Stock Sapphire RX 480 8GB Mem Freq/Coil Whine

[SneakyStuff]

Hey Gang,

I haven't owned an ATI-... AMD card since the 9700 Pro and I am thrilled to have picked up a Sapphire RX 480 8GB for a great price. Everything seems to be going well, except one thing keeps nagging me...

I have been toying around in Wattman and using GPU-Z as a secondary means to identify the frequency at which the core and memory of the card are running during normal operation and benchmarks and I noticed that the card is constantly changing the memory frequency from 2000Mhz to 300Mhz both in desktop and even during benchmarks. I did a little reading and found that AMD implemented dynamic thermal controls but the problem is that the card emits a horrible coil whine, more of a buzz actually, whenever this frequency shift occurs.

I have confirmed that the core frequency is not throttling and maintains a constant 1266Mhz during benchmarks so any help with this would be greatly appreciated. Is there a way to keep the memory clock stable at 2000Mhz? Nothing I've done in Wattman seems to change this.

Thank You!

-Rob

 

[Bacon1]

Not sure but you can try using the "Power Efficiency" button under global gaming settings. Disable that and it won't downclock in windows. This will cause it to use more power though, but you can try testing it at least.

 

[SneakyStuff]

I have the power efficiency setting switched to "off" and my windows performance profile is set to "high performance". Honestly, after watching a few videos online it seems that many reviewers have the same spikes I do so maybe it's something in the card's BIOS? I have undervolted the card and achieved constant memory/core speeds during gaming and benchmarks but the coil whine/buzz remains so I will probably pursue a replacement from the vendor (newegg). Curious if any other RX 480 owners are experiencing this too, I've had cards whine before during load screens but this particular card is making a constant buzzing in every game regardless of FPS.

 

[guskline]

Mine had a very slight whine when I was stress testing it with Aida 64 but is generally very quiet. What type of case do you have?