MSI AB 1.6 Beta 5 and odd Fan issue

[Nightstorm1]

Hi guys,

I'm trying to find out if this issue is my hardware or just something odd that has shown up. I just installed an EVGA GTX480 with 197.41 drivers under Windows 7 x64. I stripped out all drivers and Rivatuner and used driversweeper before loading the new card. I then installed MSI AB and Kombuster. At first all was fine. The fan increased with temp and decreased as one would expect. I let the system run over night. It wasn't running any benchmark, just a backup in Acronis and then sitting at the desktop. This morning I tried a couple more tests. The fan speed (still set on auto) seemed to now be tied to the GPU utilization and not the temperature. When I would start a benchmark the GPU goes up to 99% the fan to 92% temps still ~71c. I stop the bench, and fan goes back to normal ~50%. I could repeat this over and over. I rebooted the system. Ran AB again and then GPU-Z. Now I'm noticing these odd "dips" in MSI where the fan goes down to 30% almost like a reverse heart beat. It does this at "idle" and at full load. I don't see the RPM's decrease in GPU-Z nor any real fluctuation in the fan load. I don't know if that is because it's happening so fast or if it really isn't happening at all. The pattern is unmistakeable though. I've tried adjusting the poling rate, I tried setting the fan to manual even 100%. It still does it. The card seems to be working fine, but I don't want the fan to be acting wierd on me. Has anyone seen anything like this? Any ideas?

[boogieman]

All I will offer is make sure you are running the latest version of GPU-z.

[Nightstorm1]

Yup, I've got that. I'm just wondering is the fan controller on the card defective or am I just seeing some odd software glitch. As long as the fan runs and card works I'll be happy heh. I'd hate to have to RMA the card, probably take another month to get one back.

[TurboMan]

This is weird. Did you try with its default fan settings w/o MSI afterburner ? Does it increase with temperature or load ?

ps; Unwinder mentioned that MSI Afterburner is using Nvidia's own scripts for fan control so chances are, MSI afterburner is not at fault here.

[Nightstorm1]

I didn't really think Afterburner was the culprit. I'm just really wondering if anyone has seen anything like this. I'm on the computer now, I set AB to run the fan at 100% all the time and so far it's fine. No dips. However, the computer was off all day. I didn't trust it to be alone I'll continue testing tonight. I'm perfectly content to leave the fan at 100% all the time. I might even try to OC it if it looks to be stable.

[eternitykh]

i also see this happening, the readings would read 30% for a split second, but i dont notice any real change. im assuming it's software glitch at this point.

[Nightstorm1]

Doing testing for the last six hours, all has been fine. I came out of running some games and started up GPU-Z to look at the numbers. Shortly after doing that with MSI AB running of course the Fan Usage reported that it dropped to 30% and stayed there in AB. The actual fan RPM's climbed to ~5500. That would be above the *normal* 100% mark of ~4750RPM that I've seen. The slider in AB as well as the NVidia panel showed "Manual control set at 30%". As soon as I attempted to change the setting back up to 100% the fan TURNED OFF. I saw the RPM's wind down in GPU-Z until it read RMP -. Of course the temp started to skyrocked. If I set it auto it would go up to around 2200RMP and then Afterburner read 100%. WTF? I shut down and rebooted. It seems mormal except now the 100% setting thats supposed to be there is reading at 92% but the RPMs are at 4800ish. Since a shutdown/power up resolves the wierdness at least for a while, this is REALLY acting like a dirver/software problem to me. I'm at a loss.

[TurboMan]

Are you using latest version of GPU-z ? Cause previous versions were causing some issues with the reading of Fermi. Other than that, this seems pretty strange. Im using MSI Afterburner 1.6.0 beta 4 and everything is running perfect.