Guild Wars 2

See title. I know this is a somewhat common problem, but I was curious if people had any fixes in particular. With this game (And only this game) my GPU overheats like crazy, oftentimes leading to complete computer crashes because of it. I have to manually go into my CCC and enable manual fan control and keep it at 100% to keep it within reasonable limits. (And that still doesn’t work all the time) I’ve set character limit to lowest any time I’m going to a big event, and in general I keep it on low. Still keeps happening. Very, very frustrating. Just happened again with Tequatl (The first time I’ve finally done it, too, crash within 15 seconds of seeing the boss/zerg)

PC specs:

Phenom II x 4 @ 3.1 Ghz
HD 7870 2GB
8 GB DDR3 RAM

Has it always been that way when you got the gpu? Try running valley benchmark and/or furmark(valley on max settings is enough to put the same/more load as gw2 on max settings though).

Have you physically checked if the fans are working properly and/or dirty and clean/replace them?

It can be just dirty fans/heatsink or needing to replace the TIM on your gpu.

Overheating is NOT a common issue… It is an issue yes, but an issue of improper cooling on YOUR end. Can’t believe this thread is coming up again, lol.

If you are SURE it’s your gpu overheating and not cpu or both cpu and gpu, then look at aftermarket cooling options. Simple as that.

Previous poster mentioned verifying fans are spinning along with no dust clogging things up, do that of course, but if it’s always been a problem, get a better cooler.

sobe.4157:

Overheating is NOT a common issue… It is an issue yes, but an issue of improper cooling on YOUR end. Can’t believe this thread is coming up again, lol.

If you are SURE it’s your gpu overheating and not cpu or both cpu and gpu, then look at aftermarket cooling options. Simple as that.

Previous poster mentioned verifying fans are spinning along with no dust clogging things up, do that of course, but if it’s always been a problem, get a better cooler.

Uh, look up Guild Wars 2 overheating. You’ll get more than a few hits.

I play a lot of games, and none have this issue but GW2.

EDIT: Looking through some old threads in an attempt to find an answer, looks like you are very, very determined to say it’s not the game. I doubt I’ll change your mind, but I found it amusing to see you reply in threads from months ago.

Izaya.2906:

Has it always been that way when you got the gpu? Try running valley benchmark and/or furmark(valley on max settings is enough to put the same/more load as gw2 on max settings though).

Have you physically checked if the fans are working properly and/or dirty and clean/replace them?

It can be just dirty fans/heatsink or needing to replace the TIM on your gpu.

The GPU has run every other game I’ve played capping out at ~68C maximum. Run Guild Wars 2 and it overheats depending on the situation. Something is causing it to sit on 100% load until it blows up my PC.

But yes, I’ve opened the side of my case and watched all of my fans while leaving the game running, from what I can see (And based on both AMD Overdrive and Everest) everything is running fine.

Zoralink.9836:

sobe.4157:

Overheating is NOT a common issue… It is an issue yes, but an issue of improper cooling on YOUR end. Can’t believe this thread is coming up again, lol.

If you are SURE it’s your gpu overheating and not cpu or both cpu and gpu, then look at aftermarket cooling options. Simple as that.

Previous poster mentioned verifying fans are spinning along with no dust clogging things up, do that of course, but if it’s always been a problem, get a better cooler.

Uh, look up Guild Wars 2 overheating. You’ll get more than a few hits.

I play a lot of games, and none have this issue but GW2.

EDIT: Looking through some old threads in an attempt to find an answer, looks like you are very, very determined to say it’s not the game. I doubt I’ll change your mind, but I found it amusing to see you reply in threads from months ago.

Izaya.2906:

Has it always been that way when you got the gpu? Try running valley benchmark and/or furmark(valley on max settings is enough to put the same/more load as gw2 on max settings though).

Have you physically checked if the fans are working properly and/or dirty and clean/replace them?

It can be just dirty fans/heatsink or needing to replace the TIM on your gpu.

The GPU has run every other game I’ve played capping out at ~68C maximum. Run Guild Wars 2 and it overheats depending on the situation. Something is causing it to sit on 100% load until it blows up my PC.

But yes, I’ve opened the side of my case and watched all of my fans while leaving the game running, from what I can see (And based on both AMD Overdrive and Everest) everything is running fine.

I highly advise you to run Valley benchmark at the very least just to be sure.

Nvidia and AMD both have implemented throttling mechanisms for even power viruses like Furmark to avoid hardware damage if they aren’t as up to specd (I had my gtx 460 rma’ed because a capacitor blew up on stock settings running Furmark lol) or crashes.

It’d be strange for something like Guild Wars 2 to overheat your GPU and not Furmark so I recommend running Furmark too aside from “every other game”.

BTW as a temporary fix, you could also try turning V-Sync on. I have a 280x and having V-Sync on gives me 59-62c while turning it off gives 70c so I go with V-Sync on(I don’t have problems with V-Sync off except those associated with higher FPS than screen refresh but it saves on power consumption and less heat/noise from GPU).

A more drastic measure would be to limit FPS to 30 on your settings.

Zoralink.9836:

EDIT: Looking through some old threads in an attempt to find an answer, looks like you are very, very determined to say it’s not the game. I doubt I’ll change your mind, but I found it amusing to see you reply in threads from months ago..

If you noticed in those other threads, all of the knowledgeable people kittenponded already told the user(s) that the software does not cause overheating. It is simply a fact, if something is overheating, it is due to improper cooling, plain and simple, that is how these machines work. You are more than welcome to post over at XtremeSystems, Overclockers, or HardForum and ask the same question, of course you will be told what I told you, need better cooling if your gpu keeps rising in temp at 100% use. That indicates a problem with the cooling.

Which 7870 do you have? Blower style cooler? If not, what cooler does it have on it? Overclocked? Have you verified your cpu temps? What is your ambient temp? What are your hardware temps at idle and at load? Have you kept a temp log when playing GW2?

Despite the aiming at GW2 for a heating problem, I’d like to see this issue fixed for you. Try to answer the above to the best of your ability.

There are ONLY 2 ways to fix over heating components;

1. Clear out your component and make sure your fans are not aging/dying/slowing down

2. remove the heatsink from the device and polish both the heatsink surface and the die surface, then replace the TIM (thermal interface material) with something better then what was there.

TIM dies up every 2-3 years depending on how dry your environment is, and when that grease dries up your heat transfer rate takes a HUGE dump in performance.

fans last about 3 years on AVERAGE. The more dust buildup, the longer that dust sits below that fan attached to the heatsink, the faster your fan is going to die.

Fact – Heating issues are NOT caused by ANY software. If you have heating issues its due to your cooling solution/materials.

Izaya.2906:

I highly advise you to run Valley benchmark at the very least just to be sure.

Nvidia and AMD both have implemented throttling mechanisms for even power viruses like Furmark to avoid hardware damage if they aren’t as up to specd (I had my gtx 460 rma’ed because a capacitor blew up on stock settings running Furmark lol) or crashes.

It’d be strange for something like Guild Wars 2 to overheat your GPU and not Furmark so I recommend running Furmark too aside from “every other game”.

Sorry, meant to include that in my above reply: The Valley benchmark ran perfectly fine. (I left it on stock settings, as I’m not running GW2 at max) GPU quickly rose up to 68C and then stayed there for most of the benchmark. (High settings, no AA, 1920×1080)

BTW as a temporary fix, you could also try turning V-Sync on. I have a 280x and having V-Sync on gives me 59-62c while turning it off gives 70c so I go with V-Sync on(I don’t have problems with V-Sync off except those associated with higher FPS than screen refresh but it saves on power consumption and less heat/noise from GPU).

A more drastic measure would be to limit FPS to 30 on your settings.

I’ve tried both of the above (V-sync on and limiting my FPS to 30)

sobe.4157:

Which 7870 do you have? Blower style cooler? If not, what cooler does it have on it? Overclocked? Have you verified your cpu temps? What is your ambient temp? What are your hardware temps at idle and at load? Have you kept a temp log when playing GW2?

Despite the aiming at GW2 for a heating problem, I’d like to see this issue fixed for you. Try to answer the above to the best of your ability.

Sapphire 7870

Has a blower style cooler. (As you can see with the link)

I’m actually underclocking it now in an attempt to resolve this (1025 MHz rather than the stock 1050) while setting fan speed to 100%.

