Is this game really supposed to heat up GFX cards?

[JnEricsonx]

My computer is running a old Radeon ATI 4890, and apparently under idle it runs in the mid 40 C range...at least prior to weather like now, where it's base is about 51-52, but while playing a 15+ year old game, it's temp still jumps to the high 60s.  I know I need to get a new card at some point, but when it comes to hitting near 70C....am I just being paranoid or what?

[Bopper]

Not sure, but it has felt like ever since Page 5, my fans blow like crazy when I'm in game. Even on Beta server. It seems to calm down a little based on where I'm at, such as a mission and perhaps a less populated zone. But sitting in Atlas or Ouro, and the fans started humming loud

[RCU7115]

My GTX 960 heats up to 70 when I triple box. 

[Patti]

Same here!   64bits just kills my computer and it keeps crashing.   I used to use safe mode.

[Oubliette_Red]

3 hours ago, JnEricsonx said:

My computer is running a old Radeon ATI 4890, and apparently under idle it runs in the mid 40 C range...at least prior to weather like now, where it's base is about 51-52, but while playing a 15+ year old game, it's temp still jumps to the high 60s.  I know I need to get a new card at some point, but when it comes to hitting near 70C....am I just being paranoid or what?

Remember that the Homecoming team has updated it to some degree, especially the aforementioned 64-Bit mode.

 

Prior to that, Legacy CoH blew up 2 laptops on me (the original and its replacement), the keyboards would get so hot that I could barely keep my hands on it, granted much of that was poor design on the laptop's part. My current laptop (GTX-1070) has no issues at all running it and neither does my desktop.

 

[JnEricsonx]

My comp is running fine playing the game, I'm just more curious as to if those who are more tech-savvy can tell me if a graphics card hitting the high 60s-to 70 C is something I don't have to worry too much about is all.  I'm on a tower PC, not a laptop.

[Troo]

2 hours ago, Bopper said:

Not sure, but it has felt like ever since Page 5, my fans blow like crazy when I'm in game. Even on Beta server. It seems to calm down a little based on where I'm at, such as a mission and perhaps a less populated zone. But sitting in Atlas or Ouro, and the fans started humming loud

I had to turn down some of the specific settings. Now no more crazy fan sounds.

[ImpousVileTerror]

Ah!   Which settings?   My poor computer is having a heart attack too, and the heat wave we're under in my neck of the woods isn't helping any.

[Oubliette_Red]

26 minutes ago, ImpousVileTerror said:

Ah!   Which settings?   My poor computer is having a heart attack too, and the heat wave we're under in my neck of the woods isn't helping any.

I'd recommend resetting to default graphics and then bump up one setting at a time while checking temp. The game may look 12 years old, but it may also take the strain off some components during the current heat wave.

 

[nihilii]

50 minutes ago, JnEricsonx said:

My comp is running fine playing the game, I'm just more curious as to if those who are more tech-savvy can tell me if a graphics card hitting the high 60s-to 70 C is something I don't have to worry too much about is all.  I'm on a tower PC, not a laptop.

You definitely shouldn't have to worry about those temps. Graphic cards are built to handle 90-100°C.

 

48 minutes ago, ImpousVileTerror said:

Ah!   Which settings?   My poor computer is having a heart attack too, and the heat wave we're under in my neck of the woods isn't helping any.

You might get good mileage out of lowering Shadows and View Distance (world especially). Turning off Water effects is good too if you haven't done that already.

[Psyonico]

1 hour ago, JnEricsonx said:

My comp is running fine playing the game, I'm just more curious as to if those who are more tech-savvy can tell me if a graphics card hitting the high 60s-to 70 C is something I don't have to worry too much about is all.  I'm on a tower PC, not a laptop.

70 is pretty warm for a 16 year old game, but totally safe.  If you feel uncomfortable with it, a lot of graphics cards have software where you can change the fan curve to something more aggressive.

[Giovanni Valia]

60-70 seems really warm to me. This summer my temps have been around mid 40's on ultra settings. Over the winter idle temps were low 30's for me. I have a GTX 1080 Ti, water-cooling loop.

[tidge]

I have had very bad experiences with Radeon cards, specifically the RX 560. I am using Windows 7, 64-bit. The software & drivers always seemed to 'want to do more' than I needed: whenever I had multiple tabs in a browser, or if I had any sort of media playing with audio (running Media Player, YouTube, Sound Recorder) the card would eventually crap out. Something as simple as running an instance of Civ V and playing an mp3 would cause issues. Homecoming CoX would play, but there was no reliable setting that would let me be in a zone with more than about 20 other players.

 

I was never overclocking, but there was also something peculiar about the default settings for the Radeon card, as viewed in the Wattman & Afterburner utility: The default settings didn't have the fan come on until 70+. This should have been 'ok', but in practice I saw the video card crapping out before it got to that temp. I changed the default to have the fans on all the time, and that did reduce the time between crashes... but the GPU was still 'doing too much' for even limited things like web-browsing.

 

I have never had problems with NVidia cards.

Edited June 8, 2020 by tidge
added reference to accursed Wattman

[Stratigamo2]

Your graphics card may be "spinning it's wheels." It may be trying to output over 60 fps for really no benefit. Use vsync which will cap the fps to your monitor's refresh rate which is probably 60 fps. If you have a higher hz monitor, you could cap the refresh rate to 60 in nvidia settings by using half under vsync settings. 

 

EDIT: I see you have a radeon card. The same advice applies, though. Try turning on vsync within the game if it's not. 

Edited June 8, 2020 by Stratigamo2

[Stratigamo2]

On 6/6/2020 at 7:51 PM, JnEricsonx said:

My comp is running fine playing the game, I'm just more curious as to if those who are more tech-savvy can tell me if a graphics card hitting the high 60s-to 70 C is something I don't have to worry too much about is all.  I'm on a tower PC, not a laptop.

This is exactly where my 1070 TI runs when under 100% load. It's totally normal. I think most cards can hit 90 before any kind of thermal throttling occurs. 

[Hyperstrike]

I remember when Ultra Mode arrived.

I had a buddy at NVIDIA test it out on a Quad-SLI setup.
Found out that the performance boost from SLI didn't really make a ton of difference for the game.

[Panthonca7034]

On 6/6/2020 at 3:33 PM, JnEricsonx said:

My computer is running a old Radeon ATI 4890, and apparently under idle it runs in the mid 40 C range...at least prior to weather like now, where it's base is about 51-52, but while playing a 15+ year old game, it's temp still jumps to the high 60s.  I know I need to get a new card at some point, but when it comes to hitting near 70C....am I just being paranoid or what?

 

Here's what I would do in your place (since I got an XFX setup, XFX=Crossfire or Dual Bridged Video Cards), if your temperature has climbed recently, you might want to unplug your system, take the cover off so you got access to the motherboard, and then check for dust particles or dust bunnies which may be crusted either on your motherboard or in the fan grille. Believe it or not, dust wrieks havoc on electronics and can even kill your RAM modules (one burnt out on me due to dust last year) and can even cause stuff to run hot. You can also get an air compressor, hose, and air nozzle to blow out all the dust from your system. You could also take out your video card and blow the dust away with compressed air or the nozzle, and with a little bit of luck your temperatures will go back down.

 

Also make sure to update your drivers, sometimes those driver updates can make a difference in performance. Hope this helps...

[Troo]

On 6/6/2020 at 4:55 PM, ImpousVileTerror said:

Ah!   Which settings?   My poor computer is having a heart attack too, and the heat wave we're under in my neck of the woods isn't helping any.

I'll take a look and report. It is likely one setting is the culprit, totally made the difference.

That graphics card fan noise was super annoying. Lowering the graphic settings and then slowly raising individual gfx settings without the fan having to kick in worked for me.

[SwitchFade]

I run liquid cooling (weird?) On my cpu and have a thermal monitoring app that shows temp for both cpu and Nvidia GeForce gtx card at 39c constant. Very quiet as well. So, no issues here.

[r0y]

Could it be an ATI issue?  I'm running a Radeon RX580 with a Ryzen 7 2700X and notice my fans shoot to "loud" when in game a lot.

 

Haven't done any thermal monitoring, but thinking maybe I should...

 

[JnEricsonx]

6 hours ago, Stratigamo2 said:

Your graphics card may be "spinning it's wheels." It may be trying to output over 60 fps for really no benefit. Use vsync which will cap the fps to your monitor's refresh rate which is probably 60 fps. If you have a higher hz monitor, you could cap the refresh rate to 60 in nvidia settings by using half under vsync settings. 

 

EDIT: I see you have a radeon card. The same advice applies, though. Try turning on vsync within the game if it's not. 

It is a older card.  I cleared out some dust within the last month as best I could, was worried about taking the card out-I'm so paranoid about messing with hardware.  It runs in the 40s-50C range as is, not helped by the weather.  Is Vsync something I turn on/adjust inside the game, or a seperate setting in my computer as is?  My PC gaming tech knowledge is not that great, I usually had friends tell me what to do.

[nihilii]

17 minutes ago, JnEricsonx said:

Is Vsync something I turn on/adjust inside the game, or a seperate setting in my computer as is?

Vsync is "Vertical Sync" in game. It stops visual tears you might see when moving the camera fast, but negatively affects input lag. Some people don't notice, so for them, it's win/win. You might already have it on.

Going to reiterate because perhaps the amount of replies you got makes it confusing, what with people talking about their own temps with newer cards: the temperatures you're experiencing are completely fine in general, and to be expected for this card's generation.

 

Somewhere around 2010-2012 GPUs got more efficient at heat management, and it's frequent to have newer cards running no hotter than 50°C even under heavy load and without watercooling.

 

The Radeon 4890 came before that time and it's normal to see it go to 60-70°C. Quick Googling around for "average temps Radeon 4890" will confirm that for you.

There's really nothing you should worry about here.

[JnEricsonx]

Fair enough, thanks.  It's just a natural paranoia for me to see that kind of temp.

[Ironblade]

On 6/6/2020 at 7:51 PM, JnEricsonx said:

My comp is running fine playing the game, I'm just more curious as to if those who are more tech-savvy can tell me if a graphics card hitting the high 60s-to 70 C is something I don't have to worry too much about is all.  I'm on a tower PC, not a laptop.

That kind of temperature is no problem for a graphics card.

I'd freak out if that was my CPU temperature.

[JnEricsonx]

Just as is I think my CPU is at tops around 29-30 C, atm, without a game running.