Have graphics cards gotten quietter over the years?

Bojangle12 · Mar 22, 2014

I have a Geforce 8800GT and it's pretty loud when playing games. Was going to buy a new graphics card, a GTX 660, and was wondering if I need to go for a model of a card that is quieter. So, if you happen to know how loud an 8800 GT is, maybe you can compare.

I think cards would have gotten louder. More power = more heat, so they need powerful fans.

SethJPC · Mar 22, 2014

However if they are more powerful then they are under less stress when playing your games and so surely generate less heat therefore reducing fan speed+noise.

Iceberger · Apr 4, 2014

Normally a graphics card wit bigger and multiple fans run less noisy especially in load, because it can stand off more heat with less effort. Hope this helps.

Hawkdemon · Apr 4, 2014

I'm running a Geforce 8800 Ultra and I believe its quieter then the Geforce 7950gt I had. Its definitely a lot more powerful so I believe its not producing as much heat to run the same games.

RobCrezz · Apr 4, 2014

Depends totally on the card in question. Reference AMD 290 and 290x run hot and loud, but other models run much cooler and quieter.

Iceberger · Apr 4, 2014

I have an EVGA GTX580 SC with an Arctic cooling Twin Turbo fan and heatsink installation, it's definetly less noisy than te standard heatsink with the single fan at the end.
It also keeps the card in low temps.

leeb2013 · Apr 4, 2014

there are so many variables, it's impossible to generalize. Best you can hope for is to compare one particular brand of old card with a new one, playing exactly the same game with the same settings.

eg. I could barely play any recent game with my old 8600GT and it's tiny fan emitted an annoying noise. A year ago, I got a HD7750, which used the same power, but had 9 times better performance and was a little quieter due to its slightly larger heatsink and fan, but still quite annoying when pushed and most games were limited to low settings. Now I have the R9-290 with the Sapphire Tri-x cooler. I can play almost everything on max with 3 monitors, yet I can barely hear its triple fans. If it was the AMD reference design, it would be a lot noisier. So how is it possible to compare?

What's clear is, top end GPUs offer many times more performance than the top end GPUs of several years ago, yet the power consumption (and hence heat produced) has not risen proportionately with performance. This is mainly due to die shrinking of the silicon and optimization of the architecture, which means they require less power to do more. Heat sinks have become more efficient and larger to cope with the massive increase in performance, despite the technological improvements.

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Have graphics cards gotten quietter over the years?

Bojangle12

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SethJPC

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Iceberger

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Hawkdemon

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RobCrezz

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Iceberger

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leeb2013

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