Gigabyte 7850 OC 2G NOISY

Sorry for shouting, but it's insane. I just bought one (a Giga 7850 that is), and wouldn't you know, I now find a graph showing it to be the loudest 7850 available, by a very long way. This is important to me because of damaged hearing; I've (well, had) an almost silent pc, rubber lined, low noise fans, it made a little whisper. This thing a Hollywood wind machine, 1 metre from my head.

I had read in another forum google found about this card, and the "tape trick" to quieten it. I don't have enough 'reputation' to post there, having just joined so I could ask, rude, I thought. So here I am at a more convivial and most likely more knowledgeable gathering. Does anyone here know what a "tape trick" to quieten fans is? Putting packing tape across them so they can't spin? I vaguely remember putting tape on the inside of the fan barrel, to minimise the distance between the blade tips and the fan body, but have never done it.

Does anyone want an almost new 7850? There may be some refurbishment needed .

Are you using any software to control fan speed? In my experience the stock AMD drivers and CCC do a horrible job of fan control, so use something like MSI Afterburner or Sapphire Trixx to set a custom fan profile to get a good balance between noise and cooling.

The heatsink may also have bad contact with the GPU, so replacing the thermal paste with some high quality stuff may be an option, although you will probably void the warranty in doing so.

Also, your case cooling may be partly to blame. If you don't have sufficient airflow inside your case, then that may force the fan(s) to spin faster.

Thanks for the reply, I should have been more specific and detailed in my comments.

The case is very well ventilated, with both a 12cm and 14cm fan above the CPU area, a 12cm intake fan, with a 12cm cutout next to the video card area and no cards underneath the video card. Temperature has never been a problem with this case, I don't bother turning all the fans on usually.

Nor is the card faulty, having seen photos of the card with HS removed, it's typical for the stock TIM on a gfx card (not particularly good, I normally replace it, but adequate). It is also firmly in place with the fans set in the HS, the HSF on the card, and the card in its slot and chassis.

There is no mechanical noise, vibration or otherwise, it is the noise of fans trying to push a lot of air against a large static pressure, small-ish fans versus a lot of aluminium fins.

I have tried both MSI afterburner and the EasyBoost software that Gigabyte provide, they act identically, as they should, they do the same thing.

Some observations:

manually changing the fan speed from 5% to 100% changes the fan noise by only a tiny amount. It is still very, very loud at 5%, at which I'd have expected the fans to stall, and changes only slightly in tone rather than loudness at 100%

running DX11 demos like the ladybug or translucent robot from AMD crank the GPU up to 100% (no surprise), the GPU temp gets towards 60, and the fan changes from 40% to 45%. I find that very odd. It's winter here (Australia), and probably 21 Celsius indoors.


my theory is that the BIOS on the card has an error; it is misreading and mis-setting the fan speeds.

The fans have headers, my next step will be to plug them into a regulated variable power supply and see what they (the fans) do in certain conditions.

The software doesn't state 100% of what, exactly, so it's going to be hard to get rpm figures. I'll settle for quiet figures. The card is either very badly designed indeed, or very over-designed for typical indoor temperatures.

Try using HWMonitor to see what the GPU fan is doing, unless I'm mistaken, it shows temp and fan speed for my 550ti

Thanks, that was a good call. Unfortunately HWMonitor only shows one voltage and one temp for the card, which it identifies as a 7800. The 30 degrees is what Afterburner reports too. I can't see any other figures that might relate to the card and nothing relating to fans. I cycled the 'fan speed' control up and down a few times with nothing changing.

So on the same theme, I tried RivaTuner, which I found is missing the all important options setting underneath the card / monitor selector box. So there's nothing to be adjusted there.

I'm using the Catalysts I downloaded last night, Win764bit SP1 that's stable in every way, has a decent (650W Seasonic) power supply, plenty of cooling...

Is the card too new for the drivers to work properly, perhaps?

It might only do that for me because I have a reference card then.

I didnt know that 5% fan speed is even possible. Might work using Afterburner but Catalyst is usualy limited to 20-24% and up.

If you say that 5% is same noise such s 100%, then there is definitely a failure, and i would say that your fan is always at 100%. The difference in noise between 5 and 100% is huge, but i would not recomend to run your fan lower than 20%. A quiet fan is almost unhearable in idle (20%) mode. I would recommend to put the PC 3 m away from you... every bit of distance is useful.

At gaming, a fan may have to run at 50% in most cases which is creating some noise but it should not be disturbing when at the same time game sound is enabled.


