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Fan Speed & Noise
Fan Speed & Noise
We now know that AMD prioritizes GPU temperature, meaning fan speed is what suffers. Let’s first look at how fast the fan is forced to spin on a warmed-up card across all eight of the configurations we're measuring:
The difference in noise between the card running at its lowest and highest clock rate is a massive 12.3 dB(A).
We discussed this fan's acoustic profile in our AMD Radeon Vega RX 64 8GB Review. Beyond the secondary BIOS' Power Save mode, Radeon RX Vega 56's noise level is unacceptable as well. The reference Radeon R9 290X, which made it even further beyond the 50 dB(A) mark, is really the only graphics card that does worse.
Primary BIOS Acoustic Profiles
If the fan speed limit was removed completely for our overclocking efforts, then the card would actually exceed 60 dB(A), compelling you to run the other direction.
Secondary BIOS Acoustic Profiles
The noise spectrum of the secondary BIOS' profiles appear in order of quietest to AMD's hurricane simulation.
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