7970 squealing noise when playing games?

T

tzhu07

Gawd
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Nov 21, 2010
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I got my 7970 yesterday and noticed that there's a high pitched squealing noise whenever I run a game. When doing 2D things like browsing the Internet, the noise goes away.

Prior to inserting the video card, I was running the integrated HD3000 graphics and my computer was completely silent.

I've read that this sound is in line with what is described as capacitor squeal, and that it doesn't affect the performance of the card. But if this squeal is here to stay, then it dashes all hopes of me silencing the card with any kind of aftermarket cooler, because the problem would not be fan related.

Should I RMA and see if I get a card that doesn't squeal or are there other solutions?
 
My Gigabyte is doing the same thing. It's not that bad if I play full screen games but anything in Window mode makes the card squeal pretty awful. I upgraded from a 6950 that had none of these issues.
 
This sounds pretty normal for high end cards when loaded. I would only be concerned if it started whining while it was idle.
 
Madpacket said:
My Gigabyte is doing the same thing. It's not that bad if I play full screen games but anything in Window mode makes the card squeal pretty awful. I upgraded from a 6950 that had none of these issues.
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Madpacket, good to know that I'm not just hearing things.

Upon some further research, I read suggestions of taking a flexible tube and placing one end to your ear and the other around the inside of your computer to isolate the source of the noise to a very specific location. I've also heard of people using hot glue guns to cover up the offending noise-maker.

When I get home from work today I'll have to double check that the noise isn't coming from elsewhere like my PSU (I have a Seasonic X-750). Hopefully I can find a good fix for this since I am actually a quiet computer enthusiast.
 
only time i've heard mine do this is in some menu/loading screens when i'm getting like 4000 fps (STALKER CoP, for example)
 
I only run into problems like that when the framerate is extremely high. Normally it'll be a menu or other static image. Turning on v-sync can help get rid of it. It may not be the video card either. It may be the power supply. I had a motherboard that would cause my power supply to squeal. Not much you can do about it, but be sure its actually the video card before you RMA only to find out you wasted your time.
 
Oh no, not again... I haven't had coil whine since my 8800GT...
 
No squeals on mine, but I have heard of that phenomenon occurring before on other sites with certain cards.

Some said they connected their power differently (different 8/6 pin lines on those PSUs that supported SLI/Xfire) and some re-seated the cards so it made better contact. It seems to have worked for some and not for others. I would try those first then, if it's still present, contact the Mfgr to see if they will approve an RMA on the card. (though I do not believe coil whine is a "break/fix" issue, personally)
 
I've got 3 of the XFX 7970 Double D Blacks, all three of them have the squeal... :( Not a big deal, I forget about it once I've been gaming for a minute or two.

I've only got two in my system at the moment, they get way too hot when they're right on top of each other. Waiting (not so patiently) for water-blocks...
 
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Max9R said:
I've got 3 of the XFX 7970 Double D Blacks, all three of them have the squeal... :( Not a big deal, I forget about it once I've been gaming for a minute or two.

I've only got two in my system at the moment, they get way too hot when their right on top of each other. Waiting (not so patiently) for water-blocks...
Click to expand...

custom fan profile helped my BEDD quite a bit with heat. are you running a custom fan profile?
 
This is normal. I had the same noise with my 6970 and I can hear a very slight noise with my 7970. Both only in 3D mode and it's more obvious when i'm doing benchmarks.

On a side note, my 7970 makes a more annoying noise with the fan at 50% or higher. Might RMA it but it's really not that bad.
 
Porter_ said:
custom fan profile helped my BEDD quite a bit with heat. are you running a custom fan profile?
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No, no custom profile. I've taken out the middle card and that's got things under control now. With all three in there they were cooking. Amazing performance though hehe...
 
