HD5770 too noisy?

[edo25]

I notice a lot of people are thinking about the ATI 5770 graphics card as a possible upgrade.

My PC is a DELL XPS420 Quadcore 2.4ghz, 4GB ram - originally supplied with 8800gt graphics.

My 8800gt gave up the ghost last weekend and after reading several reviews I purchased an Asus HD5770 voltage tweak edition, tempted by its better performance and low power requirements.

When i'm browsing or doing mundane stuff such as word processing it's fine - almost silent.

However when I play any games such as Dragon Age it is VERY NOISY.
Seriously, its like a full scale fan heater clicking and whirring - even with my headphones on I can hear it. When I exit the game, the fan goes back to silent.

Is this normal for a HD5770 or do I have a faulty card?

Thanks for any ideas and responses!

[aidanjt]

I believe it's rather normal. When idling, the HD5xxx series uses very very little energy, so the drivers throttles back the fan to nearly nothing, when you start gaming the fan needs to spin up to keep the thermals in check. The reference HD48xx was criticised for it's thermal management, so I'd imagine AMD decided to be a bit more aggressive with the cooling this time around.

[shaithis]

From another thread....might be useful:

I have an Asus 5770 bought a week ago from Scan and this has the new cooler on. I also bought one at launch with the old cooler on and this runs hotter and exhibits problems at idle.

The new one is cooler and runs better imho

Perhaps the newer coolers are quieter as well. Might be worth asking some 5770 owners how noisy theirs are.

[edo25]

Thanks for your responses.

I know many people are considering the 5770 so i thought i'd add this topic as a headsup in case the noise issue is important.

If I'd known the 5770 was this noisy, I honestly would not have bought it and gone for a 9800gt instead!

Oh well, it does have the ATI Tools - I'll experiment with the fan and CPU settings to lower the noise!

[aidanjt]

I just wish ATI had a 'target temp' value and automatically adjust the fan speed to try to match, even if it was locked at 70C or something, that'd still be reasonable. Currently their TM algos seem a bit finicky.

[Zak33]

Run in the default state, the Voltage Tweak's fan is quiet in 2D, but it does rise a notch or two above what we'd like when rendering games....
Leaving the fan-speed to auto results in it spinning to 2,500rpm, as noted earlier. The basic card isn't the quietest around, so adding to the noise is one side-effect of raising voltages.

The faster fan struggles in keeping the GPU cool, clearly.

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.ph...=6&search=5770

This is where nvidia beat for bales out of ATI/AMD... cooler efficiency. 260 GTX's barely go above a whisper in any game.

I have a 4870 TOXIC, and I got it because it used Sapphires cooler, which is a lot quiter than the default version.

I didn't used to mind noisy fans... but age caught me up

Can you use Smart Doctor to adjust is down a tad?

SmartDoctor is more than just about setting voltages. The monitoring portion extends to fan speed, engine and memory, and separate tabs give you granular control over the way in which the card's fan/clocks are set.

In the default state the fan spins at roughly 1,150rpm, rising to 2,000rpm under load. Increase the clocks and voltage (by around 15 per cent) and the 'auto' under-load speed adjusts accordingly, to 2,500rpm for a 1GHz core speed.

[Pob255]

The stock coolers on the 5xxx series are much better, however, there's also the question of where the heat is coming from.
One major flaw with the 4xxx series (well the high end ones) was power regulators (prm&mofets) got nearly as hot as the gpu, hotter when there was good cooling on the gpu alone.
the 5850&5870 has revised the power regulation with digital moftes that run far cooler, however the 5770 is just running the same prm as the 4xxx series.
The cooler is far better, under that shroud there's a vapour chamber like the sapphire vopor-x cards used.

the fan could be set agressivly high in 3d mode, however

My 8800gt gave up the ghost last weekend and after reading several reviews I purchased an Asus HD5770 voltage tweak edition, tempted by its better performance and low power requirements.

that might be the route cause of it.
If Asus has increased the voltage in 3d mode to get more out then it's going to produce more heat so they may of upped the fan speed as well.