I would not bulge and simply bring the GPU back and switch to another one with a aftermarket design. It may help you a lot, especially when your sensitive at noise. NEVER use a stock cooler when you cant handle lot of noise, thats worst case... Next time you should truly check out review sites such as Techpowerup first.. very useful and always a must do, when you have certain demands! If you cant switch to another GPU at your vendor then its probably not the correct vendor. Remember: Cheap prices arnt everything, a good service and support may be worth some additional bucks.

For myself its very clear, first thing i look at is cooling efficiency and noise under load, for my next GPU i get. Because that noise issue is starting to become serious, GPUs nowadays are getting hotter and hotter and coolers can get really noisy when there is no special fan attached. I will probably go back to Nvidia GPUs because im tired of driver issues. It is aswell never recommend to get a GPU stronger than truly needed because powerful GPU tends to create more heat thus resulting into even more noise.

Yes, the whole purchase was badly arranged, triggered by the fact that I got a 27" Dell monitor on sale - $674 from $899, Australian, then couldn't drive it, I was using onboard Intel gfx (which are all I need, HD2000 or better is fine by me) and the monitor needs dual link DVI or DisplayPort. . The motherboard in the HTPC machine has a display port that would driver it fine, but i thought dropping in a gfx card into this machine was easier, than swapping in a new motherboard because I want the monitor in here, not the loungeroom, and with all those pixels I might as well get a half decent card to drive them... a series of perfectly logical steps which led to a big mistake.

They may/may not replace the card - it is, from what I've now seen, the loudest of the name branded cards, a good 25dB louder than the quietest of the 7850s, the XFX, or a middle of the road Sapphire OC which is more readily available here in Aus.

I think it may indeed have a fault. I agree, running a PWM fan at 4% is absurd, it'd stall long before that. And the almost non-existent change in sound, which should be giant isn't there. MSI Afterburned and Gigabyte Easyboost display and behave the same way, not a software problem.

Most cards, it seems, start at 100% at boot, but drop sharply in rpm, without necessarily having anything to control it, this one just starts loud and stays that way.

The plan is still to run the fans off a regulated desk power supply, and see what happens. I know, it's not the same, some fans are horrible at certain PWM duty cycles and I'd be supplying DC, but it'd give me an idea of how quiet they can be.

I imagine most other purchasers of the card are gamers who don't mind so much, but yeah, I'm trying to look after my hearing. I can kick myself all night, but I'll figure out something more useful to do, I hope. Like I said, worst case I can just sell it, take the loss and move on, but the odd behaviour has me interested, it so strongly points to either a BIOS error, or something mechanically wrong with the HSF itself, and I'd be interested to know.

I just tried using GPU-Z v0.6.3

It reflects the same % fan speed that Afterburner etc do, but the fan speed is always reported as '-RPM' in what I assume is meant to be a numeric box.

25 db? Thats a insane difference, dont underestimate db, its a algorithm...
Additionally the human hearing is somewhat special, db isnt the only factor which is making it loud, it also depends on the frequency itself. db itself.. isnt bound to a certain frequency but the human hearing does indeed make a difference.

When they dont take it back, try to RMA directly to the manufacturer. You should still have warranty (?!), and that card most likely is defective. Sounds like the issue would be difficult to solve if you dont get a new card.

I got that figure from here http://uk.hardware.info/reviews/285...0--7870-round-up-cooling-and-noise-production which I wish I'd read first, before an of this.. Its cooling is appalling, unless both they and I got faulty samples. It makes a rather astonishing graph, and since it's a Gigabyte I can't really play the unknown manufacture card.

It has a middle high frequency component, but either r I'm becoming used to it, or becoming deafer I do not know. I've emailed them, but will have to wait until Monday, now.

Playing more with GPU-Z and Afterburner I found I can hear some difference in tone, a lower sound appears (not as unpleasing interestingly) but the high pitched wining air rush noise that is so distracting, aand sounds the same across the same (5-0%)! range.

A good cooler does not create any noise at 5-10%. At 20-25% its close to unhearable still and is even suitable when someone is asleep. At 30-40% clearly hearable but not disturbing, however, its not suitable when body is sleeping, that would cause stress to the ears. At 40-60% its rather noisy but when gamesound enabled it still is fine to use and not overly disturbing for most ears.

At above 60% most coolers will be very noisy and it will start to become disturbing for most of us, even when game sound is enabled. However, when PC is ventilated correctly most GPUs will not need a fan speed above 60%, so this is rarely a issue. The issue is highest when there is a mid-range to high end GPU, and at the same time having a stock-cooler. Its easyer to get around of such issues when the GPU is in mid-range but in the same time is having a high end aftermarket cooler. Which is very hard to get because manufacturers usualy use inferior coolers for low to mid range to save up on cost. Thats foolish because many people wish to have the very best cooler on a mid-range GPU for the reason to reduce noise and increase cooling. Those GPUs are kinda a shining star if there is any of them. A expert can judge the cooler by watching a review-comparison and checking out its architecture.

