Guild Wars 2

I’ve had my PC for about 4 years. I just bought GW2 on the big sale so I will give some background info to my problem.

Since about November/December I have had some problems. My audio stopped working and FIFA 15 stopped performing like it usually does (default settings, 1920×1080 resolution) and was getting a kittenoppy/stutter. I reinstalled windows on my computer and the audio problem was solved. FIFA continued to be slow and choppy, but other games like CSGO were still okay. I do have an HD 6770 and I believe it is about a 430W PSU.

It seems that as soon as I launch a game it is fine (CS GO, FIFA, GW2), every time it starts out with my regular frames and smoothnesss. But then it deteriorates extremely quickly, I can hear my GPU fan work faster and faster, and in tandem my frames get lower and lower, and my temperatures also goes way up.

This is what the temps/specs of my PC are at rest (as per Speccy):

Operating System
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit SP1
CPU
Intel Core i7 2600 @ 3.40GHz 37 °C
Sandy Bridge 32nm Technology
RAM
12.0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 665MHz (9-9-9-24)
Motherboard
Dell Inc. 0Y2MRG (CPU 1) 31 °C
Graphics
DELL ST2420L (1920×1080@60Hz)
1024MB ATI AMD Radeon HD 6700 Series (ATI) 56 °C
Storage
931GB Western Digital WDC WD10EALX-759BA1 (SATA) 35 °C
Optical Drives
PLDS DVD+-RW DH-16ABS
Audio
Realtek High Definition Audio

For GW2, my frames start at 60 FPS and drop to at least 30 FPS within a couple minutes:
CPU 61 C
Motherboard 42 C
GPU 95 C

I also ran another test using FIFA in windowed mode, on the lowest resolution in windowed mode (1280×720), and these were the temperatures after about 10 minutes (with not acutally playing the game at all, it was simply open and minimized):

CPU 48 C
Motherboard 35 C
Graphics 95 C
Storage 35 C

CS goes from 70/80 to about 40 as well in terms of FPS

So, should I assume this is a GPU problem? Is it dying and should it be replaced? I have tried installing/uninstalling drivers, cleaning out the dust, etc. But it has gotten quite bad now and I feel it is rather unsafe as the temperature is really high and the fan seems to be going so quickly it will soon explode.

I appreciate you for reading this whole thing, and any comment or suggestion you may have for me would be great so I can get back into the game! Thanks!

Looks like the graphics card may be overheating under heavy load.
Can you check whether the fan is actually spinning properly while the machine is running the game? Maybe the heatsink needs some dust cleaning?

its too big load for your weak GPU and 95 c is pretty big try dust clean but i think its not help and your cpu will go up too quick buy better fan and temperature will go down . I have i5 750 1156 2.6GHz but i use Hyper TX3 evo and i can easy overclock to 3.5-3.8 and my temperature never go above 60 c or if have your cpu some time buy good thermal pasta its help a lot. if you want some GPU look for gtx 660/760 or if want some more power try AMD 280-290 but pric will go up.

I guess I could open up the casing and watch as I run the game, but from what I am told that is a bad idea is it disrupts natural airflow and that I run the risk of things getting in there that shouldn’t? Also, I am not the most familiar with the inner workings of a PC, by heatsink do you mean the fan of the GPU or the box type thing over the CPU?

I did a couple months ago take the airspray can and without taking anything apart, blew the heck out of it. the only thing I removed and aired out was the GPU, but I didn’t dismantle it and I didn’t remove anything else but the RAM.

I have also read about thermal paste and what it is for, but where exactly do you put it on the GPU? My main concern is just since it has been working fine for gaming for 3 years without the fan ever going that fast (I can hear it working hard and incrementally increasing as my frames start going down), do you think my GPU is failing then Pecar?

Thank you again for your input, I really appreciate it!

There shouldn’t be any problem running the game with the case open, just be mindful of the fans spinning in there.
The box type thing over the cpu is a heatsink, there is also a heatsink under the plastic casing of your graphics card, which from your descriptions still needs a good cleaning.
As long as the fan for your graphics card is still spinning, I would try to clean it again and this time at least remove the cover of the graphics card to fully inspect/clean the heatsink (dust between the fins)

I’d say with a quite high confidence that this is purely due to dried out Thermal compound under the GPU heatsink. What you are experiencing is one of the biggest signs of overheating components. So eventhough there isn’t enough dust that might cause this kinda issues the real problem resides under the surface. the TIM must have turned into concrete by now^^