But before we go any thurther down this complex road let's start with basics.
Check the fan in the card, make sure nothing id getting sucked into the fan (like a wire) or any other form of obstruction, somewthing catching on the fan blades may not be very noticeable at slow speeds but really add the the fan noise at high speed.

[edo25]

Thanks for your ideas Zak33, Pob255.

I'll try them when I get back on my home PC tonight.

[DeludedGuy]

My 5770 is pretty cool and quiet, but ofcourse when I am running a meaty game it does spin up, even when its still under 60c.

What I did was use the ATI Overdrive to set the fan at 40% all the time, I find this to be the best noise to heat ratio for my card. 45% fan speed and you can hear it, anything under 40% is virtually silent, but the temps do go up, at 40% fan speed the highest temp i have seen is 73c after playing Fallout 3 for 4 hours.

[fireisdangerous]

From another thread....might be useful:



Perhaps the newer coolers are quieter as well. Might be worth asking some 5770 owners how noisy theirs are.

i have the saphire version with the egg shroud and must say its preety quiet if you open the catalyst control centre and got ati overdrive and u can manually change the default fan speed i have it set at 20 whilst im just surfing and set it back to auto when i play games etc

[edo25]

I checked my 5770 and there doesn't appear to be anything wrong with it.

DeludedGuy -
I will set the fan to 40% when playing games and see what happens.

You said that highest temp you got was 73c - what is the highest 'safe' temperature before I should start getting worried?

Thanks

[ta2]

Get some program like HardwareMonitor or RealTemp to tell you your GPU core temperature, then check it against what other people are getting. If it's too high then your card is faulty (probably HSF not properly mounted) and you can either send it back or remount the HSF yourself. You might want to do this anyway as you could use better quality thermal paste.

[Gerrard]

I replaced my 4870 with a 5770 because I wanted something that was cooler/quieter and because I had modded my 4870, it no longer exhausted the hot air out the back, which I now need for my new case. I can't hear my card when idling over any other fans in my case (and they're all very quiet), which is ideal. However, like you, it does get a lot noisier and more noticable under load, but I've come to accept that. If I'm playing games, I'm not too worried about the noise; it's not noisy enough to affect my game play. It's the idling noise that's the real concern for me (eg, if I leave it on over night), and for that, I can't fault it.

[edo25]

OP here,

I tried some of the suggestions people gave to reduce the noise, such as:

- underclocked the voltage using the ASUS Doctor utility
- experimented with set fan settings, eg to 40% when playing games
- checked that nothing is hitting the fan when it is in the PC case

The card is fine under 'normal' conditions eg browsing, word processing etc.

But when playing games the card gets very noisy, eg when I have earphones on, I can still hear it in the background.

Just to be clear about the noise, I am okay with the "whooshing" noise of an extractor fan, or a PC powering up, even if it is loud.

But the noise coming from the card is like rapid succession of very loud clicks, as if the fan is hitting something - which it doesn't appear to be.

Sorry to ask such a newbie question again - but is this really normal?

The card sound level doesn't seem fit for purpose, I suspected that I had a faulty card/fan, but maybe not.

If anyone has a 5770 -
Is it possible to replace the existing 5770 fan with another one of the same height as I don't have any additional space in my case? Which one would you recommend?

Thanks for all the help so far, much appreciated!

[Bugbait]

- checked that nothing is hitting the fan when it is in the PC case

But the noise coming from the card is like rapid succession of very loud clicks, as if the fan is hitting something - which it doesn't appear to be.

Have you checked to see if the fan is clipping on something inside the card itself, ie. The underlying, internal heatsink? There was a return discussion on the Scan forum recently I think where the fault was traced back to the GFX fan clipping something internally. Checking it might be a bit harder, although the shroud usually comes off with a few screws. Have you tried spinning the fan manually to see if it's balanced and unimpeded?

Clicks are never normal for fans. Loud, yes, clicking, no.

[ta2]

Get some program like HardwareMonitor or RealTemp to tell you your GPU core temperature, then check it against what other people are getting. If it's too high then your card is faulty (probably HSF not properly mounted) and you can either send it back or remount the HSF yourself. You might want to do this anyway as you could use better quality thermal paste.

+1