ASUS STRIX GTX 970 (Shadow of Mordor VS. Team Fortress 2)

Hi,

First, I'm not certain this is an issue with "all models" as suggested. I'd like to see an official link if true since what I read suggested it's a known issue with various models of graphics cards.

More:
The reason you get coil whine isn't the frame rate, it's how heavily you are stressing the card. TF2 is being software capped at 144FPS so you aren't pushing the card to the limit.

*For SOM or any other game for which coil whine is an issue here's some things to try:

a) Lower the GPU frequency, at least for now to test. Lock to 1100MHz. You may even try overclocking as well since coil whine is a resonance issue and may be affected within a certain range however I obviously don't have the schematic.

b) Create a VSYNC software cap:
*Use FRAPS, then tweak the game settings to maintain ABOVE the target refresh rate at least 80% of the time. If you force on Adaptive HALF VSync (per game only, not globally) you'll be effectively synching to 72FPS on a 144Hz monitor.

If that's too high, you could change the monitor into 60Hz mode and either try to synch to 60FPS or even drop down to 30FPS with the Half VSync method.

I use Adaptive VSync for games I know I can't easily maintain 60FPS. In Assassin's Creed Brotherhood for example, regular VSYNC caused major stuttering when I dropped below 60FPS (60Hz monitor) due to the synch mismatch. I couldn't just turn it off like in some games because the Screen Tearing was severe.

So I forced on Adaptive VSync after tweaking to stay above 60FPS most of the time. Later on I noticed too much screen tearing so I dropped a couple settings to minimize that even more (raise average frame rate).

More on COIL WHINE:
It's my understanding that most of the "coil whine" being reported traces back to circuits with INDUCTORS which at specific frequencies start to create a resonance with the card. You can Google that. I bring it up because I'm wondering if physical DAMPENING might help. It's like taking a tuning fork then lightly touching it. You disrupt the vibration and thus the noise.

In the case of GRAPHICS CARDS I'm out of my depth here but perhaps you can ask Asus about whether there's any way to physically dampen coil whine. I suppose you could try touching the card in different spots with your finger in an anti-static bag but I'm not comfortable recommending that.

SUMMARY:
a) experiment with GPU frequency, and
b) create a VSYNC cap
c) Physical dampening of resonance? (ask Asus?)