What is a good free download to test for coil whine all I have loaded for games are LOTRO and D3?
Thanks
You'll know. A little buzz or whine when going from low load to very high load, or vise versa, is normal, and happens even on many "quiet" (potted and/or normally supersonic) cards. If it whines audibly at super-high FPS, probably from all the variation of VRAM access, that should be acceptable, as well. If low enough, and the fans loud enough, it could be drowned out by the fans, but short of the small Zotac, Phantom, or Jetstream under load, there probably aren't many other 970s or 980s that would be able to do that by themselves.
3DMark, Diablo III, and Unigine Heaven seem to do it for those with more intermittent whine.
Mine doesn't even need that, so short of a miracle, I'll be playing the lottery. I'll see if I can run Kombustor over night...but I still don't get how that would help, unless there's QC issues with the inductors, intentional cheapening out on the inductors (mind you, this is a problem that could happen earlier in the supply chain, and not necessarily be an attempt to go too cheap on them by the video card makers), bugs in the voltage/power control scheme, or maybe capacitors that need burning in (unlikely, for low-ESR, usually solid, types that commonly used, I'd think).
I almost want to just a known-good R9 290 or 290X, until I look at the power use numbers, and then compare 770 and 780 prices...grrr . That's a good bit more money, or a good bit more heat to dump into the room.