XFX 5870 awful noise (audio inside)

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Marvin_78

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 23, 2004
Messages
198
So I got my XFX 5870 from the egg and this thing sounds like its gona fry itself. My rig is a week or two old and has been rock stable running the 8800gtx.
I can deal with fan noise but this thing is louder then my Thermaltake 120 screamer.
I know there is talk of forcing vsync but it makes no difference.
Link to youtube for audio.

Anyone else have this happen? RMA worthy? I could deal with slight noise but I duno about this being so loud.

specs: all running stock
i7-860
ASUS P7P55D LGA
G.SKILL Ripjaws 4GB
WDBlack 500GB
Corsair 850HX
 
Sounds like there is a cable (or something) clipping a fan somewhere. Sure there aint a twist tie stuck somewhere? Maybe some tape?
 
Or the PSU. (squealing is what made the think about this)

If you are sure the GPU, then RMA.
 
Yeah, its the gpu. There is a sound-card between the gpu and psu and the mic got it better the closer I got to the gpu.
Negative on a cable, thats all electrical noise except for the fan noise, and thats not even the gpu fan.

Odds are if I RMA back to newegg its gona end in a refund. Anyone know the hold time on an XFX rma? Dangit, I've tasted the power and gota go back. :(
 
Put the case in another room and drill a hole through the wall for the video cable. :p
Or send it back for a refund and hope you don't wait long for a replacement.
 
Marvin_78 said:
Yeah, its the gpu. There is a sound-card between the gpu and psu and the mic got it better the closer I got to the gpu.
Negative on a cable, thats all electrical noise except for the fan noise, and thats not even the gpu fan.

Odds are if I RMA back to newegg its gona end in a refund. Anyone know the hold time on an XFX rma? Dangit, I've tasted the power and gota go back. :(
Click to expand...

DO NOT RMA back to newegg, they just refund me instead...

which I reply back to them and ask for my item back....
 
During gaming on my old 8800, the screen would go black and I heard pretty much the same squealing noises as in your clip. Are you able to look at your temps while this is happening? The problem was high core temps for me and the card was overheating.
 
That sucks. What makes it worse is that its impossible to get a replacement at the moment. If it isn't crashing or glitching while running it, keep it until new stock comes in for XFX and then RMA with them. It is lifetime afterall.

Drown out the noise with headphones or volume on the speakers for now.

Now you did mention a sound card installed near it. Have you tried to remove the sound card and see if it still makes that sound? I'm just wondering if it is EMI that is causing that noise if the sound card is not properly shielded from such interference.
 
Dam, I'd rma that sucker. PSUs have been known to squeal as well, so make sure it's not your psu under load. You could just wait for more stock and then rma to xfx.
 
Yeah. I can confirm without a doubt it's the gpu when under load. :( I hate to do it but I think I'm gona rma it back to the egg and play the waiting game again. I just dont trust running this thing with it making such noise. Those of you with 5870's know how loud the fan can get @100% and this can be heard over the fan and headphones. And who knows what I would get back from XFX.

Note that everything heard in that audio is comming from the gpu itself except the fan noise. Those "beeps" in the beginning aren't really beeps, it's electrical noise coming from the gpu during the loading and splash screens. Like an old tone board or something.

Thanks for the responses.
Dangit
 
Yup, 5870 at 100% fan speeds almost drowned out the 3 jet flyby we had the other day, no, seriously, I can hear it over 3 jets flying over my house!! (The rumble was the jets, the the "whirring" was the fan.) Hell, even at 50% it's as bad as a small je.......prop plane engine.)

Thankfully it never gets hot enough to go over 30% fan speed and is quieter than my 8800GTX was at <30%.
 
Coil whine ... if that's the noise you're getting under load, it's coil whine. Something many high-end ATi cards have suffered from these past few generations.
 
Yeah, I read about coil whine but this is coil screaming. The card rocks but I dont trust it and cant really deal with the noise. For this amount of money I could except some whine/noise but not at the level it is.
 
This sounds insane but do it anyway:

Get a piece of pipe or non-metal tubing of some kind. Stick one end in your ear. Move the other end around in your case pointing at the gpu and then up at your psu. The tubing gives you extremely directional hearing. You will immediately be able to tell where the whine is coming from.

Very often, you will find that the whine is coming from your PSU even though it comes and goes when you replace A DIFFERENT component in your system.

I've seen it many times. The latest was with an older Antec PSU and a Seagate disk. Install the disk and the PSU would whine. Remove disk and the whine would stop. Install a different disk; no whine.

Try a different PSU if you can. You may RMA your GPU only to find that you have the same problem.

