GPU Fan never slows down after upgrading to NVidia 169.21 driver

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Mon Dec 31, 2007 6:39 pm

GRRRRRR.... I hate upgrading drivers. 163.71 worked solid as a rock but I had to upgrade because CoD4 looks like crap under the old drivers. Now the damn GPU fan runs at high speed all the time on my 7950GT.

I'll see if I can find a slightly older driver that works otherwise anyone have any suggestions for an un-official driver?

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Mon Dec 31, 2007 6:53 pm

Apparently it's a common issue with recent drivers on 7000 series cards. If the fan is left on automatic it thinks you're in 3D mode all the time. It's all over newsgroups and forums and has been an issue for a while and Nvidia is ignoring it so far.

The card manufacturer (EVGA) is recommending the 163.75 drivers so I'm downloading them now.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Mon Dec 31, 2007 7:23 pm

163.75 drivers don't have the fan issue, but now CoD4 looks like crap again (tables and chairs are all black).

So right now I have two choices: stay with the older 163.75 drivers and don't play CoD4 and wait to see if they fix this in the next driver, or use the newer drivers and adjust the fan speed manually with the nTune software.

I'm going to email NVidia and EVGA but if you guys know of any other drivers I can try let me know.

Err · Post by **Err** » Mon Dec 31, 2007 7:30 pm

It looks like OMEGA is making Nvidia drivers again. You may give them a try:

http://www.omegadrivers.net/nvidia_winxp.php

Otherwise I thin you can control the fan speed with NVTweak:

http://nvtweak.laptopvideo2go.com/

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Mon Dec 31, 2007 7:51 pm

Thanks, may have to play with the Omegas.

Well I can override the automatic fan with any utility - nTune works fine - but then I can only set one speed that it runs at all the time. I prefer the automatic mode which throttles the fan down very slow automatically when I'm not gaming, but throttles it back up when I start a game or watch a video.

If I use nTune or some other utility then all I can do is pick a manual speed for the fan somewhere between lowest and highest where it will hopefully not overheat when gaming. I find the fan annoying and would prefer it throttle down when I'm not gaming.

I also just found a thread on NVidia's forums that the first driver version that fixed the visual anomalies in CoD4 on 7000 cards was 169.09 so I'm going to try those and hope they didn't break the automatic fan control until afterwards.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Tue Jan 01, 2008 1:20 am

Okay I got lucky. The 169.09 driver doesn't have the automatic fan bug, but it does fix the black shadow anomalies in CoD4 on a 7000 series card, so I'm sticking with that for now.

ZYFER · Post by **ZYFER** » Tue Jan 01, 2008 5:44 am

Heh all that effort you shouldn't have had to apply. Don't you just love computers?

This is Nvidia telling you to upgrade!

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Tue Jan 01, 2008 11:22 am

You're actually right. This auto fan problem is ONLY on the 7000 series cards and not on the 8000 series, and so far they've been ignoring it.

GRRRR.

COD4 is pushing my 7950GT pretty hard though. It's the first game that's making me crave a new card, but I'd like to put off an upgrade for a while. It's playable but I'm giving up some minor eyecandy and playing it at 1024x768 to get the best experience.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Thu Jan 03, 2008 8:14 pm

EVGA (the card manufacturer) told me there's no fix until (if ever) Nvidia fixes it (he said it's SUPPOSED to happen in the next driver release).

He said if I have to use the latest driver he recommended using RivaTuner to set up a dynamic fan control to ramp up the fan speed at certain 3dload's or temperature ranges.

I wasn't aware RivaTuner could do that. That might be a nice way to prevent the fan from kicking in whenever I just click on a thumbnail for a video file (not even playing it). be nice to just tie the fan to the temperature of the GPU. I'll have to play with that.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Sun Jan 06, 2008 3:03 pm

OKAY!!! RivaTuner DOES allow you to make a custom fan controller profile. I can now run the latest 169.21 drivers and use RivaTuner to manage the fan speed based on the GPU temp.

Are you sick of your Geforce vid card spooling up it's fan to high speed when you're watching a video or even just right click on an AVI file? No problem. RivaTuner lets you setup an automatic fan controller based on the temp of the GPU.

Instructions for how to this are located here: http://guru3d.com/article/article/449/1/

EXCEPT that there is one mistake in those instructions:

The mistake is right in the beginning when he tells you to "Click on the arrow box next to Customize… next to the second text box on the application. " It's the FIRST text box and the first screen shot in the article should look like this:

You want to be in the low-level fan control for the HARDWARE not the the fan control for the DRIVER. If you got into the wrong fan control you'll know it because it will look different than the one he shows in the next screen shot.

This works beautifully. I spent 20 minutes tuning the fan speed settings but it's pretty close right now to the way I want it. I am not using his numbers but you might want to at first just to make it easy, then fiddle with it. Keep in mind every vid card model will behave differently. What you need to do is bring up the hardware monitor in RivaTuner and make a note of what your GPU temp is at idle and what it is when playing a 3D game (in my case on my Geforce 7950GT, 54C is the lowest temp at idle and 84C is the highest even with the fan at full throttle).

I'm using 3 fan speed thresholds instead of the 2 he's using in the article. That way I get a bit more control and I can run the fan slower most of the time except when heavy gaming.

My thresholds are:
Fan Speed 100% > 70C
Fan Speed 75% > 66C
Fan Speed 50% > 62C

Executioner · Post by **Executioner** » Sun Jan 06, 2008 8:03 pm

So nTune does not do this?

GuardianAsher · Post by **GuardianAsher** » Sun Jan 06, 2008 8:24 pm

When I still had the stock fan on my X1900GT, I used ATI Tray Tools to set up the custom fan ramp. But with my Zalman cooler, I can leave it running 100% since it's so quiet

I think ATI Tray Tools work on nVidia cards too...

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Sun Jan 06, 2008 10:28 pm

So nTune does not do this?

No. All nTune does is let you turn automatic fan control on and off which, as I said at the start of the thread, is broken in the latest drivers on 7000 cards and doesn't really work the way I like it anyway when it was working (there's no reason the fan should go to 100% while watching a Divx video). If you turn off automatic fan in nTune then all you can do is set a manual fan speed that the fan runs at all the time. Nothing dynamic.

NubyCanuby_OFC · Post by **NubyCanuby_OFC** » Mon Jan 07, 2008 7:57 pm

It turns out the driver bug didn't affect my 7900 GTO. I thought I just couldn't hear the GPU fan over the CPU fan but when I manually set the duty cycle over 66% I can start hearing it. It's too bad ATITool doesn't let you set the fan speed with my videocard. It looks way easier to use then RivaTuner. I'm using it on my other computer with the ATI X800 XL.

I can't believe how bad the characters look in COD4 without the new 169.21 driver. All the characters were just a black shadow.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Tue Jan 08, 2008 8:30 pm

All the characters were just a black shadow.

Yeah, I had the same problem.