Coil Whine when starting the game

[Rikrik]

This may not actually be a bug, but i wasn't sure where else to post this.

When i start up the game and it enters the main menu my graphics card starts producing terrible coil whine. A high pitched noise that's often produced when there's a crazy amount of FPS.
When i load my savegame the coil whine stops because the game drops back to 60FPS.

Here's my system specs:
Motherboard: MSI X99S Gaming 7
CPU: Intel i7 5820k
RAM: 32GB Crucial DDR4 @ 2400Mhz
GPU: Sapphire R9 Fury
PSU: Seasonic X-650 Gold V2

As you can see this is quite a powerful system, and in the main menu it produces so much FPS that the GPU produces a really annoying high pitched noise.
I know it only lasts for a few seconds until i load my savegame, but it's still annoying nonetheless. Especially when you start the game and walk away to get something for a second.

Since people use monitors with different refreshrates these days varying from 60 to 150+ Mhz, maybe you can make Factorio check the display refresh rate setting and cap the fps in the main screen to that amount?

Cheers,
Rikrik

[Rseding91]

That sounds like an issue with your graphics card. Mine doesn't make any noise when on the Factorio menu - it could be something wrong with your graphic card fan or more likely some issue with it consuming power (not enough power or broken power something).

[Rikrik]

That sounds like an issue with your graphics card. Mine doesn't make any noise when on the Factorio menu - it could be something wrong with your graphic card fan or more likely some issue with it consuming power (not enough power or broken power something).

I had this issue on my r9 290 before i upgraded it to the R9 Fury last week.
And yesterday i replaced my PSU because my old one had it's fan running at 100% all of the time even when idle.

So the 2 main causes of coil whine have both been changed/ugpraded, and the problem is still here.
Not sure if there's anything else that can cause coil whine in a pc.

[Rseding91]

Possibly this? http://lifehacker.com/this-video-explai ... 1669522880

[keyboardhack]

I actually have the same problem but only when loading a save. When factorio loads my game i can really hear the gpu fan spinning around really quick. Looking with procexp reveals that factorio uses 50% of my gpus power when loading a save. When playing factorio, only 5-10% of my gpu is ever used. It started happening with 0.12 i think. This only happens with factorio.

specs
GPU: ati R9 290X
CPU: i7 2820K
Ram: 12GB

sounds like this could be fixed by limiting fps when you are in the menu.

[orzelek]

Are you running with vsync enabled?
Menu might be trying to run at very high fps without vsync.

[keyboardhack]

Are you running with vsync enabled?
Menu might be trying to run at very high fps without vsync.

Good point. yes i did turn of vsync and hat's probably the cause of the problem. Still there is no reason to render over 60 fps while a save is loading.

[GopherAtl]

no reason to deliberately, but if it's just running a tight update-render loop and the update is being skipped because time is frozen, I could see it happening. Same in the menu where there's nothing to update.

[Rseding91]

The game running > 60 FPS when v-sync is off is intended. Leave v-sync on if you don't want it to run over 60 FPS. As for the coil whine - that's just the graphic card (as shown in the linked page above).

[keyboardhack]

The game running > 60 FPS when v-sync is off is intended. Leave v-sync on if you don't want it to run over 60 FPS. As for the coil whine - that's just the graphic card (as shown in the linked page above).

What is expected when you turn vsync off is an increase in fps when the time it takes for a single ups is a little too long for 60 ups and not to get 400 fps when loading a save. Maybe have vsync on by default until a save is loaded and then have the setting decide if it should be on or off?

[Rikrik]

Hmm so it turns out the game magically turned off v-sync somehow. I just turned it back on and after restarting Factorio it is quiet once again in the main menu

First thing i always do in games is turn v-sync on, so it never occurred to me that it might have been disabled.

[orzelek]

I'd still consider this a bug.

When in main menu game generates constant 100% GPU load with vsync off. It's not a desired behavior for sure.

[Rseding91]

I'd still consider this a bug.

When in main menu game generates constant 100% GPU load with vsync off. It's not a desired behavior for sure.

Turn v-sync on turning v-sync off is telling the game "run at as fast of a frame rate as you can". On the main menu that's some 2000-3000 FPS. In-game that's 60 FPS.

[orzelek]

I'd still consider this a bug.

When in main menu game generates constant 100% GPU load with vsync off. It's not a desired behavior for sure.

Turn v-sync on turning v-sync off is telling the game "run at as fast of a frame rate as you can". On the main menu that's some 2000-3000 FPS. In-game that's 60 FPS.

It's one way of looking at it.
On the other hand - vsync doesn't really mean run as fast as you can. It only means that you don't sync with monitors refresh rate by waiting on vblank.

I wouldn't think it means - get the GPU and heat it up as fast as you can since user started the game (and for example his vsync disabled itself for some reason). I'm not sure how it would affect variable sync monitors (G-sync, FreeSync) since I don't have one so can't test. And they do work with vsync disabled by design.

Tl;DR You are doing nothing on main menu screen - why in reality you are doing a lot more then in game.