I have particularly sensitive hearing.

I have an asus 7850, and have had it for 2 weeks... its performance is ok, not as amazing as I thought it would be, but ok.

Problem is... its fan won't drop below 1182, even when you use third party software to drop fan speed to 0%.

The right fan is ok, since it blows through a heatsink, then blows into open air, but the left fan is *loud*

I'm going to return it... however... I'm trying to find a replacement.

I am eyeballing 7850s and 7870s. Does anyone know which ones can go sub 1k-rpm? I'm not entirely opposed to a geforce 660, but its failure at anti aliasing kind of scares me because I exclusively use a 40 inch 1920x1080 screen at 1920x1080

Are there any models that shut fans off at idle?

This might be resolvable with a BIOS mod. If there are any versions of these ATI cards which will allow zero RPM then the only way they will have achieved that is via a different BIOS setup. Look into RaBiT.

Instead of replacing the card (which seems a little rash if you don't know that another card actually will be better) why not remove the stock fans and zip tie a 120mm fan in place? You can even power it from the GPU fan header using this adaptor pointed out to me recently:
http://www.gelidsolutions.com/products/ ... d=11&id=60

Well the fan sounds damaged. I don't accept things damaged from factory

I have heard rumors that the gigabyte 7870 OC using afterburner can drop to 0%

What's your 7850's model #?

I'd definitely love to know also if there is Any way to reduce idle fan speed below the minimum 20 % since I'm looking at a XFX 7970 DD, which is noisy at idle according to reviews.

HD7850-DC2-2GD5

I'm rather annoyed with how loud it is.

It does and it's a brilliant card for what you want. Credit goes to SPCR username:"Wanky" for finding this out. I merely confirmed that he didn't have a weird sample and wasn't brave enough to try another brand. Maybe SPCR can try the afterburner software on the asus and see if it can go down to 0 as well since it was recently reviewed. The other reason SPCR should review the gigabyte 7870 is that they are more flexible in terms of adjusting voltage than the 660/660ti so you can undervolt and reduce temps/noise. On top of that for some reason Gigabyte went all out with a tri fan design for the 7870 and a bigger heatsink. This allows it to cool the card passively at idle. Compare that to Gigabytes implementation of the 660/660ti (2gb). They are smaller heatsinks with dual fans.


Google Msi Afterburner and download that. It will allow you to get fan speed to 0%. That doesn't mean that it will turn off. Most fans have a minimum speed so reducing fan speed from 20% to 0% might not do anything at all.

Bummer - I thought the Direct CU II version was supposed to be decent. +1 on using MSI Afterburner to adjust the fan profile.

My particular 7850 is probably just defective

I'm thinking about jumping ship to nvidia with MSI actually. A lot of the problems have been worked out in the newest driver update... for example tom's hardware horrific review of the 660 ti on batman arkham city with MSAA... yes it'll still be worse with heavy MSAA, but they improved it 18% since tom's did their review

There is a msi geforce 660 on newegg for 194$, that only gets 3 stars, but if you read its reviews, its because people had motherboard bios incompatibilities with early UEFI bios, and having a modern UEFI bios fixes it (I have fully up to date p8z77-m with 3570k)

Techpowerup shows that the MSI models use some form of bios hackery to get better performance (slightly) at lower clock rates on both the 660 and the 660ti

I wish the MSI hawk 660 came out... uses twin frozr IV which is supposedly a bit better, and uses some power conditioners.

I've seen demos of it on the net.

My last videocard was a msi geforce 260 216core with a reference cooler... it was damn near silent at idle, but a jet engine at load.

I'm also thinking about getting a new case... fractal design R4 seems to be sold out on both newegg (newegg stopped carrying the non window version completely!) and amazon

The GTX 660 is a nice alternative, with lower power use for video playback and multi-monitor setups. Here's a bunch of reviews.

Thanks for the tip about MSI Afterburner. Is there anything to do if it doesn't actually turn the fan off, like a BIOS mod? Or is it hardcoded into the board?

A BIOS mod will allow changes to be made to the fan speed dependent upon temp or 2D/3D mode.

After feeling burned by the horrifically noisy 7850 I ordered a msi nf660 2gd5/oc

An update

new msi geforce 660 is *much* quieter than the asus 7850


And it's minimum fan speed is bouncing between 1050 and 1070 (30% minimum)

It's a much *heavier* card than the asus 7850, even though its a hell of a lot smaller.

It's heatsink is very dense, and heavy. Also, the front plate is *very* solid metal, and not plastic. It has plating over the memory.

It's the most solid feeling videocard I've ever seen

Does the GTX 660 have Bios mods to set the fan lower than 30%?

Looking to replace my GTX 260 which I was able to flash a 0% minimum fan speed, made the fans spin very slowly (unknown rpm)

no idea

A BIOS mod is what you make of it. If you want, download a video BIOS, open it in NiBiTor and see if you can set 0% fan speed. The answer will almost certainly be yes.

Thank you, this is what I did on my GTX260, I hope the same options will be available.

NiBiTor doesn't, yet, support the GTX 6x0 cards. But the devs are working on it.

There is a huge thread over on mvktech about modding bioses. You may try your luck there:
http://www.mvktech.net/component/option ... tstart,40/
http://www.mvktech.net/component/option ... start,970/