Coil Whine in MSI 290x

I

Italiano86

Limp Gawd
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May 26, 2008
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I just got this used msi 290x card off ebay a couple days ago and just got all the drivers installed, which happened to take 20 mins. Not too happy about that but it's all done finally. I grabbed the 14.7 beta which shows up as 14.6 in afterburner.

Anyway, it's sporting anice ek water block and runnign flawless, except for one major annoying issue now. It has some crazy coil whine coming from it, only when I move the mouse around! As soon as the move is not moving the sound is gone. Is this common?

I read around and people seem to point at either the psu or the card. This is a reference msi card, and I am running a corsair modual 620w which should be enough power I would think. I am running 6x gentle typhoons and my water system.

Please help me out with this, it's driving me nuts and I'm beginning to regret my purchase.

I believe the noise was not present before I installed the new drivers if this helps.
Also loaded up a game and the noise is not present until I am back on the desktop.
 
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First guess is power supply, another option to try is to turn off any power saving features you may have enabled.
 
Some cards just have coil whine, it normally happens when FPS gets too high (300+).
 
I have a feeling it does have to do with frames because it only seems to happen when I'm on the desktop and of course the frame rate is insanely high.

Could my psu be getting old? I bought it back in 2008 so it's 6 years old now but it's been solid. What are the chances getting a new psu would help? I was looking at the newer hx850's but they are damn expensive, at least 165 right now.

I'm super disappointed by my initial amd experience after installing the new card. Amd's site took me 20 minutes to download a 300 meg file and I couldn't find the drivers anywhere else good, and they took 25 minutes to install. I'm also getting a bunch of directx diagnostic errors on startup and at random times. Another oddity is the monitor flickered out and showed me the dvi icon in the top left icon then the video came right back.

Alot of annoying stuff going on which I haven't experienced on my previous nvidia card unfortunately. Hopefully I can sort out all this stuff.
 
Italiano86 said:
Amd's site took me 20 minutes to download a 300 meg file and I couldn't find the drivers anywhere else good, and they took 25 minutes to install. I'm also getting a bunch of directx diagnostic errors on startup and at random times. Another oddity is the monitor flickered out and showed me the dvi icon in the top left icon then the video came right back.
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That sounds like an issue on your end. Sounds like something is broken.
 
Coil whine is not a defect and it can happen with any card, AMD or Nvidia. Changing your GPU or PSU may or may not fix it.

What I would try first, since its only happening at the desktop, is enable the Unofficial overclocking mode w/o PowerPlay support in Afterburner. After you've rebooted, create a profile to use at desktop with slightly higher than normal clocks, something like 500 core/750 mem or 500 core/1250 mem. The higher power draw may help eliminate the coil whine and if it doesn't try forcing 1000/1250 or whatever your default clocks are.

The dynamic clock adjustments in the newest drivers have gotten really aggressive and cause the black screen and other issues with my 290 and anything newer than Catalyst 14.2. If I lock the clocks with Afterburner everything works fine.
 
This whole throttling thing with the 290x is just strange. I understand they are doing it to save power when the gpu is hardly being used but it seems excessive. Playing watch dogs today I noticed the core clock was all over the place, and it didn't get much higher than 8-850, which I thought was really strange.

I thought the card gets up to 1ghz? My temp gets to around 55c on water. I am wondering if enabling vsync has something to do with the throttling? Maybe the card core clock doesn't get as high because it only has to get to 60fps, but this seems like it would create lag or stuttering which I seem to experience while playing.
 
WD ran smooth for me with an r9 290 under water, clocks didn't throttle at all either. Try disabling v-sync.

Relayer said:
Lots of people with both brands experience stuttering in WD.
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This is true. A lot of people did or still do have issues running wd smoothly.
 
Yes, vsync without triple buffering is probably why its throttling.

Its either that or temps; did your VRMs have heatsinks put on them when the waterblock was installed? An easy way to tell if the VRMs are overheating is to let GPUZ monitor your temps while you're playing.

At desktop vsync will be on and it will only draw if something changes. You'll see the core clocks go very low at desktop which is why I suggested locking the clocks higher with Afterburner to increase the power draw. That could eliminate the coil whine at desktop.
 
I used gpuz this morning and used the little rendering test to tax the card and the noise stopped. I don't like the idea of turning off the power saving to get rid of the noise which in turn would run the card higher than normal.

I'll try turning off vsync in game and see if the clock stays more stable and at a higher level.
 
Can you set a frame rate cap? Even if you set it high (120-240 fps) to see if that stops it.
 
Italiano86 said:
I don't like the idea of turning off the power saving to get rid of the noise which in turn would run the card higher than normal.
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Tom's isn't the best source for reviews, but they did a very detailed analysis of 290X power consumption.

