Hey everyone,

 

My 4yo Gainward Phantom 560Ti 1024MB is clearly showing its age and so I started looking for a replacement. The rest of my machine (Phenom 2 X4 965 oc'd to 4,0 Ghz) is still doing fine.

 

Anyone got an affordable FSX-specific recommendation for me? Gaming is not my main purpose in life so I dont need Starship-grade computing power at home and I only use one 24'' screen at 1080p. However, a card in my rig should be as silent as possible, because sometimes I keep the sim running at night during long haul flights.

 

 

EVGA 970. Did the same GPU upgrade and the quality of the scenery is now better (higher AA can be used) while retaining same frame rates.

 

The EVGA i bought was the 970 SC with ACX 2.0+ cooling. Very quiet!

I second the GTX 970. Although I would have a good look at reviews before you make your choice as some cards produce an anoying "coil whine" under load. I bought an MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G for that very reason. It's not the fastest 970 (but still no slouch) but, more importantly for me, I couldn't find any reports of it whining.

thanks everyone, Ill have a look into it.

I bought an MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G for that very reason. It's not the fastest 970 (but still no slouch) but, more importantly for me, I couldn't find any reports of it whining.

 

Then here is the first such report. Mine does whine under load. Quite considerably.  MSI GTX 970 Gaming 100ME 4GB GDDR5 is my exact version. I am satisfied with it and its performance. And I can endure the whine. It does not happen that often on my system.  Conditions that produce the whine requires sophisticated aircraft, sophisticated gauges, photo real scenery and complex weather with high quality add-on weather textures.  Remove perhaps just one of those conditions and little or no whine.

Then here is the first such report. Mine does whine under load. Quite considerably.  MSI GTX 970 Gaming 100ME 4GB GDDR5 is my exact version. I am satisfied with it and its performance. And I can endure the whine. It does not happen that often on my system.  Conditions that produce the whine requires sophisticated aircraft, sophisticated gauges, photo real scenery and complex weather with high quality add-on weather textures.  Remove perhaps just one of those conditions and little or no whine.

 

Bad luck, Frank! I'm happy to say that, even under full load, the only noise comes from the fans on my card.

 

 

the only noise comes from the fans on my card

 

Is that not where the whine comes from?

Is that not where the whine comes from?

No, not at all. Coil whine is caused by high-frequency vibration/buzz emanating from electronic components made up from coils (inductors or transformers) when under load. For a more comprehensive explanation, look here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coil_noise. In computers, it most commonly comes from power supplies and graphics cards. It can be reduced by using better quality components but there's little, if anything, that the end user can do about it.

 

Fan noise, on the other hand, is common to all graphics cards to some extent. With most modern cards you can customise the fan temperature profile to reduce or remove fan noise. If you haven't already got it, I highly recommend downloading MSI Afterburner - https://gaming.msi.com/features/afterburner. Although it's notionally an overclocking utility, it could just as accurately be described as a monitoring utility. You can easily customise the fan curve for your card such that you only hear it under higher loads.

I watched a couple of youtube videos on coil whine and stand corrected. My noise appears then to be fan noise. It really spools up. Like jet engines being run up.  I has not always been that way with this system. Started about six weeks ago and system is six months old.  Same flying conditions.

If you can possibly wait for a month or two NVidia will be releasing their new Pascal based cards, one of which replaced the 970. Then you can act quickly and get a 970 at a reduced cost until the pipeline is exhausted.

If you can possibly wait for a month or two NVidia will be releasing their new Pascal based cards, one of which replaced the 970. Then you can act quickly and get a 970 at a reduced cost until the pipeline is exhausted.

 

Good point! That is exactly how I sourced my GTX560TI I swapped into my previous system about three years ago. Got it for a great price less than a month after I almost spent what would have become fools money. LOL

I watched a couple of youtube videos on coil whine and stand corrected. My noise appears then to be fan noise. It really spools up. Like jet engines being run up.  I has not always been that way with this system. Started about six weeks ago and system is six months old.  Same flying conditions.

 

As I said before, you can probably sort this out by using a custom fan curve in MSI Afterburner.

As I said before, you can probably sort this out by using a custom fan curve in MSI Afterburner.

Thanks. Looking for a video to guide my curve settings.  All I have found so far are short videos showing that the fan curve can be customized, but no guidelines on what are safe settings.

Go to the bottom of this thread for the MSI afterburner settings.

 

http://www.simforums.com/forums/drivers-nv-inspector-fsxcfg-complete-guide_topic36586.html

Go to the bottom of this thread for the MSI afterburner settings.

 

http://www.simforums.com/forums/drivers-nv-inspector-fsxcfg-complete-guide_topic36586.html

 

OK. Did that. The fan curve there was actually identical to my default curve with the exception of the lowest point. So I messed around and got Task Tray indicators for GPU Temp and GPU Fan Speed, then nudged the Afterburner settings up to 80% fan speed at a low temp. Turns out the imitation of a jet engine spooling up during high loads must be my Corsair H100i CPU cooler and not the GPU fan because I could not perceive a difference in GPU fan noise between 40% and 80%.

 

Have no idea why this didn't start until after 4 months of use.  And that under the same flying conditions.  Actually, looking at my logs the advent of the issue may correspond to my installation of my first Orbx scenery.  But why would the issue occur even when not even close to the vicinity of that scenery (New Zeland North Island), and with that scenery deselected in Scenery Library.