Guild Wars 2

Whenever I fire up GW2, my GFX card goes nuts; it makes this very laudable “electrical whirring” sound that reacts to the graphics (spinning the camera around changes the pitch and sound of the noise). If I alt-tab out of the game it goes away completely.

I do not get this with any other game. I’m worried and suspect it might be a hardware malfunction in which case I hope and pray my warrant covers the card, but I figured I might as well try making a thread about it.

The GFX card has not been altered or overclocked or anything. I am also not entirely sure it is my GFX card, but to me that seems like the most probably culprit given the nature of the problem.

Well gw is a high demanding game my graf cars (N440 btw) growls like a jungle cat but try playing on a lower res and if it sill kepps up then it’s Arena.net’s side the problem is coming from.

Thing is it plays the game flawlessly. If it coughed and sputtered in the performance department as well it’d be a different issue, wouldn’t you agree?

regardless how the game runs it still uses more resources to run the game. So still i sugjest try playing on a lower setting and see how it goes like that the game is pritty nice looking on med setting so that mutch eyecandy at the expencive of a 1-2 more years on the same graf would be enaugh for me.

Coil or inductor whine, use vsync to limit the frame rate.

Squall Leonhart.2075:

Coil or inductor whine, use vsync to limit the frame rate.

^This,i remember back in the GTX280 days nvidia commonly used non-shielded capacitors and coils that vibrate under high current.
The only real fix ive seen required some modding,thus voiding warranty.

Squall Leonhart.2075:

Coil or inductor whine, use vsync to limit the frame rate.

I’ve got vsync enabled in-game. Switching it on/off didn’t seem to make a difference…

MrFayth.3546:

Squall Leonhart.2075:

Coil or inductor whine, use vsync to limit the frame rate.

^This,i remember back in the GTX280 days nvidia commonly used non-shielded capacitors and coils that vibrate under high current.
The only real fix ive seen required some modding,thus voiding warranty.

So it is not harming the GFX? I play with headphones so I can’t really hear it anyway.

what is the framerate when vsynced?

Your unlucky to get coil whine
The only thing you can do really is RMA it for a new card or just keep using those headphones :P

Squall Leonhart.2075:

So it is not harming the GFX? I play with headphones so I can’t really hear it anyway.

No it shouldnt effect your performance. I would try to keep the card nice and cool through high fan speeds,heat will degrade your already shoddy capacitors faster.

Squall Leonhart.2075:

what is the framerate when vsynced?

45-60 (depending on area. Lion’s Arch is a PITA)

Sorry for putting it like this but I’am glad I’m not the only one! I built my first rig which I personally dedicated to GW2, and purchased with that the Geforce 670 Phantom card, and guess what – I got the very same problems! The sound increases ONLY when playing GW2 lol, I can play Crysis 2 etc. and other MMOs on max without that sound rising.. :/

well…GW2 doesn’t heave the best graphics out there…but by far the best in any mmorpg
and since mmo’s tend to be very demanding on your system, because alot stuff happens graphic-wise in-game very randomly, thanks to other players (not to mention, more players online – more stress to the game’s server), put “mmo” and “awesome graphics” together for some nice PC-BBQ

my GTX580 would probably catch fire if i wouldn’t limit the framerate

btw: most of my GTX’s growling is caused by a customized fan-speed

I run the same card as you, admittedly only at 1680×1050, but still at max settings (incl. supersampling) GW2 can really give even a 680 a run for its money, making it work harder than in most other games currently out there. This means your problem might not be directly related to GW2, but rather just to high stress on your graphics card in general with GW2 currently being the only game on your PC to push the card to those limits.

One thing I would recommend doing is installing some graphics card monitoring software like MSI Afterburner or EVGA Precision and checking the following values: GPU useage, % fanspeed, temperature. If you can monitor these values as you play it will tell you a lot about what your graphics card is doing. GPU useage is meant to go as high as it needs to to keep the FPS as high as possible, so don’t be alarmed if it goes upto 90-100% at times, it’s designed to do that.

The fanspeed and temperature however are limited and shouldn’t be going too high (at least on my card the fanspeed is capped at a value below 100%, probably due to the wear and tear being too high at max speeds) – if they do, then that could indicate a problem with the cooling or a flaw in the design of the card.

