Coil whine GTX 970

[sprudeldude]

I going to order next setup.


RAM: Kingston HyperX 16 GB DDR3 1600 Kit
Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-H97-HD3
CPU: Intel® Core™ i74790 3,6 GHz (4,0 GHz Turbo Boost)
GPU: GIGABYTE G1 Gaming GTX970
PSU: Corsair RM650
SSD: Samsung 850 EVO, 250 GB
HDD: Western Digital Green, 2 TB
Case: Corsair Carbide Series SPEC-01 Blue LED

But now i've read a lot about coil whine with the 970.
Same with the 980.

That it IS POSSIBLE you have coil whine.

I don't know what to do now. Anyone with helpfull tips so i can avoid buying a GPU with coil whine ?

Many thanks !

[Atmos]

Uhh, coil whine can be a pain. Sometimes it can take several weeks before it starts as the coils loosen a bit in their places. If it does start, then send the card back and get a new one, sometimes though it may not be covered over warranty.

 

I'd really advise though getting a R9 390 over the 970, the performs better, costs the same, doesn't have that annoying coil whine, and has more than double the usable vram.

[EthanTheFrogMan]

I going to order next setup.

RAM: Kingston HyperX 16 GB DDR3 1600 Kit

Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-H97-HD3

CPU: Intel® Core™ i74790 3,6 GHz (4,0 GHz Turbo Boost)

GPU: GIGABYTE G1 Gaming GTX970

PSU: Corsair RM650

SSD: Samsung 850 EVO, 250 GB

HDD: Western Digital Green, 2 TB

Case: Corsair Carbide Series SPEC-01 Blue LED

But now i've read a lot about coil whine with the 970.

Same with the 980.

That it IS POSSIBLE you have coil whine.

I don't know what to do now. Anyone with helpfull tips so i can avoid buying a GPU with coil whine ?

Many thanks !

I would get the EVGA 970 ftw, it is great and I have not had coil whine

[arronleeds]

does my 970 have coil when? yes

 

is it noticable 99% of the time? no

 

get a 970 and be happy.

 

dont buy an ftw, they cost more than most when its basically an ocd evga sc 970, pointless.

[W-L]

-SNIP-

 

Coil whine is kind of the loosing lottery if you will, there is no way to avoid or control it, sometimes it can be less or worst by the combination of GPU and PSU I find most of it occurs only when it is doing a crazy high FPS or benchmarking tends to do that.

[don_svetlio]

Coil whine is kind of the loosing lottery if you will, there is no way to avoid or control it, sometimes it can be less or worst by the combination of GPU and PSU I find most of it occurs only when it is doing a crazy high FPS or benchmarking tends to do that.

More or less this - my cad will occasionally whine for a bit then stop - usually when it's @ 0% load or low load like a YT video or VLC - whenever I'm pushing it - high fps or no it's as quiet as a mouse so it's a lot more random than the lottery

[W-L]

More or less this - my cad will occasionally whine for a bit then stop - usually when it's @ 0% load or low load like a YT video or VLC - whenever I'm pushing it - high fps or no it's as quiet as a mouse so it's a lot more random than the lottery

 

yeah I have to set FPS limits or turn on Vsync for some games since their FPS will shoot through the roof causing it to whine but for most stuff it's not a problem

[don_svetlio]

yeah I have to set FPS limits or turn on Vsync for some games since their FPS will shoot through the roof causing it to whine but for most stuff it's not a problem

Yup - Witcher 3 flat out crashed several times when I entered the main menu without V-sync or a frame limit in place - 3 000 fps ftw

But yeah - AFAIK coil whine isn't really dangerous.

[RyGuy99]

I going to order next setup.

RAM: Kingston HyperX 16 GB DDR3 1600 Kit

Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-H97-HD3

CPU: Intel® Core™ i74790 3,6 GHz (4,0 GHz Turbo Boost)

GPU: GIGABYTE G1 Gaming GTX970

PSU: Corsair RM650

SSD: Samsung 850 EVO, 250 GB

HDD: Western Digital Green, 2 TB

Case: Corsair Carbide Series SPEC-01 Blue LED

But now i've read a lot about coil whine with the 970.

Same with the 980.

That it IS POSSIBLE you have coil whine.

I don't know what to do now. Anyone with helpfull tips so i can avoid buying a GPU with coil whine ?

Many thanks !

I've owned a 970 G1 gaming for about 2 months now and have been overclocking it. The only time I've ever had coil whine was in the FIFA 15 main menu and even then it's not on a regular basis. It's a great overclocking card and I strongly suggest it.

As for the 390 its not really as much of a better card as people like to say. At 1080p it is safe to say they perform the same.

[don_svetlio]

I've owned a 970 G1 gaming for about 2 months now and have been overclocking it. The only time I've ever had coil whine was in the FIFA 15 main menu and even then it's not on a regular basis. It's a great overclocking card and I strongly suggest it.

As for the 390 its not really as much of a better card as people like to say. At 1080p it is safe to say they perform the same.

@ 1080p they are about equal but once you crank up the res, it steadily pulls ahead of the 970 - it's a refresh of the 290, not a direct rebrand and with DX12 coming within a year or two to the mainstream, the 390 will get a bump of about 30%

[RyGuy99]

@ 1080p they are about equal but once you crank up the res, it steadily pulls ahead of the 970 - it's a refresh of the 290, not a direct rebrand and with DX12 coming within a year or two to the mainstream, the 390 will get a bump of about 30%

Yes I'd assume he was thinking 1080p but I'm not sure. Even cranking up the resolution in DSR to 1440p and 4K the 970 does really well. Even Jayz Nitro video shows that they perform extremely similarly above 1080p, but I have seen other benchmarks saying otherwise.

 

As for that bump of 30% that is theoretical and I'll be damned if we assume the future of DirectX12 before we even see games that support it come out and driver updates come for both sides. Give it a year or more then we can start seeing how these match up. But I have read up and the 390 does look like it will see a bigger improvement...lets wait and see.

[don_svetlio]

Yes I'd assume he was thinking 1080p but I'm not sure. Even cranking up the resolution in DSR to 1440p and 4K the 970 does really well. Even Jayz Nitro video shows that they perform extremely similarly above 1080p, but I have seen other benchmarks saying otherwise.

 

As for that bump of 30% that is theoretical and I'll be damned if we assume the future of DirectX12 before we even see games that support it come out and driver updates come for both sides. Give it a year or more then we can start seeing how these match up. But I have read up and the 390 does look like it will see a bigger improvement...lets wait and see.

@ 4K it is simply impossible for the 970 to match the 390 as 3.5GB of usable VRAM will bottleneck very hard as 4K uses over 6GB sometimes. So it's more likely the 390 to be the better choice for 1440p and both are bad at 4K but the 970 is worse off I guess.

As for Ashes - one game or not, one bench or not, it exposed a critical design flaw in Maxwell - it lacks A-sync Compute - no amount of perfect drivers will fix that - the driver cannot solder compute units to the GPU core - it's unable to use A-sync, even through the driver tries to, because it was cut by Nvidia, knowingly I may add as they've had the code and the info about DX12 for over 2 years. It's just a ploy to make people buy Pascal since otherwise they are doomed to have lower performance with DX12 than AMD equivalents - the 1080 Ti or whatever it's called - Titan Y? We did X and Z already, (XYZ!) will support it but it's just a way for them to screw over the fanboys and milk them - something we all knew would happen - every time we give a company our blind support it either dips in quality or screws us over - Corsair's lower end PSUs are a prime example, or Asus GPUs - the 7970/680 Matrix cards were awesome - the 290X was crap and now the 980 Ti strix has heat issues IIRC.

 

[RyGuy99]

@ 4K it is simply impossible for the 970 to match the 390 as 3.5GB of usable VRAM will bottleneck very hard as 4K uses over 6GB sometimes. So it's more likely the 390 to be the better choice for 1440p and both are bad at 4K but the 970 is worse off I guess.

I'm just stating a benchmark I found. And it is 4.0GB of usable VRAM!!!! I get readings of 3.8 in some games when I'm 1440p and 4K DSR!

[don_svetlio]

I'm just stating a benchmark I found. And it is 4.0GB of usable VRAM!!!! I get readings of 3.8 in some games when I'm 1440p and 4K DSR!

It's 3.5 of fast and 0.5 of slow VRAM - what software reports is not always the way it is - my GPU-Z says I run @ 1.5V but that's obviously bullcrap - all apps report slightly higher numbers in order to prevent the card from actually running out of VRAM.

[sprudeldude]

I'm just stating a benchmark I found. And it is 4.0GB of usable VRAM!!!! I get readings of 3.8 in some games when I'm 1440p and 4K DSR!

 

 

@ 4K it is simply impossible for the 970 to match the 390 as 3.5GB of usable VRAM will bottleneck very hard as 4K uses over 6GB sometimes. So it's more likely the 390 to be the better choice for 1440p and both are bad at 4K but the 970 is worse off I guess.

As for Ashes - one game or not, one bench or not, it exposed a critical design flaw in Maxwell - it lacks A-sync Compute - no amount of perfect drivers will fix that - the driver cannot solder compute units to the GPU core - it's unable to use A-sync, even through the driver tries to, because it was cut by Nvidia, knowingly I may add as they've had the code and the info about DX12 for over 2 years. It's just a ploy to make people buy Pascal since otherwise they are doomed to have lower performance with DX12 than AMD equivalents - the 1080 Ti or whatever it's called - Titan Y? We did X and Z already, (XYZ!) will support it but it's just a way for them to screw over the fanboys and milk them - something we all knew would happen - every time we give a company our blind support it either dips in quality or screws us over - Corsair's lower end PSUs are a prime example, or Asus GPUs - the 7970/680 Matrix cards were awesome - the 290X was crap and now the 980 Ti strix has heat issues IIRC.

 

 

 

Yes I'd assume he was thinking 1080p but I'm not sure. Even cranking up the resolution in DSR to 1440p and 4K the 970 does really well. Even Jayz Nitro video shows that they perform extremely similarly above 1080p, but I have seen other benchmarks saying otherwise.

 

As for that bump of 30% that is theoretical and I'll be damned if we assume the future of DirectX12 before we even see games that support it come out and driver updates come for both sides. Give it a year or more then we can start seeing how these match up. But I have read up and the 390 does look like it will see a bigger improvement...lets wait and see.

 

 

@ 1080p they are about equal but once you crank up the res, it steadily pulls ahead of the 970 - it's a refresh of the 290, not a direct rebrand and with DX12 coming within a year or two to the mainstream, the 390 will get a bump of about 30%

 

 

I've owned a 970 G1 gaming for about 2 months now and have been overclocking it. The only time I've ever had coil whine was in the FIFA 15 main menu and even then it's not on a regular basis. It's a great overclocking card and I strongly suggest it.

As for the 390 its not really as much of a better card as people like to say. At 1080p it is safe to say they perform the same.

 

 

Yup - Witcher 3 flat out crashed several times when I entered the main menu without V-sync or a frame limit in place - 3 000 fps ftw

But yeah - AFAIK coil whine isn't really dangerous.

 

 

yeah I have to set FPS limits or turn on Vsync for some games since their FPS will shoot through the roof causing it to whine but for most stuff it's not a problem

 

 

Coil whine is kind of the loosing lottery if you will, there is no way to avoid or control it, sometimes it can be less or worst by the combination of GPU and PSU I find most of it occurs only when it is doing a crazy high FPS or benchmarking tends to do that.

 

 

does my 970 have coil when? yes

 

is it noticable 99% of the time? no

 

get a 970 and be happy.

 

dont buy an ftw, they cost more than most when its basically an ocd evga sc 970, pointless.

 

 

I would get the EVGA 970 ftw, it is great and I have not had coil whine

 

 

Uhh, coil whine can be a pain. Sometimes it can take several weeks before it starts as the coils loosen a bit in their places. If it does start, then send the card back and get a new one, sometimes though it may not be covered over warranty.

 

I'd really advise though getting a R9 390 over the 970, the performs better, costs the same, doesn't have that annoying coil whine, and has more than double the usable vram.

So what do you guys think ? 

My case will be standing 40 cm away from me with the right side of the case pointing at me.

Will i hear the coil whine ? The sound will be connected into my stereo or my headphones.

Otherwise, make a changeover to a MSI or Gigabyte R9 390 ?

I've looked at the benchmarks and they are kind the same. The only disadvantage that i see is that the R9 gets a little hotter. 

[arronleeds]

I'd personally get a 390 now over a 970 because it has plenty more vram, people are also like yeah nvidia doesn't support dx12 properly but unless it has come from nvidia its bullshit.

[ApolloX75]

My first Gigabyte 970 had severe coil whine brought on by a Corsair CX600M. My replacement 970 has none with a Seasonic G750.

I think with the late model 970s coil whine is a lot rarer. If you happen to get one from the early batches then the chance is definitely higher.

Coil whine is also influenced by power supply and other factors. My 970 may not have coil whine with my Seasonic but if I installed a Corsair PSU it might suddenly flare up. It's hit or miss.

Either way unless you run a silent PC and no sound you won't hear it much with the case sides on. Even AMD cards suffer from it, so there really is no respite. The difference is most Radeons are loud enough you can't hear it.

[sprudeldude]

I'd personally get a 390 now over a 970 because it has plenty more vram, people are also like yeah nvidia doesn't support dx12 properly but unless it has come from nvidia its bullshit.

So are you having coil whine that is really iritating ? Or how do you game ? Headphones ?

 

[sprudeldude]

My first Gigabyte 970 had severe coil whine brought on by a Corsair CX600M. My replacement 970 has none with a Seasonic G750.

I think with the late model 970s coil whine is a lot rarer. If you happen to get one from the early batches then the chance is definitely higher.

Coil whine is also influenced by power supply and other factors. My 970 may not have coil whine with my Seasonic but if I installed a Corsair PSU it might suddenly flare up. It's hit or miss.

Either way unless you run a silent PC and no sound you won't hear it much with the case sides on. Even AMD cards suffer from it, so there really is no respite. The difference is most Radeons are loud enough you can't hear it.

So i shall probably hear it with my setup, because i'm gonna buy a Corsair RM650 ?

[arronleeds]

So are you having coil whine that is really iritating ? Or how do you game ? Headphones ?

 

the only time ive ever heard coil whine from my 970 is in the far cry 4 menu when the fps was over 2000, apart from that i never ever hear it, i use headphones in a sound card.

[ApolloX75]

So i shall probably hear it with my setup, because i'm gonna buy a Corsair RM650 ?

Not what I'm saying. It's completely dependent upon individual cards. Mine didn't like a Corsair PSU, yours might be fine. Maybe yours doesn't like Seasonic.

It seems to be completely luck based.

[GarfieldsField]

I'm planning to get one of those 970s. And I'm concerned about coil whine.

 

How loud it can be?

 

My chassis will be on the floor beside my table. Around 1 meter from me. It is Thermaltake Core v51 (pretty open chassis, good airflow). Will coil whine irritate me?

I do not require complete silence.

 

What brands seem to have less coil whine?

[Masada02]

I had 2 EVGA 970's in SLI for about 5 months. Both cards produced a ridiculous amount of coil whine. It was loud, and the only way to stop it was to limit the frame rate to your monitors refresh rate (which honestly isn't a bad thing).

 

Just know that it is likely you will see in on the 970, but it is easy to fix. 

[GarfieldsField]

I'm planing to play CSGO on 250+ fps...So I guess I should avoid 970?

[Masada02]

I'm planing to play CSGO on 250+ fps...So I guess I should avoid 970?

What's your monitor's refresh rate?