Thats strange. Going from 0-40%, I can barely hear my Gigabyte 7850. And when I mean barely, I mean I can BARELY hear a difference...I would even go as far as saying its the placebo effect..

Problem is, my computer is loud, its got 6 fans. I can noticeably hear it from 52% on up soo my opinion might not matter..
In all the reviews I read, I heard it was thee quietest and coolest running 7850 they tested...

^^^^ same, i can't hear mine. all i hear is the PSU fan over it and that's not loud.

Can you post a link to the actual card you have? it might be a little different to ours.

The 7850 is a extremely effective GPU and got the potency to be one of the quietest on the market, so its indeed hard to understand where those issues are coming from and he even said that he got "damaged hearing".

The 7750/7770 could be even less noise but they are not made for high end gaming. Its used best on a media center or low resolution gamer PC.

This is the card I have, right down to the artwork on the box

http://www.gigabyte.us/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4155#ov

I hadn't paid that much attention to noise levels produced by all the OEM cards since 1) I already knew the Evergreen chips and the 7850/70 in particular are a great architecture, and that they shoudn't need a tremendous amount of cooling - linked to being intelligent and frugal in their power needs and 2) no review I read before its purchase made any comment about excess noise from any of the cards. That, of course, was my mistake.

Like I said up there ^ a bit, I imagine most ppls who buy any 7850/70 will be gamers, whi will have lots of fans for flowthrough, and plenty of other sounds going on. OTOH I have a 12cm low speed Scythe intake fan, a 12cm Tricool on low for exhaust, and the fan on the Seasonic PSU which doesn't bother turning itself on most of the time. The plan, then, was to move to SSDs so I could ditch the front 12cm intake, only there to keep the drives cool, while using onboard graphics. My brother looked at me with some incredulity when I told him I'd put a 7850 in the machine, and asked just why I was installing a mid range card in a machine I am trying to make silent. I have asked myself that question, too, although the answer is still vague; most of my time at a computer is spent reading, while it spools FLACs off the server for me, or in email, in which case the clack of this Filco keyboard is easily the loudest thing in the house - no, I'm not complaining about the keyboard, I like clicky keyboards, and am glad to see Filco and such companies using Cherry switched kbds -that got a bit off track. My point was that I have the thought that one day I may wish to play some game, which even for strategy games I prefer, will need some GPU power. If the graphics switching on the '77 chipsetted 'boards works, and I haven't heard otherwise, I have the best of both worlds - a silent PC most of the time, and a decent gfx card which was supposed to be relatively usable, fast enough, cool enough, quiet enough. Didn't need to be a 590 or some such 900W animal.

Ivy said:

The 7850 is a extremely effective GPU and got the potency to be one of the quietest on the market, so its indeed hard to understand where those issues are coming from and he even said that he got "damaged hearing".

Click to expand...

I wasn't claiming that the card had damaged my hearing, but that the frequency and type of noise that most fans make makes my already damaged hearing worse.

That 5-0% number up there was obviously a typo, I meant 5-100%, and yeah, at low speed any fan should be near silent. It's change in sound isn't that noticeable, either, an old 9800 I had sounded like a jet taking off when it hit a certain stress point and the fan spun up, this just makes a slightly deeper drone.

I'd really like to see any reviews of this card showing that it does perform quietly, in comparison to other 7850s, if it is indeed the same card. None seemed to make much comment one way or another, and not being much of a fan of the shroud type coolers I thought the two larger fans on big heatpiped fins would work well and be quiet about it.

I'm still waiting to hear what the shop has to say, and still have in mind some alterations to actually drop the speed of the fans, and hope that the next Cats can read the actual RPM off the card, if I still have it. Much as I like a mystery solved, if the shop offered me a refund I'd break through the front door getting there. That's unlikely, so my original plan may still work, using a 77 board with this (probably modified) 7850 for the (infrequent) games, and using the Intel HD gfx the other 99% of the time.

This is a photo of the card.
It has two wire fans no true rpm measurement

I was originally concerned about the VR prefix Gigabyte use on their website, but that's silkscreened on the card, not displayed on the box.

I have the exact same card and the thing is dead silent at 40% fan speed.

I ended up doing this to it

http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Repairi...2GD-Radeon-HD-7850-Fan-vibration-sound/8567/1

It now seems much quieter. Maybe some of the plastic framework parts on the spidery cage that holds the fans come out a bit skewed, I don't know. It was annoying, now it is, as heaps of other ppl have commented, virtually silent at 40%.

That's great dude!