CPU temps have all looked good, highest I’ve seen them go was ~56C.

I keep my house at around 75F. (~24C)

Idling, my CPU is sitting at 31C, while my GPU is currently at 40C. (Though it has been slowly dropping, normally it stays around 37C)

I haven’t kept a log, but during normal play (When there’s no overheating happening) the GPU is staying around 55-57C, then, seemingly with no rhyme or reason, it spikes upwards in both load (Up to 100%) and in temp until it explodes. Highest I’ve caught it was 72C before my computer crashed.

EDIT: And to add, it’s crashing entirely with no error, simply a “Whelp, I’m out!” and cut to black.

Apologies if I’m getting snippy, I appreciate the help, but this issue is part of the reason I quit before, so I’m getting incredibly frustrated.

EDIT2: Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand my GPU died. Having to use my old 4850, which has now outlived my 6870 and my 7870.

How sad.

Don’t run it at stock settings, the goal for running it is to stress your GPU with a realistic “game like” application. It’d make no sense of you don’t test for maximum utilization.

When testing for overclocks or even verifying if a new gpu is okay I run Furmark for a few minutes and actually play games/run gaming benchmarks for a couple of hours on settings that can push the utilization to 100%.

Run it on Ultra HD settings and let it loop for a an hour or two.

Also, when you try underclocking, test for AMD stock settings, that means 1000MHz core clock and 1200MHz on the memory.

In theory, your GPU should throttle down if its overheating, maybe it’s the VRM overheating? Try monitoring with GPU-Z/msi afterburner or other similar programs.

You could also try a fresh install of the latest AMD WHQL drivers.

Edit: Just read your gpu died, well that just sucks

kitten , well that may have been why you’ve been having issues, it was out the door

I’m sorry to hear that though, I would talk to Sapphire and see if they would still accept an RMA. Some companies will still help you out.

Don’t worry about being snippy, it’s understandable, you were the one having the issue and having an issue and not finding out what it is can be frustrating. I think I can safely say we’ve all been there.

Yeah, I sent an e-mail to Sapphire asking about an RMA, the card is only a little over a year old and it (supposedly) has a two year warranty, so hopefully it’ll work out. I’m leery of Sapphire after this. I was always kinda iffy about them, but I got the card with a nice sale so I decided to give them a shot despite the card having a fair number of reviews warning about it dying in this manner. (artifacting with green lines/corrupted textures everywhere)

I’m guessing there was some underlying issue and since Guild Wars 2 is fairly intensive graphically it just was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Curious if I can run Wildstar better with this 4850 compared to the 7870, as I was having issues running it well before.

On the plus side, I guess the 7870 was too screwed up, and my 4850 is actually running GW2 better than the 7870.

But yeah, went to start a game of Orcs Must Die Unchained, entire screen turned into the joyous brown/white screen of “Teehee, your card is dying,” relaunched my PC and it would just get caught in an endless loop of “Starting Windows… Crash, starting Windows…. crash, Run startup repair? Starting Windows…. crash…”

Been playing since my last post, no issues, running at pretty much the same settings (Only turned post processing from high to low), temp hasn’t gone above 65C. That or I just need to upgrade my CPU and it’s bottlenecking my computer far more than I realized on top of the 7870 crapping out… I know it’s old, but everything seems to have run fine at medium-high settings up until now.

Ah well, I’ve been debating just doing a fresh build other than my HDD and CD/DVD drive for a while now, this might just be the final impetus to get me to do so. Probably going to try to move away from AMD as they’re slowly falling out in comparison to Intel/Nvidia…

The downside being that fun thing: Money that I don’t have to spend on this.

GW2 DOES heavily exercise the GPU in a system, but if it’s overheating, that’s a direct hardware issue (properly operating GPUs in properly cooled systems do NOT overheat). Unless the environment is very warm and you have inadequate cooling in the system, this sounds like a Graphcis card hardware defect of some sort (bad fan, heatskink seating, etc.).

If you have the money, put them underwater. Mine idle CPU 25’c and GPU 24’c. Stress CPU 50’c max and GPU 40’c max.

I don’t have to worry about my components be murdered by heats.