VOGONS

EVGA GTX 970 - Coil Whine and (not as much) Disappointment...

Topic actions

First post, by ptr1ck

Posted on 
User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

I have an opportunity to use an EVGA GTX 970 4gb in my XP/10 box instead of my Asus GTX 760 2gb. However, the 970 has a lot of coil whine and is only putting out about 5% higher score on 3D Mark 06. I have tried another PSU on hand and it did not improve the whine any nor the score. I have also ran 3d Mark 06 in Windows 10 which did not bench as high as XP.

I would like to use the 970 as I dual boot and it's still more than capable of playing modern games with 4gb, but the noise trade-off for little performance gain is not what I want. I was expecting 20-30% higher performance. Any suggestions for what direction to go here? I'm willing to solder on the 970 if needed, but doesn't seem to be worth it for little gain. Could whatever making it whine also be killing performance? Do I need to use a different test to quantify the performance difference between the two?

Edit: Forgot to mention the rest of the system is a 4.0ghz i5-2500k with 16gb RAM.

Last edited by ptr1ck on 2023-02-17, 00:06. Edited 1 time in total.

"ITXBOX" SFF-Win11
KT133A-NV28-V2 SLI-DOS/WinME

Reply 1 of 3, by agent_x007

Posted on 
User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

Don't use 3DMark 06, use at least 3DMark 11 to compare those cards.
Your CPU has too much of an impact on overall score with those fast DX11/12 GPUs.

Here's similar comparison (GTX 680 vs GTX 980 [clock sync'ed]) on my main PC :
3DMark 06 : https://www.3dmark.com/compare/3dm06/18244072/3dm06/18245573
3DMark 11 (P-Score) : https://www.3dmark.com/compare/3dm11/15526234/3dm11/15549893

If you want to do a compare between OS (so test must work on WinXP + Win10) - use 3DMark 03 instead :
https://www.3dmark.com/compare/3dm03/6555653/3dm03/6555823
(with fast enough CPU, it should be easier to see actual performance difference)
Both of those versions ('03 and '11), are free to download from legacy 3dmark website :
https://benchmarks.ul.com/legacy-benchmarks

As for coil whine, use some tape or glue to change their resonation frequency.

Last edited by agent_x007 on 2023-02-16, 18:14. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 2 of 3, by The Serpent Rider

Posted on 
User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

You don't play 3DMark06.

I'm willing to solder on the 970 if needed

Won't help you, unless you have good understanding of card schematics and inductors in general.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4D6PKusyvUU

...or hot glue. Lots of hot glue.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 3 of 3, by ptr1ck

Posted on 
User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

I did run 03 on my 760 but forgot the score. I'll try some more tests later. It's mostly for Windows XP so the 760 I have ought to be more than sufficient if I go that route. I have plenty of other faster machines for modern games.

edit: OK so thanks to agent_x007's advice, I tested with 03 and there was a difference of 98999 with the 760 to 136360 with the 970. I also forgot that it turns off vsync and the high frame rates is what makes it sing. I am a vsync on kind of guy, so I shouldn't have any worries.

"ITXBOX" SFF-Win11
KT133A-NV28-V2 SLI-DOS/WinME

Go to top of page Go to top of page
Back to Video
Close window
Close window