Beyond that though, I can’t say I’ve had any problems with whirring sounds myself even at 100% GPU useage (obviously there IS an increase in fan noise, but I wouldn’t describe that as an electrical whirring sound), so it may be you’ve simply got a card from a bad batch. If you can establish it only happens at, for example, higher loads or fanspeeds and it’s a recent purchase, then I’d definitely recommend getting it RMA’d as it might cause you worse problems down the road.

Oglaf.1074:

Whenever I fire up GW2, my GFX card goes nuts; it makes this very laudable “electrical whirring” sound that reacts to the graphics (spinning the camera around changes the pitch and sound of the noise). If I alt-tab out of the game it goes away completely.

I do not get this with any other game. I’m worried and suspect it might be a hardware malfunction in which case I hope and pray my warrant covers the card, but I figured I might as well try making a thread about it.

The GFX card has not been altered or overclocked or anything. I am also not entirely sure it is my GFX card, but to me that seems like the most probably culprit given the nature of the problem.

install evga precision, run as admin and u can higher the fan. i need to do that with my superclocked version and it works excellenty.

wauwi.9162:

well…GW2 doesn’t heave the best graphics out there…but by far the best in any mmorpg
and since mmo’s tend to be very demanding on your system, because alot stuff happens graphic-wise in-game very randomly, thanks to other players (not to mention, more players online – more stress to the game’s server), put “mmo” and “awesome graphics” together for some nice PC-BBQ

my GTX580 would probably catch fire if i wouldn’t limit the framerate

btw: most of my GTX’s growling is caused by a customized fan-speed

You should check out tera online. Graphics are MUCH better then guilds wars and even harder to run

My 680 doesn’t seem to make any noise.

Coil whine does not cause any problems at all besides giving off an annoying sound.People RMAing because of this…welll,lets just say Dont.Coil whine does not hurt your gpu whatsoever.Changing vcore and core clock may help get rid of the sound,if its really an annoyance to you,just check up on how to first.

By the way,make sure its not your PSU you’re actually hearing.

Raijinn.9065:

wauwi.9162:

well…GW2 doesn’t heave the best graphics out there…but by far the best in any mmorpg
and since mmo’s tend to be very demanding on your system, because alot stuff happens graphic-wise in-game very randomly, thanks to other players (not to mention, more players online – more stress to the game’s server), put “mmo” and “awesome graphics” together for some nice PC-BBQ

my GTX580 would probably catch fire if i wouldn’t limit the framerate

btw: most of my GTX’s growling is caused by a customized fan-speed

You should check out tera online. Graphics are MUCH better then guilds wars and even harder to run

Graphics are Def Not better,cheap use of the U3 engine if you ask me honestly.And Tera runs much better on my pc then gw2 does btw.Only thing is i havent played tera in months,horrible game.

Caedmon.6798:

Raijinn.9065:

wauwi.9162:

well…GW2 doesn’t heave the best graphics out there…but by far the best in any mmorpg
and since mmo’s tend to be very demanding on your system, because alot stuff happens graphic-wise in-game very randomly, thanks to other players (not to mention, more players online – more stress to the game’s server), put “mmo” and “awesome graphics” together for some nice PC-BBQ

my GTX580 would probably catch fire if i wouldn’t limit the framerate

btw: most of my GTX’s growling is caused by a customized fan-speed

You should check out tera online. Graphics are MUCH better then guilds wars and even harder to run

Graphics are Def Not better,cheap use of the U3 engine if you ask me honestly.And Tera runs much better on my pc then gw2 does btw.Only thing is i havent played tera in months,horrible game.

Your opinion has been noted

I had a 8600GT once with coil whine. It was very annoying because it was a fanless passive cooled card in a silent PC build. The noise was very noticeable.

Oglaf.1074:

Whenever I fire up GW2, my GFX card goes nuts; it makes this very laudable “electrical whirring” sound that reacts to the graphics (spinning the camera around changes the pitch and sound of the noise). If I alt-tab out of the game it goes away completely.

I do not get this with any other game. I’m worried and suspect it might be a hardware malfunction in which case I hope and pray my warrant covers the card, but I figured I might as well try making a thread about it.

The GFX card has not been altered or overclocked or anything. I am also not entirely sure it is my GFX card, but to me that seems like the most probably culprit given the nature of the problem.

It normal guild wars 2 eat through bus bandwidth quickly. In this game it must loads GB of unique assets. It is very taxing on the bus which causes the fan to go crazy due to excess heat. It is also the reason why ATI cards are better because they have a tendency to have larger buses. Reduce the texture quality and it the should be blowing less.