Max9R said:
No, no custom profile. I've taken out the middle card and that's got things under control now. With all three in there they were cooking. Amazing performance though hehe...
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if you're willing to run a 3rd party program like Afterburner or Trixx, a custom fan profile is amazingly useful. my card is quiet at idle and sounds like a server room while i'm gaming, which is a perfect setup for me since i wear closed headphones while gaming and can't hear shit anyway.
 
tzhu07 said:
I got my 7970 yesterday and noticed that there's a high pitched squealing noise whenever I run a game. When doing 2D things like browsing the Internet, the noise goes away.

Prior to inserting the video card, I was running the integrated HD3000 graphics and my computer was completely silent.

I've read that this sound is in line with what is described as capacitor squeal, and that it doesn't affect the performance of the card. But if this squeal is here to stay, then it dashes all hopes of me silencing the card with any kind of aftermarket cooler, because the problem would not be fan related.

Should I RMA and see if I get a card that doesn't squeal or are there other solutions?
Click to expand...

I only had one card that squealed and it was my GTX 280. Funny as that was the only card that died on me. But the replacement was squeal free! I would RMA it. But I also know people whos card is still working just fine squealing away.
 
Porter_ said:
if you're willing to run a 3rd party program like Afterburner or Trixx, a custom fan profile is amazingly useful. my card is quiet at idle and sounds like a server room while i'm gaming, which is a perfect setup for me since i wear closed headphones while gaming and can't hear shit anyway.
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Thanks I might look into that although I don't know if it'll help me with the middle card there's just no room for air to get into it or the top one for that matter. All the hot air leaks out the sides and gets sucked back in by the card on top of it. I'm almost wishing I would have went with a reference cooler model.
 
Mr Mean said:
I only had one card that squealed and it was my GTX 280. Funny as that was the only card that died on me. But the replacement was squeal free! I would RMA it. But I also know people whos card is still working just fine squealing away.
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Yeah, I'm going to contact XFX to see what they say. They're the first cards I've had that have been this loud. My 5870's had a barely audible squeal you could only hear if you put your head right beside them but nothing like this.
 
Max9R said:
I've got 3 of the XFX 7970 Double D Blacks, all three of them have the squeal... :( Not a big deal, I forget about it once I've been gaming for a minute or two.

I've only got two in my system at the moment, they get way too hot when they're right on top of each other. Waiting (not so patiently) for water-blocks...
Click to expand...

Wow, that sucks man.

I hope this isn't some broken-by-design issue. I got my reference card from Sapphire and I'll sent them an email about it too and see if they have any suggestions.
 
I'm having the annoying squeal as well. It's of a lower pitch than my old 280, but definitely noticeable and somewhat annoying when gaming. Diamond HD7970.
 
Skakruk said:
Oh, for fuck's sake, not ANOTHER generation with coil whine.



Sort of. They obviously haven't designed the card to squeal, but they haven't designed it NOT to squeal either. Fucking idiots. Probably more penny pinching and useless QC.

I can't believe this is the first time you've noticed coil whine... It's been around for years. GPUs do it, PSUs do it, even motherboards can do it. Some components will be worse than others - I was lucky enough to find a GTX 580 with no audible coil noise, and that was a miracle.
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I have 4 Evga Vanilla GTX580s and none of them ever squeal.. neither did my 4 evga 480s i had prior to that. It would be easy for me to hear it as i'm water cooling with quiet fans.
My PC Power & Cooling 1KW SR will but i'm currently not using it.
 
I just noticed that my coil whine started up also.

I didn't noticed this the first few days but now it's pretty apparent.
So there's some broken in time before its noticeable?

Also, on my 6970, there was no whine/squeal unless its very high fps, on the 7970, it happens all the time
 
I've got similar issue on my reference model Sapphire 7970. It produces very loud squel and it only occurs when there's 3D load (games, furmark etc.). It's even louder than the stock fan on 50% setting..
The noise gets worse when increasing voltage and clock speed.

Tasking the GPU to 100% with OpenCL produces very minimal noise (barely audible) and that leads me to believe that the noise is caused by faulty VRM for memory chips.

Going to request RMA for my card next week.
 
For strange reason i had an Antec PSU, both my GTX 460 would squeal. But since i got my Corsair 750W, no more sqealing from the exact same video card...

and i dont know why...
 
I've cut a support ticket with XFX but I haven't heard anything yet...
 
A computer I built for a customer awhile back had the famous squealing sound on the video card, but it did it pretty much all the time. It was a low squeal and sometimes got louder if you were doing something intensive on the pc. It worked 100% fine with no issues so we just kept it in the pc.
 
I'd have to find out whats doing it and put some hot glue over it to calm it down hehe.. I've spent a ton of dough on my newest PC about a year and a half ago to ensure it was damn near silent and theres no way i'd could handle it as i could prob hear it no problem.
 
Yeah the hot glue is a good idea, people do it all the time. It will not hurt anything at all, a lot of car audio amplifier components have hot glue inside of the amp to stop the vibration from the bass from possibly damaging anything. Pretty much the same concept I guess lol. Usually the noise is capacitor whine btw.
 
My HD 7970 BE DD emits a electric squeal / whine during gaming..it's pretty damn annoying.

It even does it while watching videos as well as when I am just at idle (but very faintly)..

Performance increase over my HD 6950 is pretty decent on BF3..
 
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ASUS HD7970 emits it too, should I be worried or just ignore it? It even happens when I move my mouse - basically during any gpu activity.
 
This used to happen on the cards before the ones I have in certain games. It was from the menus rendering at 34095093fps because they were so simplified. Turning on v-sync dealt with it.
 
I use MSI Afterburner to limit my FPS to 125 in all Direct3d games. Eliminates the noise from menus when it's normally 10929092948 FPS... works great.
 
I made an account on this forum just to share that I also own an XFX 7970 Black Edition Double D and I also have alot of squealing noise when running any 3D application (and i've done alot to try to stop it). Firefox has made my PC crash twice since I installed this card, but I guess thats just driver issues. It is the first time I have such an intensive noise coming from a GPU but I've already had it before in lesser amounts when moving the mouse (on a 7800GTX).

My previous card is XFX 5870, never had a problem with it.

Otherwise, the 7970 performs amazingly with P8380 on 3Dmark11 and runs fluidly. I have contacted XFX support twice and they have answered that there should be no problem but if, however, I wish to return the card to get a new one I could do so.

Edit: I am also using Afterburner 2.2 beta for a custom fan profile, the GPU is always under 65c with fans going up to 55% but most of the time they are running at 40% which is totally inaudible over my 1700RPM case fans. Much quiter than reference XFX 5870 in general.
 
Have you tried limiting ingame FPS with MSI Afterburner + MSI OSD Server (Or VSYNC if you enjoy lagging 3 frames behind)?

That eliminated squealing noise related to high fps values.
 
I'm glad I read this thread. A few weeks ago my XFX 6870 started doing the same thing. Whenever I run a game in windowed mode a high pitch noise is heard from the card...at first I thought I was going crazy as nobody else heard it. This explains a lot...and yes I did pinpoint the noise to the card with the case open while running a heavy load.

So is this a RMA'able issue or should I live with it.
 
@Druneau: Well I even get the noise when running 3dmark11 or Crysis 2 with extra resolution and tesselation package so the FPS is never above 50-60... but anyway I will try that on Afterburner soon.

@shyboi: My card performs great even with that noise. Since you have card for obviously more than a few weeks, I think you shouldnt RMA it unless the sound annoys you or you notice performance drops in games. However, both the XFX support and scan.co.uk (where I bought the card) told me that I can RMA it any time I want with the warranty.
 
Druneau said:
Have you tried limiting ingame FPS with MSI Afterburner + MSI OSD Server (Or VSYNC if you enjoy lagging 3 frames behind)?

That eliminated squealing noise related to high fps values.
Click to expand...

Yeah I tested Vsync on both my monitors (60Hz & 120Hz) it still made this noise.

Even in games where I was getting 40 FPS (well below the refresh rate) the noise was still there.

The noise still persisted at idle :(
 
No noise coming from my 2 Diamond and 1 XFX 7970.. idle or load is good so far (knocking on wood).
 
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