Fan Noise

In past years, users would accept everything for a little bit more performance. Nowadays, users are more aware of the fan noise and the power consumption of their graphics cards.

In order to properly test the fan noise that a card emits, we use the Bruel & Kjaer 2236 sound-level meter (~$4,000). It has the measurement range and the accuracy we are looking for.


The tested graphics card was installed in a system that was completely cooled passively. That is, passive PSU, passive CPU cooler, and passive cooling on the motherboard and on a solid state drive. Noise results of other cards on this page are measurements of the respective reference design.

This setup allows us to eliminate secondary noise sources and test only the video card. To be more compliant with standards like DIN 45635 (we are not claiming to be fully DIN 45635 certified), the measurement was conducted at 100 cm of distance and at 160 cm off the floor. The ambient background noise level in the room was well below 20 dBA for all measurements. Please note that the dBA scale is not linear but logarithmic. 40 dBA is not twice as loud as 20 dBA. A 3 dBA increase results in double the sound pressure. The human hearing perception is a bit different, and it is generally accepted that a 10 dBA increase doubles the perceived sound level. The 3D load noise levels were tested with a stressful game, not with Furmark.

AMD claims noise levels of the HD 7990 are much improved over previous cards, and also much better than NVIDIA's GTX 690 and GTX Titan. While I can confirm that noise levels are definitely much better than on the HD 6990 and HD 7970 GHz Edition, our measurements cannot confirm that the card is quieter than the GTX 690 or GTX Titan.

In idle, the card emits noise levels similar to any other recently released card that has somewhat optimized settings tailored around that state, which is good. AMD also claimed "whisper quiet" in some early information they passed on, and the card is at least whisper quiet in idle.

I also tested the subjective listening experience, and all the cards (HD 7990, GTX 690, and GTX Titan) sound roughly the same to me, with the Titan maybe being a tiny bit less noisy under load. None of the three can be classified as "quiet", but I think the noise levels are acceptable for the performance these cards deliver.

A really big, glaring issue is the AMD HD 7990's loud coil whine. It is very noisy, audible throughout the whole room, especially at high framerates. What makes it even worse is that the pitch and volume keep changing all the time, so you will find it distracting, noticing it more than its fan noise. I asked five other colleagues and they all confirmed the card's coil whine issue, so it's not just my sample.

AMD suggests enabling V-Sync to lock the card in at 60 FPS, which would result in less coil noise, but doing so still has the card produce very noticeable coil whine, especially due to it changing frequencies. I'm also sure most of you want to game with as many FPS as possible after spending all that money on a graphics card, not just the 60 FPS you could just as well achieve with a cheaper option.

NVIDIA's GTX 690 and GTX Titan both barely have any coil noise, no matter what the FPS rates are, which tells me that this is a solvable engineering problem. NVIDIA did a much better job here.