On NVIDIA’s latest releases, the GTX 970 and 980 we saw many add-in card (AIC) partners that use custom cooling solutions feature a idle-fan off mode. This feature allows for the fans on the card to turn completely off when the card is at idle or below a temperature threshold. This in turn makes the card completely silent when you are not gaming. NVIDIA is planning at add this feature to their next generation GeForce GTX Titan X graphics card.
Just like the Titan Z the Titan X is going to be a super high-end graphics card and is made to never get customized by AIC partners. Because of this NVIDIA has decided to standardize the fan-off feature. NVIDIA’s approach to this will be driver based, compared to specialized fan-controller chips used on AIC cards. Future drivers for the Titan X will have a new feature that will allow you to choose a non-linear fan curve that keeps the fan off, or one that runs the fan at low speeds. So the driver will be able to run the card with the fan tuned completely off until the card reaches a temperature threshold.
Because this will be a driver-based feature, your favorite GPU tweaking software will be able to toggle this feature on and off. This driver-based feature could even turn out to be more flexible that the AIC solutions that we saw on the GTX 970 and 980.
Source: TechPowerUp! | News Archive
