Adaptive Fan Control on the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 Explanation & Demonstration Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
668 words · ~3 min read
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Now, I'm going to have to talk over this full speed fan. Right now, I have the
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fan manually set to uh Okay, you can't
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really tell, but I unchecked auto. I took it to the very end and then I
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clicked apply. And that's how loud it is. This
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thing is loud. Um, so I'm going to have to talk over it a little bit, but I want
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to show you guys something really neat. So, I turned auto back on. And watch
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what's happening to the fan speed right now.
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It's going down by one percentage at a
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time. And if you listen to
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it, it's a very very gradual progression
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in terms of the noise level. Now, it actually does the same thing when the
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fan speed is ramping up compared to previous cards from NVIDIA as well as
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from their competition. So NVIDIA's added what they're calling adaptive fan
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control, which is a way of saying that
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instead of the fan speed going from, you know, idle, so so pretty much silent on
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almost every NVIDIA card for the last couple generations
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to as soon as you start gaming, you'll actually see like look how gradual that
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ramp down is of the fan speed once the card realizes that it doesn't need the
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fan to go as high as it is. So, why don't we give you the opposite example
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really quick here and I'm going to fire up Firmark in extreme burn mode and show
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you just what happens with that fan speed right
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there. Actually, here to speed things up a little bit, I'm going to go ahead and
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cover the intake of the fan with a piece of
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paper. So, there now you can see it's finally going up. So, it's it stepped
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itself up one and then
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2%. And then
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3%. 4
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5 6. So, this allows it to be a lot
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smarter about how much noise it's outputting depending on the amount of
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load on the GPU. So, I personally think this is pretty cool because it means
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that you don't get that uh that obnoxious uh uh up and down movement of
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the fan. Like say you're in a you're playing a game where there's a certain
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intensive part and then there's a less intensive part and you hear the fan
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go. or if it's at that borderline where
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it's uh it's it's just like let's say the uh the fan profile on the card is if
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it gets to 80 degrees then the fan ramps up to cool it down and then it cools it
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down to 75 but then it heats back up to 80 and then it and so you have that that
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constant up and down up and down motion. Well, this will make that kind of uh
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well adaptive cooling almost
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unnoticeable unless you got your ear to the card. So that's pretty darn cool.
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So, just for context, here's the same demo with the GTX 480. So, I'm going to
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turn on auto fan control. And boom, it's quiet. Okay. And
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then if I go ahead and do what I was doing before with the 580, turn on firm
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mark, cover up the fan, you're going to
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see that even though it shows that the the fan speed is going up, you know, one
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lone percentage at a time here. I'll wait till it uh starts
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going here and I'll put the camera a little closer. You're going to be able
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to hear the fan ramp up really fast,
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kind of like a a jet taking off.
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So, contrast that with how slowly and smoothly the 580 fan ramps up and you
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have yourself a very good reason for NVIDIA to implement their new adaptive
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fan control.