Graphics card advice help? (urgent)

[Dawelio]

Hey guys,

So I recently purchased the ASUS GTX 970 Strix 4GB and it had coil whine, returned it and got a new one, even worse coil whine... so now I'm very unsure if I should try my luck a 3rd time or if I should get something else?.
As I will go back tomorow to return this one and wanna get advice on how to go from here/there.

Also keeping in mind regarding this memory thing with 970's that has recently come alive.

I've thought of the XFX R9 290, bit older card, but still "in the same line" so to speak... as I currently have an Sapphire Radeon HD6950.

I do however really like the single 8 pin power connector on the 970.
And I absolutely LOVE the Zero RPM fan feature of it... if I can have it as a feature, I'd really like it!

And the length of the card is also something to consider, since I have the 380T.

What do you guys think or recommend?...

Thank you,
Chrazey

 

[Feronix]

Sorry for not replying to your PM yet mate! Been massively busy for a change

Well they do say that third time's a charm, but yeah the 9xx series seem to be very hit and miss with coil whine. It can also be cause by your PSU though, even if the coil whine comes from the card itself. Do you have another PSU you can test it with (you had 2 system if I recall correctly)?

The XFX 290 will be a really great card and offer near-same performance (especially when overclocked). I also think it looks gorgeous, but it is a taller card as well so make sure it would fit in your system.

That said, it does consume more power (not really relevant to you probably), but also puts out a lot more heat inside of your case and since you're on ITX I'm not sure if that'll be the best idea ever. Although honestly it shouldn't cause any sort of overheating or other issues, except for maybe slightly higher temperatures for you mobo/CPU and the fans spinning a up a little further, thus creating more noise.

Because of the heat output on the AMD cards, I'm not sure if you can even find semi-passive models. Have you considered picking up a (used) 780 (Ti) reference design/strix?

 

[Dawelio]

Sorry for not replying to your PM yet mate! Been massively busy for a change

Well they do say that third time's a charm, but yeah the 9xx series seem to be very hit and miss with coil whine. It can also be cause by your PSU though, even if the coil whine comes from the card itself. Do you have another PSU you can test it with (you had 2 system if I recall correctly)?

The XFX 290 will be a really great card and offer near-same performance (especially when overclocked). I also think it looks gorgeous, but it is a taller card as well so make sure it would fit in your system.

That said, it does consume more power (not really relevant to you probably), but also puts out a lot more heat inside of your case and since you're on ITX I'm not sure if that'll be the best idea ever. Although honestly it shouldn't cause any sort of overheating or other issues, except for maybe slightly higher temperatures for you mobo/CPU and the fans spinning a up a little further, thus creating more noise.

Because of the heat output on the AMD cards, I'm not sure if you can even find semi-passive models. Have you considered picking up a (used) 780 (Ti) reference design/strix?

No worries dude, since my memory is quite lol and I think I have memory loss, I even forgot about it

How can the PSU be the issue? (not trying to be an ass or question though, just wondering...). But yes, I do have my old 850W PSU from my old system lol
The thing is, IF it's the PSU... then that would be a shame, as it's the smaller silverstone with short cables and an 160mm PSU will be extremely tight with the cables, if not it won't fit with the HDD cage in there. As this one is 140 and it's tight with the cables.

Yeah... but well if that's the only option, then I'd rather have that over coil whine that gets to my ears, head and especially giving me massive migraine

The thing is that I putted the 970 up on a 3 month payment, and it would be easier to try and find another card to maybe exchange them, for the same price.
As otherwise it would be more of an hassle to get that first payment back in order to get an 780.

So is it ALL the 970's or just some?... as I could possibly test the EVGA one lol... although many here say it's a bad one. And not sure if it even has the fan feature.

I'm really lost here on what to do ...

EDIT: The thing is that when I returned the first one, they actually tested it to see if it had coil whine, in order to see if it was legit for getting a new one... and I think they used a different PSU than mine?...

 

[steverebo]

I has 6 different 970's with coil whine, I ended up just sticking with the last 2 and watercooling them and the cards have quietened down substantialy after a month of heavy gaming and I can only here the whine if I take my side panel off and put my ear against the cards.

Sometimes they just need to be burnt in a bit

 

[Warchild]

coil whine has been a great issue on the 900 series cards especially the 970. I think you should just stick with it. You shouldn't hear it if you have sound while gaming. I noticed that overclocking my old 680s increased the coil whine pitch which made it less audible... (hmm signifies my age and degrading of hearing I suppose)

 

[JR23]

If you have the opportunity and the alternative available to get off the 970 bandwagon then I honestly would. But I am possibly a biased 970 racist :mellow:

People seemed to think it was a magical card that came along offering 780 performance for 770 money, and they do, but that doesn't make them on the same level as a 780. While they even manage to consume less power and thus create less noise none of the offerings seem to have any quality about them. Few have backplates and even then the Strix is all cut down compared with the 980 cooler, no brace, they lost the solid look and feel the top DCUii's had. But I guess that's to be expected when they are cheap. I find it a bit like comparing a hot hatch with a sports car, all of the performance is there, even the handling and day to day it's even more practical. But the specialness and the quality and the overkill of certain components isn't present, everything has just been made good enough to work and that's it.

