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5870 = Noisy

V

vjcsmoke

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Dec 5, 2006
Messages
4,511
I'm afraid I'll have to wait for Sapphire's Vapor-X solution to come out. The stock design is over 60 DBa. I don't think I'll be able to tolerate that regardless of the performance. I know Sapphire doesn't have a lifetime warranty like XFX but I had their vapor-x 4890 briefly and it was really QUIET. Anyone have the same noise concerns or do you just plan to slap on an aftermarket cooler to get your stock 5870 to tolerable noise levels?

20134.png
 
I have a 4870 at 55% fan speed and it its LOUD. If I buy at 500 series I will buy a Thermalright aftermarket cooler.
 
Wow that does look badass.

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Even more impressive looking than the 4890 I had. Thanks for the tip. I'll let you know if I win! :)
 
That's odd, it has the gtx295 right there with it, and I can't hear mine when at idle over my very quiet system. Now when gaming I can, but I have the speakers up but it's still not uncomfortable.
 
Looks to me like Anandtech screwed up. Did they force it to 100%? Also, who the hell tests sound level in a 40.6 dB environment?
 
The 60+ Dba number does look unusually loud. The discrepencies with other sites has me wondering if Anandtech messed up their readings or methodology when measuring video card noise levels.
 
My experience with ATI cards over the last couple generations is that the noise levels are intolerable or damn close to it. I hated my 4870 X2's for that reason.
 
Dan_D said:
My experience with ATI cards over the last couple generations is that the noise levels are intolerable or damn close to it. I hated my 4870 X2's for that reason.
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It would be really great if HardOCP did some definitive noise testing on the 5800 series video cards. Like at 25% fan, 50%, 75%, 100%, etc. I'd like to know what noise levels to expect because having a fairly quiet PC is important to me.
 
Damn Dirty Ape said:
That's odd, it has the gtx295 right there with it, and I can't hear mine when at idle over my very quiet system. Now when gaming I can, but I have the speakers up but it's still not uncomfortable.
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Quiet is a subjective term ...

vjcsmoke said:
It would be really great if HardOCP did some definitive noise testing on the 5800 series video cards. Like at 25% fan, 50%, 75%, 100%, etc. I'd like to know what noise levels to expect because having a fairly quiet PC is important to me.
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I'd suggest you visit SilentPCReview's forums..
 
I have a 4670 with the stock cooler, which most reviews have called "nearly silent" or similar - and the thing is stupidly loud at default fan speed (CCC shows it at 3%, I think). I had to drop it to 1% in order not to hear the card anymore. If Anandtech had it on their graph linked above in this thread, it would probably be around 50 dB.

So yes, "quiet" is a _very_ subjective term, though it also depends on the rest of your computer. I have slow-running fans and currently the hum of my two suspended HDDs is the most audible.

If you visit the SPCR forums, tell them I said hello ;)
 
vjcsmoke said:
It would be really great if HardOCP did some definitive noise testing on the 5800 series video cards. Like at 25% fan, 50%, 75%, 100%, etc. I'd like to know what noise levels to expect because having a fairly quiet PC is important to me.
Click to expand...

I don't have any way to measure it honestly. Kyle might, or Brent might though. I can tell you this much:

X1800XT = too damn noisy
X1950XT = too damn noisy
X1950Pro = suprisingly tolerable
2900XT = too damn noisy
4870 = too damn noisy
4870 X2 = ear splitting

I can tell you more specifically about my experiences with the 4870 X2's and their fans. At 50% fan speed the 4870 X2 is nearly as loud as a Geforce GTX 280 is at 100% fan speed. 100% fan speeds on a 4870 X2 are unbearable even for me. I can normally tolerate a lot of noise thanks to all the years I've spent sitting in server rooms but the 4870 X2 is just too much for me to take. Seriously, two of those things at 100% or even 90% makes my Geforce GTX 280 3-Way SLI setup downright pleasant to listen to at 100% fan speed. As far as heat goes I needed to run my 4870 X2's at 100% fan speed in CrossfireX. In contrast my Geforce GTX 280 cards only need to be run at about 90% fan speeds.

A single 4870 X2 with no other cards in the system will rarely get above about 60% fan speeds alone. It wasn't that bad but two of them in CrossfireX necessitated more drastic fan speeds and it was just more than I could stand. I played most of my games with head phones on at that point. I couldn't stand the ambient noise they generated.
 
Tom's Hardware has the following numbers on noise.

acousticoutput.png


A stock 4890 is too loud for me. And the 5870 is louder than a stock 4890. So I guess I'm waiting for vapor-x 5870. I hope it becomes available in the next 2 weeks. I love how quiet my PC is right now but the 9600GSO obviously does not hold a candle to 5870. I want the quiet AND the performance!

