Do ATI cards whine while folding?

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BassTek

Supreme [H]ardness
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ATI folding folks, do your 4850/4870's whine while folding like their Nvidia counterparts? I just switched my main PC over to a Silverstone SG-03. The case is about 1/3 wire mesh allowing the whine from my 8800GTS to directly bore to the centre of my skull and I'm not sure if I can handle it much longer.

I'd like to go with a 4850 since I could possibly go crossfire down the road, but only if they are fairly silent while folding. I know their fans are pretty loud but I'm going to add an Accelero S1 or something similar.

 
I’ve heard no complaints about the ATI cards and noise, but do make sure you have enough PSU.

As far as the whine of the Nvidia cards some folks have realized the noise is related to the Creative Labs sound card and the noise is present at the speakers. Others are claiming the noise is coming from the card or motherboard.

For my own part I can duplicate the noise if I borrow a CL sound card. I just add that to a long and growing list of why not to spend money with Creative Labs.;)


 
From my experience, the high-pitched whine occurs when you begin overclocking the 8800GT.

For example, one of my boxes:

680i
(2) PNY 8800GT, 512
(1) GIGABYTE 8800GT, 256
Onboard sound (disabled), no speakers present
550 Watt Antec True Power Trio PSU.

The whine appears to come from the PSU when I overclock the GIGABYTE card, no matter how little. As the overclock increases, so does the amplitude of the whine.

The PNY cards will both create a whine, but only very faintly, and only when the overclock is more than 20% (shaders)

I think that this whine has to do with power. Perhaps the load on the PSU is causing the issue, perhaps there is some electrical noise introduced to the motherboard, and transmitted into the soundcards -> thus the speaker whine people notice.

I believe those people with speaker whine would still hear the whine if they unplugged their speakers and removed any soundcards - it would just be far quieter.

Personally, the box I just described makes no whining sound at stock clockspeeds, and I doubt you will have an issue with your ATI cards at stock speeds, assuming that you use a high-quality, powerful PSU, like BillR said.
 
No whine from any of my nv cards. Or systems.

I think a lot of folks have some jacked up power and or other issues. One that gets me is if the tree rats get to chewing on the in coming netural on my power service. Damn the pecan trees in my back yard. :) Once the tree rats chew through the netural my puters get strange. While the rest of the house is uneffected.

Ive seen all sorts of power issues over the years in my past carrer as a electrican. The first thing to show issue will be the computers or other sensitive stuff. Like boards in climate control units, refers, washer and dryers. All sorts of stuff.
 
styx0r said:
From my experience, the high-pitched whine occurs when you begin overclocking the 8800GT.

For example, one of my boxes:

680i
(2) PNY 8800GT, 512
(1) GIGABYTE 8800GT, 256
Onboard sound (disabled), no speakers present
550 Watt Antec True Power Trio PSU.

The whine appears to come from the PSU when I overclock the GIGABYTE card, no matter how little. As the overclock increases, so does the amplitude of the whine.

The PNY cards will both create a whine, but only very faintly, and only when the overclock is more than 20% (shaders)

I think that this whine has to do with power. Perhaps the load on the PSU is causing the issue, perhaps there is some electrical noise introduced to the motherboard, and transmitted into the soundcards -> thus the speaker whine people notice.

I believe those people with speaker whine would still hear the whine if they unplugged their speakers and removed any soundcards - it would just be far quieter.

Personally, the box I just described makes no whining sound at stock clockspeeds, and I doubt you will have an issue with your ATI cards at stock speeds, assuming that you use a high-quality, powerful PSU, like BillR said.
Click to expand...

Strangely enough, the 680i board was the first to experience this issue. I happened on the second production run so everyone who had a problem got back a board that whined.

Ok, not everyone but most. In some cases it was the PSU, that board draws a ton of power. In other cases it was the voltage regulators near the CPU on the board.

Either way the noise is easy to find with a poor man’s stethoscope. Take a piece of vinyl tubing, 18 or so inches long and hold one end to your ear and probe around the board with the other end. Typically it will turn out to be a small choke coil (inductor) near the VR system and the cure is fill the open coil with silicon or epoxy.

Luck;)




 
I'd bet good money it's the video card, as I've had the card in two different systems with two different quality PSU brands along with different loads on the PSU yet the sound has remained the same pitch and intensity. Two of the systems don't have any sort of speaker so I know it's not the soundcard, although I have heard various odd noises through speakers before.

The whine gets louder as you increase the shader clocks and is a good indication that you're near the limit. Same thing happens in my two other systems with my 8800GT's. I may have to clock down the shaders but it cuts the performance by quite a bit. I've seen others here describe the same issue so I know I'm not alone. I guess in the meantime I'll clock the card down a bit and sacrifice performance.

 
Every one of my cards whine except the 8800GS'

The GTX260, the 8800GT, my 9800GX2's. They have been in diff systems with diff PSU (all good PSU), It's the card, you can hit pause WU and it will go away, but when I play a game no whine.

 
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