That's the reason why I don't own a 970, i've had plenty of opportunities to buy one. I've actually bought two graphics cards since they were launched. I got a 290X and a 780Ti, the reference AMD card is stupidly loud but everywhere else it delivers, with a block it will be lovely. The 780Ti as well i'm especially impressed with, you can really tell that it started life as a £650 card and it does seem able to chuck out a good few frames more than a 780.

But you have to remember coil whine can affect any card, I had a really poor 570 and when doing some weird stuff or just flat out being nasty too them i've heard 780's make electrical noises too. I often wonder if 970's are that bad or people just pick up on the fact more often because they are so quiet.


Anyway your actual question! What are your options? Full refund, an alternative from the same store, if so how much did you pay, where was it from and what country are you buying it in? Can't really recommend cards which aren't for sale If it's 970 or 970 it will kind of have to be a different 970 I guess. I'd take a decent 290 (preferably one with an X) over a 970 personally.

JR

 

[barnsley]

If you have the opportunity and the alternative available to get off the 970 bandwagon then I honestly would. But I am possibly a biased 970 racist :mellow:

JR

I feel this way too. The pricing was too reasonable so they have to cut costs somewhere.


If you want a card that is very, very well built, quiet, cool and happy to OC get a Sapphire 290x Vapor-X. Its a shame that it is blue as it is by far the best aircooled 290x performance wise. The XFX card is pretty good but you need to make sure you have the version that doesn't have memory issues..

 

[Warchild]

I feel this way too. The pricing was too reasonable so they have to cut costs somewhere.


If you want a card that is very, very well built, quiet, cool and happy to OC get a Sapphire 290x Vapor-X. Its a shame that it is blue as it is by far the best aircooled 290x performance wise. The XFX card is pretty good but you need to make sure you have the version that doesn't have memory issues..

Maybe they cut costs with the so called memory allocation issue

 

[NeverBackDown]

I feel this way too. The pricing was too reasonable so they have to cut costs somewhere.


If you want a card that is very, very well built, quiet, cool and happy to OC get a Sapphire 290x Vapor-X. Its a shame that it is blue as it is by far the best aircooled 290x performance wise. The XFX card is pretty good but you need to make sure you have the version that doesn't have memory issues..

Nope.. forgetting the msi 290x lightning.. that's the best

Which xfx card has memory issues???

 

[barnsley]

Nope.. forgetting the msi 290x lightning.. that's the best

Which xfx card has memory issues???

It wasn't in stock anywhere when I last looked. It seems to be back. My bad.

The 290 DDs when they were first released tended to have issues where the VRAM got over 100c (which is pretty poor considering other cards would tend to get 75/80c). Tom appeared to have the version which had vram that didn't get overly warm (I think its called version 3.1/4?). If OP does get it, hopefully it isn't old stock as that would probably be more likely to have issues.

TLDR early manufacturing issues/typical XFX.

 

[NeverBackDown]

It wasn't in stock anywhere when I last looked. It seems to be back. My bad.

The 290 DDs when they were first released tended to have issues where the VRAM got over 100c (which is pretty poor considering other cards would tend to get 75/80c). Tom appeared to have the version which had vram that didn't get overly warm (I think its called version 3.1/4?). If OP does get it, hopefully it isn't old stock as that would probably be more likely to have issues.

TLDR early manufacturing issues/typical XFX.

I can get the 290x lightning for same price as every other 290x in the US. It's very cheap now.

It happens. Not their fault when they get bad batches from the source

 

[barnsley]

It happens. Not their fault when they get bad batches from the source

The issues weren't just faulty VRM either. Something to do with the VRMs not having the heatsinks attached properly/attached at all.

I've also been a noob and got VRAM and VRM mixed up. Again..

 

[Dawelio]

If you have the opportunity and the alternative available to get off the 970 bandwagon then I honestly would. But I am possibly a biased 970 racist :mellow:

But you have to remember coil whine can affect any card, I had a really poor 570 and when doing some weird stuff or just flat out being nasty too them i've heard 780's make electrical noises too. I often wonder if 970's are that bad or people just pick up on the fact more often because they are so quiet.

Anyway your actual question! What are your options? Full refund, an alternative from the same store, if so how much did you pay, where was it from and what country are you buying it in? Can't really recommend cards which aren't for sale If it's 970 or 970 it will kind of have to be a different 970 I guess. I'd take a decent 290 (preferably one with an X) over a 970 personally.

JR

This is true dude, um... I actually got it as it was the "newest" card and wouldn't dry my wallet completely.

