to the EVGA Precision utility.
Cheers
 
I logged into WOW just as a test and found a nice spot to just stand still. The card doesn't have much load in that circumstance, the temps are good, etc.. But I can just stand there and watch the fan do its thing. I don't know how it could have been missed either. I noticed it in like 2 minutes. It happens with no tools active, but I'll be playing with it. Thanks for the beta link.

Ok used the new EVGA tools to take this screen cap while the issue was going on. Check the frametimes and fan rpm. I've not spent a lot of time with this, so maybe it's obvious to someone else.

GTX1080_fan_issue.PNG
 
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I logged into WOW just as a test and found a nice spot to just stand still. The card doesn't have much load in that circumstance, the temps are good, etc.. But I can just stand there and watch the fan do its thing. I don't know how it could have been missed either. I noticed it in like 2 minutes. It happens with no tools active, but I'll be playing with it. Thanks for the beta link.

Ok used the new EVGA tools to take this screen cap while the issue was going on. Check the frametimes and fan rpm. I've not spent a lot of time with this, so maybe it's obvious to someone else.

With the EVGA Precision, you could try setting the fan profile to see if they still spin up *shrug*.
Only a bandaid but fingers crossed it helps.
Cheers
 
It feels like the tools attempt to override what the card wants to do (with the fan profile) but the cards still rev on their own.
 
It feels like the tools attempt to override what the card wants to do (with the fan profile) but the cards still rev on their own.

I might not be reading this correctly, but it still does this with no tools loaded. It's not any tools conflict. They've got a month to fix it, at least for me. I'll try a custom card or go back to my 980SLI that never did this.
 
I might not be reading this correctly, but it still does this with no tools loaded. It's not any tools conflict. They've got a month to fix it, at least for me. I'll try a custom card or go back to my 980SLI that never did this.
So fixing a fan profile with the EVGA Precision tool did not help?
Cheers
 
So fixing a fan profile with the EVGA Precision tool did not help?
Cheers

If you lock the fan to force it to run at or above 3000 RPM (75%) then it fixes it, but there's a lot more overall noise. Anything below that results in the same behavior, from whatever you set up to about 3000.

So yeah it gets rid of the spikes, but 75% is a good bit more noisy, though it's just the air moving thru a small space sound.

I definitely will return mine if not fixed in the next few weeks.
 
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If you lock the fan to force it to run at or above 3000 RPM (75%) then it fixes it, but there's a lot more overall noise. Anything below that results in the same behavior, from whatever you set up to about 3000.

So yeah it gets rid of the spikes, but 75% is a good bit more noisy, though it's just the air moving thru a small space sound.
That sucks :(
This is a really strange one as it does not look like it is affecting everyone but definitely is out there with quite a few, and also different brands (not surprising considering they are all the same).
I suppose you could try the drivers used by reviewers rather than the newly released ones, because if it is firmware you would expect everyone to be caught by this behaviour.
Apart from that I guess we all need to watch for any news update on solutions.
Cheers
 
Yeah I notice it less at 70% fan, but at 75% it goes away for the most part. I think I'm going to end up returning my FE cards when Micro Center has the EVGA FTW cards in stock.
 
some people here are in cold rooms, and some are in hot rooms. now that the summer is here, there's going to be a bigger difference in the results people get with fans
 
Someone on the Geforce forums noticed that it only affects card 1 in SLI. They moved the cards and the problem stays with card 1 in the SLI setup but doesn't follow the physical card. It's definitely a firmware thing.

My guess is that more people will continue to notice it. It'll depend on your noise floor. I didn't notice when I had the usual background music and such going, but noticed when I played a game with few sounds.
 
I have started noticing some throttling issues when playing The Division and Company of Heros 2 today. Anyone else have throttling problems?
 
I have started noticing some throttling issues when playing The Division and Company of Heros 2 today. Anyone else have throttling problems?
Have you set the temp and power target?
Also set the fan to cut in earlier than 83degree, to around 80.
Temp target set to around 90degrees.
Cheers
 
I've got this on my Evga 1080 FE. It's easy to hear when running Valley with sound turned off. It's kind of like "wave" noise coming and going. It can be seen with the latest Afterburner with the fan tach enabled. Fan speed is constant, or close to it, but the fan tach shows the fan speeding up, then slowly dropping down, along with the resulting audible noise. I'll wait a few days to see what happens with a fix, then it goes back to evga for a refund if a fix isn't quickly forthcoming.

It wouldn't surprise me if all, or close to all cards have this problem, from the widespread reports (with so few cards actually being in customers hands so far).
 
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I've got this on my Evga 1080 FE. It's easy to hear when running Valley with sound turned off. It's kind of like "wave" noise coming and going. It can be seen with the latest Afterburner with the fan tach enabled. Fan speed is constant, or close to it, but the fan tach shows the fan speeding up, then slowly dropping down, along with the resulting audible noise. I'll wait a few days to see what happens with a fix, then it goes back to evga for a refund if a fix isn't quickly forthcoming.

It wouldn't surprise me if all, or close to all cards have this problem, from the widespread reports (with so few cards actually being in customers hands so far).
Well one retailer here in the UK sold 500 on launch (with much more incoming this week), I do not think that retailer had that many 980ti at launch
More out there than many think.
Cheers
 
So is this an issue with all FE cards or just a handful? Trying to decide whether I should return mine when it arrives Thursday
 
So is this an issue with all FE cards or just a handful? Trying to decide whether I should return mine when it arrives Thursday

I don't think it's known whether it's some cards in all situations, or all cards in some situations.

For those not following the Nvidia thread, they've managed to reproduce the issue in house, which is good news.
 
Confirmed on my Gigabyte GTX1080 FE. Running Overwatch at 1080p (no MST support means I've had to drop from 2160p to 1080p until I can get an SST display) - GPU is barely working, the heatsink is hardly warm to the touch, yet there are very brief bursts of noticeable fan noise (less than 1 second) before it returns to being near-silent. Not a gamebreaker but a shame as it clearly has the capability to be a much quieter card than the tacky Gainward GTX970 it's intended to replace. I assume eventually there'll be a BIOS update to patch this.
 
ManualGuzman seems to have confirmed they identified the problem in the driver and a new one will be released:
Update 6/1/16 - We are testing a driver fix to address the random spin up/down fan issue.
Update 6/2/16 - Driver fix so far has passed internal testing. Fix will be part of our next driver release.
https://forums.geforce.com/default/...n-issue-updated-6-2-16-/post/4891787/#4891787
So maybe this issue did not happen with Beta drivers used by reviewers *shrug*.
Cheers
 
I noticed some of this when not using MSI Afterburner. However, when I have a fan profile setup I don't notice it.

That may explain why a driver update can fix it and not a BIOS update.

msi_afterburner_gtx1080sli.png
 
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