The explainiation of why this happens: Almost every component has it's own switching power circuitry. When you hook together a bunch of components with their own switching supplies and power them with another switching supply (the PSU) there can be strange interactions due to the fact that they are all switching on and off many time per second. When you add all of these different switching frequencies together strange/unexpected/bad things can happen.
 
kristof, I actually saw that same suggestion while googling this. My game headphones have a directional mic while the ones I used to record this are omi. I ran the directional mic all through the inside (to even make sure it wasnt the mb or cpu) and it is noticeable louder at the vid card.

I even turned off C1E and EIST per another topic I found and it made no difference.
 
Marvin_78 said:
kristof, I actually saw that same suggestion while googling this. My game headphones have a directional mic while the ones I used to record this are omi. I ran the directional mic all through the inside (to even make sure it wasnt the mb or cpu) and it is noticeable louder at the vid card.

I even turned off C1E and EIST per another topic I found and it made no difference.
Click to expand...

I tried these exact solutions with my X1950XTX and 8800 Ultra to no avail.

Coil whine's just something you may have to live with. :( The only way I got over it was installing an aftermarket heatsink with loud fans to help drown out the coil whine noise. Using amped headphones also helped.
 
I was going to say it's the "not enough power" alarm*, but your sound is relatively quiet in comparison.

*I accidentally forgot to plug in the PCI-E power connectors when I first installed my 5850. The card let me and my neighbors know that it needed more power. Most high pitched noise out of a computer I have ever heard. Yikes.
 
Marvin_78 said:
kristof, I actually saw that same suggestion while googling this. My game headphones have a directional mic while the ones I used to record this are omi. I ran the directional mic all through the inside (to even make sure it wasnt the mb or cpu) and it is noticeable louder at the vid card.

I even turned off C1E and EIST per another topic I found and it made no difference.
Click to expand...

Even though the sound is coming from the power circuitry on the gfx card you might want to try a psu swap anyway if you can do it without too much hassle, like borrowing from a friend.

All of the different switching supplies in a PC form one big harmonic system. Changing one piece can change the behavior of the entire system, especially the PSU.

Then again it could always be a bum card.

Incidentally, I recently had to choose between an XFX and MSI 4870. I was surprised to find many reports of coil whine on the XFX card and none for the MSI.
 
Someone forgot to put fan oil :D

I'm thinking it's the fan. My graphic card recently started shrieking after having it for a few months. Thank god its in a case that I can't hear it.
 
kristof, copy that. It's boxed and ready to mail though and going through the nightmare of removing all traces of the nvidia stuff again makes me whine.

lloydxd, I wish it was the fan.
 
That's your caps squealing...its quite common on both Nvidia and Ati GPU's....in fact it "ale's" my sigrig's 4870 under heavy loads

It is nothing to worry about so if you are dead set on RMAing it expect the 50/50 chance you will receive another card with the alement...goodluck on getting a quieter card though

My 4850/260GTX/9800GTX card's have all been dead quiet unlike my 4870....oh well its not Ati or XFX's fault so what can you do....

You can try fixing this problem by gluing the caps which seals the squeals and it has worked for quite a few users so i have read in research after getting my 4870...i'd imagine XFX wouldn't like that though so RMA it is?

Let us know how it goes...
 
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Rewindlabs said:
oh well its not Ati or XFX's fault so what can you do....
Click to expand...

If components on the XFX card are squealing it absolutely is XFX's fault. There are many things than an engineer can do to remedy the problem if they care. It's one thing when one card out of a thousand exhibits squealing. It's another when every card of a certain make/model squeals. In the latter case the company simply doesn't care that their card squeals and they're betting that their customers won't care either.

As I said earlier in the thread, when I was shopping for my 4870, switching supply squeal was at the top of my list of concerns. I disqualified cards that were widely reported to squeal. My new MSI 4870 is perfectly silent. I did "the tubing test" on it just the other day.
 
kristof said:
If components on the XFX card are squealing it absolutely is XFX's fault. There are many things than an engineer can do to remedy the problem if they care. It's one thing when one card out of a thousand exhibits squealing. It's another when every card of a certain make/model squeals. In the latter case the company simply doesn't care that their card squeals and they're betting that their customers won't care either.

As I said earlier in the thread, when I was shopping for my 4870, switching supply squeal was at the top of my list of concerns. I disqualified cards that were widely reported to squeal. My new MSI 4870 is perfectly silent. I did "the tubing test" on it just the other day.
Click to expand...