Yes, ever since I first picked up the whole coil whine on these forums, I've been afraid of getting one myself. Since the only real card I got, were which of my teacher purchased for me, the Sapphire 6950. Which I used from early 2012 to late 2014, and never gave down on me (although I pushed it "hard", using chrome etc), but other than that it worked fine.
I will switch PSU on the 970 just to check, as I think that my 6950 may have it as well, it didn't before with my Silver Power 850W PSU... so gonna have to check that.

I don't really know mate, but I do however really love the fact that they are so quiet, since I've become so incredibly anal about the noise of my PC lately lol... don't know why, I just have.

My options are either a full refund, (keep in mind I will probably have to fight them since it was on the 2014-12-31 which I bhought the card lol), get something else in the same price range as it. As I haven't paid it fully, I putted it on a 3 month payment, so basically cut the full price in 3 parts and pay those amounts monthly.
I'm from Sweden and the store was Webhallen.com ... yeah but isn't an 290X a bit overkill as well, compared to an 290?. As for the performance boost in relation to the price, I've been told my few that I'd be better off going with an 290 rather than a 290X.

I feel this way too. The pricing was too reasonable so they have to cut costs somewhere.

If you want a card that is very, very well built, quiet, cool and happy to OC get a Sapphire 290x Vapor-X. Its a shame that it is blue as it is by far the best aircooled 290x performance wise. The XFX card is pretty good but you need to make sure you have the version that doesn't have memory issues..

Yeah, funny thing is that, even Feronix can vouch on this one, I was for a long time on the Sapphire R9 290 Vapor-X (Black & blue) one as my build is black and blue, so it would fit quite neatly in there. It has the same blue as my motherboard has as well.
Although, the reason I gave it up was cause of the length, it was too long for the Corsair 380T unfortunately.
Although, I did get an Fractal Design Arc Mini R2, since at first I really wanted to get an mATX system, but changed all togheter and stayed all togheter with the 380T.
I have thought of switching to the Mini R2 though, just for the sheer sexy look of it and that isn't much bigger than a 380T (keeping in mind it's a smaller tower).
That way, I could actually get the Sapphire R9 290 Vapor-X... as I found this picture last night, will really gave the the goose bumps of going that route...

Just purely how cleanly that looks just gives the goose bumps... the ITX board does look a bit tiny to be honest, but looks very neat all togheter.
The front HDD cages will be removed for free air flow over to the graphics cards and thought of populating the 3.5" DVD (not sure if that is correct?) cage in the top right corner for my HDD's, just get an adapter

I've also thought of trying to switch my Silverstone 650W (140mm version) out for an Corsair HX750i PSU if I do go down that route. As everything is in the same store.

What are your thoughts and what do you guys think of it all?...

My apologies for the longer reply here.

 

[NeverBackDown]

I'd get that refund if you could and save the money. Wait till more cards come out. If you need one now then i'd trade it in for the Vapor-X.

 

[Dawelio]

I'd get that refund if you could and save the money. Wait till more cards come out. If you need one now then i'd trade it in for the Vapor-X.

Cool thanks, will probably try and trade it in then

 

[Dawelio]

Sorry for double posting... but is it worth getting the Sapphire R9 290X Vapor-X over the 290?... since the 290 is 3290kr and the 290X is 3990kr. So it's a 700kr price difference... around 51 pounds in difference.

Is it worth it, the performance to price ratio or just go with the cheaper 290 one?...

Thanks!

 

[NeverBackDown]

Sorry for double posting... but is it worth getting the Sapphire R9 290X Vapor-X over the 290?... since the 290 is 3290kr and the 290X is 3990kr. So it's a 700kr price difference... around 51 pounds in difference.

Is it worth it, the performance to price ratio or just go with the cheaper 290 one?...

Thanks!

I'd get it for that much more money. Also check out XFX cards.. they might be cheaper and still look sexy!

 

[Dawelio]

I'd get it for that much more money. Also check out XFX cards.. they might be cheaper and still look sexy!

So you would get the 290X then?... Umm yeah, I've looked at it to be honest with you, although the Sapphire will go much better with my color theme. And also since Barnsley posted about the memory issue, it putted me off a little bit to be completely honest.

And I've had an Sapphire HD6950 for a few years and never had an issue with it, so I have good experience with Sapphire

Anyone else have any thoughts on this or would you go with NeverBackDown on this, to get the little more expensive 290X over the 290?...

 

[Doomslayer]

So you would get the 290X then?... Umm yeah, I've looked at it to be honest with you, although the Sapphire will go much better with my color theme. And also since Barnsley posted about the memory issue, it putted me off a little bit to be completely honest.

And I've had an Sapphire HD6950 for a few years and never had an issue with it, so I have good experience with Sapphire

Anyone else have any thoughts on this or would you go with NeverBackDown on this, to get the little more expensive 290X over the 290?...

Not sure if you know this Sapphire is the Reference card maker for AMD

 

[Dawelio]

Not sure if you know this Sapphire is the Reference card maker for AMD

Ohh, did not know that actually... is that a bad thing? :huh: