Could my game performance be affected by ventilation?

boz81

boz81

boz81

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Hi

At the beginning of the year I built myself a relatively high-ends system

6600 Quad Core Intel
4Gb 800Mhz Ram
8800 [edit]756mg Graphics Card

Over the months I’ve had a problem with games struggling to run at high performance 3 or 4 new(ish) games which I should be able to max have suffered from bad texturing, pop-up and stuttering frame rates.

Basically I have noticed that the interior of my computer and especially my graphics card have been very hot and my 8800 card feels as though it could burn my finger.

So I wondered if the ventilation/cooling I have isn’t sufficient for my level of hardware would that be why I’m suffering from poor performance in some games…?

If I upped the ventilation/cooling levels inside my machine am I likely to see my games run better?

Thank you in advance
 
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Possibly as your graphics card or CPU may throttle or lockup if they get too hot. Have you checked the temperatures using any software utilities?

256mb for a graphics card is very much at the lower end now so if you've got a decent screen size you could also be running out of memory (screen buffer etc).
 
Hiya, which games exactly and also what PSU are you using?

It looks like same spec PC as mine previously (see my sig) and tbh It ran pretty much everything very well aside from Crysis for example which would be a little slow, but thats to be expected.

Also I would only run the games at 1680x1050 but with all details up.

Make sure V Sync is turned off too. With it off you may get a little screen tearing in some cut scenes but I noticed a big performance increase
 
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use a program such as realtemp to check your temperatures under load and let us know what they are like.

what case and cpu cooler are you using?
 
your idea of giving your system a good clean inside will help bring down your temp's
that along with R5GTT's suggestion should hopefully see you right
 
Hi

Thanks for all the replies.

I’m not sure exactly what temps the computer is running at but I’m pretty sure that its too hot since as I said my graphics card almost burns my finger when i touch it.

Hiya, which games exactly and also what PSU are you using?
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The games i've tried and seem to have the running problems are the Conan Online game, the new Warhammer online game and Battlefield2
I usually play them on 1650 x 1200

I have a CoolerMAster M700 PSU 700w and my CPU cooler is called Freexer Pro7.

The main question i'm trying to answer is does overheating affect gaming performace? or does overheating just simply shut down your machine?

Thanks again guys.
 
it can do both
if its the cpu that is overheating the system will power off to save the cpu from burning out
a overheating graphics card will slowdown gaming performance and possibly crash the pc if it gets too hot
giving it a good clean out wont harm it
 
It would have to get VERY hot for auto-throttling to kick in. More likely you've got some unwanted processes grabbing your CPU cycles. Spyware, stuff like that.
 
The main question i'm trying to answer is does overheating affect gaming performace? or does overheating just simply shut down your machine?
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As sir-les-mp said it can do both but technically speaking heat has no direct effect on performance whatsoever.

The CPU and graphics card will both throttle (automatically clock down) at high temperatures but these are usually high enough that correctly fitted hardware in a decently ventilated case won't reach them (talking something like 90C+ for the CPU and 120C+ for the GPU).
 
It's probably one of these things:
- CPU cooler isn't fitted properly which makes it to hot and it will throttle back the CPU
- GPU get's to hot because of:
1. Very bad airflow (if there is any ;) )
2. Broken fan
3. To much dust
- 3rd party programs / spyware taking cpu time from the processor which leaves little for the games you play.
- You are using a driver for your GPU that is not correctly handling the GPU fan

So check the temp of your GPU / CPU under load if that's not it, check the task manager if some programs are taking lots of cpu time. See if the GPU fun is running.

Just some suggestions
 
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