At most you're looking at increasing your idle power draw by 5 - 10 watts. If you keep ULPS on, the card will still power down if/when your monitor goes to sleep. Its not going to make your card die faster or anything.

The reason they're so aggressive now is everyone is bringing their laptop power optimizations to the desktop, where a few W saved can mean quite a few extra minutes of battery life but doesn't mean that much for your desktop. There are obviously a few problems left to work out with the desktop implementation.

Something thing that should help with stuttering in Watch Dogs is turning down the render ahead from the default of 3 frames to 1.
 
How would I set a frame rate cap in 2d mode on the desktop?

What exactly does ulps do, and how does it correlate to cranking the clock on the card?

How exactly do I lock the clock speed via afterburner? I can do this but I'm hoping I don't have to really raise it alot to stop the whine.
 
You can't set a framerate cap for the desktop. Vsync is always on at desktop which acts as a 60 fps cap anyhow.

ULPS lets the GPU enter a long idle state, and power down most of the GPU when your monitor is turned off or asleep. You have to specifically disable it in Afterburner to turn it off so don't worry about it. I was just mentioning it because that is probably the biggest power saving feature for a desktop GPU.

To lock the clock speeds in Afterburner you need to enable the unofficial overclocking support w/o powerplay.

S2qXWRd.jpg

Image is from this guide. You don't need to enable extend official limits, just set the unofficial mode to w/o powerplay.

After you hit ok and Afterburner reboots your system, set your core speed to 500 and memory speed to 1250 (defaults are 300/150 for single monitor and 300/1250 for multi-monitor). 500 core is what AMD generally uses for video playback so it should cover most of your desktop apps. If this stops the whine click on save and then click one of the profile buttons to save the speeds to that profile.

You'll also need another profile of 1000/1250 for gaming. The 2d/3d automatic profile switch didn't work for me the last time I tried it so I just select the profile I want by right clicking on Afterburner in the system tray. There is another option in the Afterburner settings to auto apply the last profile you were using when Windows starts.
 
Hmmm, I did what you suggested and set my core to 500 and it got rid of the whine! I wish I could enable ulps so it can keep my temps down but oh well. I suppose it's not taking up too much more power than leaving the card at idle 300/150.

I just wish there was a way where I can edit the registry for the drivers or something to just have the default idle state set the clock to 500 and not have to manually overclock the card like this.

I would rather not have to have 2 profiles for the card and manually change them every time I want to game because I will probably forget to change it back when I'm done but at least the whine is gone for now. Where is the 2d/3d automatic profile you talked about? Maybe we can get it working somehow.

Thanks for the help man!

Fuuuuuuu... Went into watch dogs with the 2nd profile settings and there is a crazy coil whine that's just constant. It's more annoying than the mouse noise. I'll try setting the core below 1000 and see what happens. Funny thing is if I set it to 1000 exactly it goes to 300 and fluctuates, almost like the power savings is still active.
 
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Was the whine in Watch Dogs when you were actually playing the game or at the main menu? Coil whine is common at main menus without vsync because the framerate goes so high.

I actually got my automatic profile selection working again. In settings, go to the profiles tab and you'll see the options to set it up.

If you get stuck at 3d clocks at desktop, its detecting one or more of your programs as a 3d app and there are a few steps you need to take to correct it.
 
The noise is playing the game and in the menu, turning vsync on or off doesn't seem to matter much.

I went to the profile tab and i only see 4 boxes to put hotkeys for each profile...
 
Can you check if the Afterburner overclock mode is with or without PowerPlay and try setting it to the other option?

The automatic profile is set through the 2d/3d profile options here:
1SHNgzA.jpg
 
Italiano86 said:
The noise is playing the game and in the menu, turning vsync on or off doesn't seem to matter much.

I went to the profile tab and i only see 4 boxes to put hotkeys for each profile...
Click to expand...

Damn, I feel for you... Seems like it's going to remain unresolved...
 
IMO the 290x series are loud anyway you cut it -- custom fans and all.

I get loud coil whine on mine and since it's the only GPU I have, I'm going to have to live with it until the next gen.
 
I tried to change around the with or without powerplay support and still don't have the automatic profiles setup on the profiles tab. I am running the latest msi afterburner, but i noticed you have screen and video capture which I don't have. Your version seems different.

Having powerplay set to without gets rid of the power saving feature I think, not sure what disabled does differently from this.
 
Afterburner's overclocking with powerplay is essentially the same as disabled, which uses the AMD drivers for overclocking support, unless you want a larger overclocking range than the drivers provide.

I was just suggesting to try the other to see if it helps with the coil whine in game. If not you may have no other option than to try another PSU from a store with a good return policy in case it doesn't help.
 
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