A single 4870 X2 with no other cards in the system will rarely get above about 60% fan speeds alone. It wasn't that bad but two of them in CrossfireX necessitated more drastic fan speeds and it was just more than I could stand. I played most of my games with head phones on at that point. I couldn't stand the ambient noise they generated.
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Hmm 5870 is nearly as noisy as 4870x2 according to the chart. I think I'll have to wait for vapor-x for the sake of my ears. I have no idea when Accelero for 5870 would be released. Thanks for sharing your experiences.
 
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Not surprised its louder than the 4800 series. My 4890 not only is loud but makes funny noises.
 
I'll wait for Artic Cooling to release their cooler for the 5870 than I'll add it to my XFX 5870 one....
 
I think it was the guru3d review where I read they had changed the noise profile of the fan, so it is less high-pitched. So even though it may be as loud or a little louder, it may be more tolerable.
 
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With a single card and adequate case cooling you won't (hopefully) have to deal with the fan running at 100% very often if ever.
 
Seriously will ati never able to do a damn good stock cooler lika nvidia ? i dont get it.. year after year on a new graphics card they just stick to same formula.. loud coolers.
 
I will say this again...Anand does a lot of things right. However, for video cards they really just need to stop.
 
Mortuus said:
Seriously will ati never able to do a damn good stock cooler lika nvidia ? i dont get it.. year after year on a new graphics card they just stick to same formula.. loud coolers.
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I don't know but the last several generations have had cooling that I was chomping at the bit to replace anytime I dealt with one of them. The NVIDIA cards on the other hand I'm usually content to leave alone.
 
Dan_D said:
I've got an 8800GT Superclocked in my HTPC and I can't hear it.
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And I could distinctively identify my 8800GT's stock fan above the sounds of the other undervolted 120mm Yate Loon fans in my card, even when not under load (back in the day).

Quiet is subjective.
 
Well if I play a game on the HTPC then yeah, the 8800GT becomes the loudest thing in the machine very quickly. Normally while just watching movies, I can't hear it at all.
 
vjcsmoke said:
It would be really great if HardOCP did some definitive noise testing on the 5800 series video cards. Like at 25% fan, 50%, 75%, 100%, etc. I'd like to know what noise levels to expect because having a fairly quiet PC is important to me.
Click to expand...

There's no such thing as definitive because people's notions of "acceptable" levels of sound vary too much and the dB is such an unusual unit with such variation based on how it's measured that it all become meaningless. The best way to do this is to actually record it along side a reference sound and play it back (or hear it yourself).

I still facepalm whenever I hear people tell me that the reference 4890 cooler is quiet.
 
If I can clearly hear it in a quiet room at night when I'm trying to sleep it's too damn loud.

Just get me a water block for it and I'm happy. =) (too bad full card waterblocks are usually over $100)
 
vjcsmoke said:
The stock design is over 60 DBa. I don't think I'll be able to tolerate that regardless of the performance.

20134.png
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Look at the graph. Room is 40db so that room has a lot of ambient noise so don't take those numbers out of context. Other site review says more like 43db for the card. I forget which now. It's not a quiet card but it certainly isn't over 60db unless you work in a cement factory.

Edit: here's the review saying 43dba:

http://techpowerup.com/reviews/ATI/Radeon_HD_5870/29.html
 
LittleMeEgo said:
Look at the graph. Room is 40db so that room has a lot of ambient noise so don't take those numbers out of context. Other site review says more like 43db for the card. I forget which now. It's not a quiet card but it certainly isn't over 60db unless you work in a cement factory.

Edit: here's the review saying 43dba:

http://techpowerup.com/reviews/ATI/Radeon_HD_5870/29.html
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I really do hope that it's 43 dba rather than 60+ dba.
But we have one H editor saying that the 4870x2 was too noisy and the 5870 is clearly louder than a 4870x2 in the graph that you linked.

I am thinking I might have to get an aftermarket cooler to get the 5870 quiet enough.
I'll know for sure when it gets here.
 
AMD's ATI Radeon HD 5870 Video Card Review
The fan has undergone a bit of work, supposedly reducing the pitch of the whine that has so often occurred on past ATI video cards. In our testing we didn’t notice any annoying whine or pitch problems from the fan at idle or full load. In fact, we would have to say that the fan is relatively quiet. Only at system startup is it identifiable that the fan is even working, and then only for less than a second.
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really hard to take a side on the noise matter lol...

Some sites are saying it's realllly loud... others that it's quiet...

Pretty much the same thing everytime lol, we will all have to hear it for ourselves I guess.
 
The problem with testing noise is the condition to do it properly. I have a decibel meter, but I don't have a sound chamber or anything that could test the sound in any meaningful way by isolating it from the CPU fan and other noise. What I can tell you though, is that the fan, even at full load, did not overpower the CPU fan's noise on my test system. Only when I manually set the fan to 50% did it overpower the CPU fan. At full load I never saw it go over 37%.
 
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