Maybe so maybe so...i guess they could recall there cards but then again it's not really a problem that is going to hurt performance of the card or general operation albeit that is no excuse for the problem

I am sure they will happily accept both mine and the OP's RMA's on the case though so its not like they aren't accepting it is somewhat of a problem....it should have been fixed with the release of the 5xxx series :(
 
Rewindlabs said:
I am sure they will happily accept both mine and the OP's RMA's on the case though so its not like they aren't accepting it is somewhat of a problem....it should have been fixed with the release of the 5xxx series :(
Click to expand...

The trouble is that on cards where squealing is the norm an rma isn't going to help. The problem is inherent in the design and/or part selection. If it affects only a percentage of cards then maybe you'll win the rma lottery.

Maybe you can ask for a different but equivalent card, say another 4870 but of a different design/sku.
 
kristof said:
The trouble is that on cards where squealing is the norm an rma isn't going to help. The problem is inherent in the design and/or part selection. If it affects only a percentage of cards then maybe you'll win the rma lottery.

Maybe you can ask for a different but equivalent card, say another 4870 but of a different design/sku.
Click to expand...

My 5870 doesn't make a peep. Id say it was defective if it is in fact the caps squealing.
 
That damned near sounded like a modem handshake. RMA that! If you didn't amplify the recording that's not a normal capacitor squeal. Solid caps, should never get that loud.
 
inotocracy said:
My 5870 doesn't make a peep. Id say it was defective if it is in fact the caps squealing.
Click to expand...

That quote of mine was in reference to Rewindlabs' squealing 4870 not the op's XFX 5870.

The 5870 situation is different since all cards out now are the same reference design. The actual component selection may differ between brands though.
 
Interesting. Let us know what happens, I'm interested to see how the XFX RMA process performs should something ever go wrong with my 5850. Turn around time, and if the new card fixes your problem would be good info to share.
 
Yeah, my XFX 5870 is squeeling to, I'd made a post about it a 2 weeks ago. I'd never had a card do this before, and most of the info I'd seen was "don't worry about it" "RMA it and you have a 50% of getting an OK card back", "turn on vsync" "it's your PSU". Shrug.

Mine doesn't sound as loud as that recording, but then you're probably sticking a mic up next to it to record it. It's sort of annoying, but then I'd be more annoyed to not have that card now that all the new games are coming out, and I since it usually only happens when playing games, and since I usually wear headphones, I don't hear it while playing. Shrug. Maybe I'll just live with it for now and RMA it later.
 
That's the thing. The recording is actually quieter then what is heard. Like I've said, I could deal with a slight whine, I was even expecting it. But this is loud enough to for me to be concerned. I just wanted to know what others thought.
Boxed and rma'd back to the egg. Figure I will just sit and wait till someone comes out with a non-reference version.
 
probably had a better chance of getting a replacement card within days if you contacted XFX instead of the egg..
 
Do make sure to contact our support staff and report the issue if you haven't done so already. Our support section is here http://xfxforce.com/en-us/Help/Support.aspx . Get a support ticket up as soon as possible.

As others have indicated cards making some level of noise is common, but that level of noise is definitely out of the ordinary.
 
bitgod said:
Yeah, my XFX 5870 is squeeling to, I'd made a post about it a 2 weeks ago. I'd never had a card do this before, and most of the info I'd seen was "don't worry about it" "RMA it and you have a 50% of getting an OK card back", "turn on vsync" "it's your PSU". Shrug.

Mine doesn't sound as loud as that recording, but then you're probably sticking a mic up next to it to record it. It's sort of annoying, but then I'd be more annoyed to not have that card now that all the new games are coming out, and I since it usually only happens when playing games, and since I usually wear headphones, I don't hear it while playing. Shrug. Maybe I'll just live with it for now and RMA it later.
Click to expand...
Yeah same thing with my XFX 5850, I just turned on vsync(which stops it) and it really doesn't bother me when it does happen. Its only when my FPS gets past 200 that it starts to whine.

Also the OP said that Vsync doesnt correct it, is this in game or at the menu? Since I still get a whine from the menu since the frame rate is at around 999. At first it really did bug me, and I was worried every application was going to cause it, but after a week I just didn't care because it was only happening in menus or when I was testing out a humus 3d demo.
 
sc3252 said:
Yeah same thing with my XFX 5850, I just turned on vsync(which stops it) and it really doesn't bother me when it does happen. Its only when my FPS gets past 200 that it starts to whine.

Also the OP said that Vsync doesnt correct it, is this in game or at the menu? Since I still get a whine from the menu since the frame rate is at around 999. At first it really did bug me, and I was worried every application was going to cause it, but after a week I just didn't care because it was only happening in menus or when I was testing out a humus 3d demo.
Click to expand...

You'd figure that the 5870 was so fast that it would be supersonic by now... Apparently not... :D
 
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