So, can anyone tell me what this switch does to the card, would very much appreciate the response?.. I watched somewhere on YouTube that it allows the card to run in normal overclock mode or water / LN2 cooling for extreme overclocking mode... Thanks... Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk
Pretty sure it's just a bios switch, so if you flash a bad vbios you van still access the backup at the flick of a finger. I doubt it has much if anything to do with fan speeds. What the alternative BIOS allows you to do would depend on the way it's set up, not something I'm familiar with.
Durp, I didn't see this thread and answered this question in the Sales thread. Copypasta: MSI Radeon R9 280X Gaming Edition OC 3GB Review | bit-tech.net Unless the MSI card works differently, this seems to imply that the switch just toggles a backup BIOS for safety - not a different performance setting. (edit - I don't think it'll affect performance at all unless the BIOSes are different, like if one's more up-to-date than the other. You'll have to get into BIOS flashing and try flashing one yourself to find out for sure.) Regarding temperature and noise, let me tell you a story. I had an ASUS 560Ti that ran red hot and really loud - I had to crank the fans way up in MSI Afterburner to keep it from hitting 80'C, and it was terribly noisy. I never thought much of it, telling myself it was just "a powerful card". I eventually RMA'd it and got a refund for unrelated artifacting issues. Happy days. But my next card, and a 780 we used at work, revealed to me how far out my tolerances were: my card had been about 20db louder than a card should ever be, and I just had no idea with nothing current to compare it to. I researched further and discovered loads of people reporting similar temp/noise problems with the 560 series. They, too, in isolation, had assumed they were just being fussy and had put up with noisy cards, never joining the dots. Seems it was an overlooked bad firmware release that never got press coverage. If I'd just seen another comparable card at the time I'd have realised that I was suffering through a misbehaving card (which a firmware flash would probably have fixed). Moral:google around for other peoples' experiences, and don't rely on subjective gauges like "I have that card and it's fairly quiet" or "I have that card and it's very noisy".
Morning all, Thanks for the detailed response, and thanks for getting me worried :3 lol... Currently the card's temperature is steadily reading around the high 50s and low 60s with OverDrive enabled to enable manual fan control at 55% which isn't too bad on the ears in regards to noise levels, but I'll keep an eye on the temps for the mean while... I might have to take the card out again to inspect the stiffness of the build as the cooler seems loose from when I wiggle it around when it's plugged in the PC's PCI-E slot, I may need to tighten the screws a tiny bit, which may or may not help with the slight overheating given that I have to run the fan speed on manual control... And finally I have a google around but when it comes to researching these types of searches I can go hours without getting anything concrete, which results in an unsuccessful findings, and I just give up and try another day, but I will look in to this as soon as I can...
60c is absolutely nothing for a gpu. turn down the fans and let it run at anything up to 80c and it will be absolutely fine.
Yeah I know but it starts turn into a radiator and warms up the room too much even with the window open lol, I'll see what 45% gives me :3 Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk
the same amount of heat is put out regardless. faster fans just means it removes it from the card quicker.
I hope it does some physics or it could just float away! (Physics not Physx ). Nevermind, I'll just get my coat.
Yes, it sounds like it's to switch BIOS if a flash goes wrong. You shouldn't need to use it at all. As far as temperature and fan speed goes, if I were you I'd use Afterburner and set a custom fan speed profile. It's really easy - in Afterburner settings, "Fan" tab, tick "Enable user defined software automatic fan control" and experiment with the profile graph until you find the right balance. I have a different card to you but for reference, I've set the fan at low speed (40%) at idle temps, beginning to ramp up at about 5-10 degrees above idle, to max speed at 60 degrees. That way it's nice and quiet when the card's not stressed but the fan kicks in as needed when the GPU is under duress.
Here's what I wrote in the original thread regarding temperatures and what I did to improve the stability of the GPU cooler... Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk
