GPU Heat going ballistic with Neverwinter

gorandor · May 2013

Since a few patches ago my GPU Temps went from regular 55-60 degree to 75-85 degree. This is near the critical mark where a system likes to go and shut down. Not to mention it's unhealthy for the GPU Fans.

Only happens in Neverwinter, so I guess somebody is miss-handeling GPU load there.

If you need a DXDiag for troubleshooting, let me know. I suspect though that I am not the only one with this problem.

meetow · May 2013

I too am still having this problem. Thanx for bringing it up. I was afraid to ask about it again as so many peeps get riled up.

fientelo · May 2013

My GPU is on constant heat between 90-105C when playing neverwinter, its only at 75-80 in other games and thats with graphics on the highest in other games and neverwinter only on the next-to-highest.

cybercrusader · May 2013

I didn't have heat issues before last night, now my GPU is constantly hitting over 85 while questing...never had a game lock up my computer before...

gorandor · May 2013

push, because this is important, hardware damage is no joke.

dreadlordmikey · May 2013

BUMP.

This started happening for me after the patch on Thursday. My GPU fan is now running constantly, even with the case completely open. Never had this happen before, and it's only happening with NW.

This seriously needs to be addressed!

rubberchicken16 · May 2013

ya when this game first came out i played it for hours and it was fine but after one of the patches i was playing and boom the game was running like <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> then the game crashed and about 5sec after that i got a blue screen of death. i looked up what happened and it was something with my GPU. after that i stopped playing for a day then my friend wanted to play and he played for a couple hours and as he was trying to log out it did it again. now i have had many games crash on me but nothing that gave me the blue screen of death and as from now on i will not be playing sadly until i see something done about it because now my computer is not running 100% anymore it really did something bad my fan is almost all the time now on full blast and loud. i don't own this laptop and i cant afford to pay for it if it dies.:(

kirnenad · May 2013

My graphic card died, while I played Neverwinter.... :P Still, I bought the new one, lowered shadow quality to medium, and voila, now it plays like a charm. No overheating anymore.

stargeezertim · May 2013

I didn't see any mention of which card(s) may be affected, but a friend of mine is nearly fanatical about keeping his GPU as cool as possible and suggested these few tips:

Vertical Sync should be on. This has a secondary effect of keeping the GPU throttled down in most cases.
Keep your frame rate capped at no higher than 60 (and lower if you have an older card.) Your eye likely won't notice any huge difference (frankly aside from a perceived smoothness, your eyes can't detect any real difference above 24 fps.)
Shadows should be simple or off.
Bloom should be off. That post-processing will eat up GPU time slices and heat it up quick. Not to mention it usually looks better without anyway (personal opinion here.)
If your card's software supports it and you're still getting high temps, try speeding up the cooling fan a bit. You shouldn't need it so high that it sounds like a DC-9 taxiing the runway, but bumping it up 10-20% may help the air throughput a bit.

ashah78 · May 2013

maybe u need to lower down your spec in the game .... my graphic card only runs at 65-70 and here is a hot country .... Iam using a Geforce 660 Ti .... TQ

stantheman10 · May 2013

Also may have nothing to do with the game could be a number of other reasons : Faulty Hardware , Driver Software Corruption , A Virus , Simply a Bad Driver that the software company needs to address , and the list goes on and on im monitoring my card and its smooth sailing.

Id get those boxes opened up and taken a look in sounds like dust accumulation but who knows could be the updated clients have a bug that result is : increasing gpu load but thats a serious stab in the dark as Mr S.Homes said "if you eliminate the impossible that which remains however improbable is possible".
Also good tips previous poster but id be carefull (d)doing (i)it (y)yourself let a professional make the adjustments this is the reason
why a lot of builds tend to well you know have problems consult a tech and i mean a certified one.

meetow · May 2013

I'm one of the Nvids they are having trouble with. I assumed many with the overheating/crashing issues were pretty much NVidia folk, from reading the posts. I'll still wait a bit before I and the Hubs fully get our game on. I'm sure it will work a bit better in a few days or so. I don't want to trial and error it any more than I have with my machine. Turning it down and putting a open door cool breeze on it is still a bit too risky for my gaming laptop considering they are on top of working it out. Please keep posting so I too can see what the crew works of it.

(I try to keep my settings very practical so I dont have to worry about these things when giving a new game a go)

gorandor · May 2013

To those who say it could be something else than Neverwinter:

55 degree with Battlefield 3
58 degree with original Crysis (that one hungers for hardware)

Clearly isn't a hardware problem, it's a software load handling one.

edit: appearently the degree sign is a bad thing on this forum

chuckwolf · May 2013

Something is wrong, but I don't think it's the game. I've got a ~4 year old Phenom II 940 BE 3.0 ghz and a Radeon 4870 512mb.

CPU usage while in NW never goes above 50% Videocard usage averages between 70 to 80% with temps at a max of 35c. And that's with both sliders all the way to the right, at a resolution of 1680 x 1050.

Your cards are just running way too hot. Try manually upping the fan speed a little so they have a lower starting temp. that way when it is under load it doesn't have to work so hard to keep cool.

stantheman10 · May 2013

Using a Gforce GTX 550-TI one gig memory and shes taking neverwinter with a grain of salt one thing to look at would
be the required specs http://nw.perfectworld.com/about/faq .
And also do a graphics card driver update as each update improves performance and fixes bugs which can effect things nothing is set in stone and those two games mentioned have had augmentation with graphics card driver updates , update direct X , and sweep the system for malware and viruses .

Also im picking theres overclocking going on out there dont try it ive seen enough builds with burnt out hardware to know just
make some tweaks to the graphics settings to improve performance or buy a beast trust me you'll save yourself a lot of bother
in the long run.

darkosh45 · May 2013

Actually Neverwinter just killed my GPU 2 Days ago aswell... I believe there is some serious Issue with the Game. Just because not everyone is experiencing it, it doesn't mean theres no Issue! In computing it's very rare that an Issue of this kind affects everything and everybody.

Of course, it might be the Graphic card just broke suddenly, but the Situation in Neverwinter seems similar to other games with the same kind of Issue I've experienced already. It started exaclty the same way like this and until it is addressed I surely won't go to ruin another 500$ card...

Regarding the last messages

chuckwolf wrote: »

CPU usage while in NW never goes above 50% Videocard usage averages between 70 to 80% with temps at a max of 35c. And that's with both sliders all the way to the right, at a resolution of 1680 x 1050.

Your cards are just running way too hot. Try manually upping the fan speed a little so they have a lower starting temp. that way when it is under load it doesn't have to work so hard to keep cool.

The reason your CPU doesn't go above 50% is because NV can't adress more CPU cores.
The reason your GPU shows at max 35 degree under load is either: A: you're using something like dry ice for cooling or similar (very unlikely) B: There is an Error with your temp readings. No 4870 will stay below 50 degree C under load with aircooling.

stantheman10 wrote: »

Using a Gforce GTX 550-TI one gig memory and shes taking neverwinter with a grain of salt one thing to look at would
be the required specs http://nw.perfectworld.com/about/faq .
And also do a graphics card driver update as each update improves performance and fixes bugs which can effect things nothing is set in stone and those two games mentioned have had augmentation with graphics card driver updates , update direct X , and sweep the system for malware and viruses .

Also im picking theres overclocking going on out there dont try it ive seen enough builds with burnt out hardware to know just
make some tweaks to the graphics settings to improve performance or buy a beast trust me you'll save yourself a lot of bother
in the long run.

These are all standard suggestions, those who barely have any relationship with the particular Issue described by the most people within this Thread. Also personally, I've never seen any new kind of Hardware being "burnt" due OCing, you have to be extremely stupid with today's Hardware to be able to kill it. There so many fool-proof protections applied, you hardly can kill it on your own. An exception are PSUs (Power Supply Units) though which are often just pure Garbage, but usually you don't over clock them... But to answer that question, no, I didn't overclock anything within the PC that runned NV when the GPU died.

chuckwolf · May 2013

darkosh45 wrote: »

The reason your CPU doesn't go above 50% is because NV can't adress more CPU cores.
The reason your GPU shows at max 35 degree under load is either: A: you're using something like dry ice for cooling or similar (very unlikely) B: There is an Error with your temp readings. No 4870 will stay below 50 degree C under load with aircooling.

Actually that is on air, stock cooler 100% though I do admit I run it at 100% fan speed. I know you're going to say it probably sounds like a leaf blower, but no it's a model called the Sapphire Silent Efficiency that's actually fairly quiet at full fan speed.

About the temps, what I was getting at is even at max settings the game was not taxing my GPU as much as something like a GPU stress test, which can cause my GPU to reach ~75c, but at the loads Neverwinter produces, it's hardly a workout for the GPU as far as temp goes.

That's what I was getting at... the GPU isn't under load even with the sliders all the way to the right in game. I admit I'm not getting 60fps, but I'm not expecting it to, 40~50 fps in most areas at 1680x1050 is fine for me.

This may sound silly but it could be it's not the videocards at all, but power supplies, a few years ago when I first bought this GPU, I would have the problem that my computer would shut down if I ran anything that was even slightly graphics intensive. Turns out the 500 watt PSU I had couldn't supply enough power to handle the GPU under load. Bought a corsair 750 watt model and haven't had a problem since.

darkosh45 · May 2013

Allright, if your GPU is somewhat chilling with a 100% fan these temperatures are possible.
About Neverwinter, I don't believe that it generally generates too much load for the Cards (as you tell). In my opinion its possible, that it stresses some specific parts of the cards under specific settings -> the exact way other Software has been killing GPUs already. After the said Patch (which includes GPU related notes) I have read of several people on different Forums about heat Issues and GPU dying in combination with Neverwinter.

Now these Issues can of course be independent and related to various things, even a faulty PSU. As written in my last post, PSUs are literally the only Hardware which you have to be aware of the Quality on purchase. Your System would be surely powered flawless by a Quality 450W PSU, but there actually PSUs sold, which are rated for 600W and will just die if the actuall load reaches 250W... But at least for gorandors and my case, I can assure it's independent from the PSU.

In the current situation I litteraly can just post my own experience and thoughts, to see if more people suffer similar Problems. Not many people actually monitor their Hardware (even less understand what they see), and flawless Hardware will not die necessarily within a few minutes or days - so it will take some time until there will be a crucial amount of reports that could proof a existing flaw in Neverwinter or not. If it is very System and Settings specific, it may never be detected, or fixed without further notice.

For example, I didn't even touch the 2 Sliders you're talking about, when I setup Neverwinter I went straight for the advanced options, which hold a lot of things you don't affect with those sliders. If the Issues are specific to one of these Settings, somebody (most people) who haven't touched these Settings also won't experience Issues. Actually I would provide the settings I used, but they are overwritten already.

I have yet only lost 2 GPUs in my life, the first was lost to a faulty Nvidia driver, and now the current one possibly to Neverwinter.

xenobius · May 2013

Bumping, since I'm in a similar situation.
I'm running a somewhat old system with a GeForce 560 Ti onboard, and while it handled Crysis 3 (and FarCry 3 before it) just fine, with fan noise being barely audible (I've got a dual-fan ASUS version) NWO's Protector's Enclave makes fans spin so fast it sounds like the card is attempting a vertical takeoff, with temperatures reaching into the red.

Not all locations are that bad, mind you, since most dungeons, Foundry quests, skirmishes etc run quietly, but Enclave, Helm's Hold and one or two others cause GPU temp to go crazy. The game isn't eye-candy enough to cause this naturally, so I'm assuming some rendering procedures just cause performance issues. Needs a fix, or at least to be lokked in!

manasire · May 2013

Running a 7970 highly O/C 'd with game at highest settings, runs fine in regards to temperature with GPU fan setting at 45%. Obviously, it depends on the graphics card and the fan efficiency on the GPU as well as case fans as to how well you cards copes with internal temperatures,(wouldn't recommend removing PC side panels) but I don't see how a game is going to burn out a GPU? Usually, software drivers won't allow such things to happen. Of course, if you O/C to the exterme you may get lock ups or even, I guess, cause H/W probs, but O/C would be an hardware issue, not S/W. Not suggesting you guys are not getting issues, just the assumption that the software is the cause. Yeah, changes in software may effect the temperature of GPU if the game uses more graphics features, heavily, but isn't that what GPUs are designed for? To be fair, and as an example, I had several temporary lockup's ingame, but on checking the temperature in the catalyst drivers, they've been fine.Probably, just O/Cing too much, because overclocking can cause lockups without necessarily causing high temperatures, can it not? Cheers all.

whogivsasheit · May 2013

Ok im running a Geforce 450 GTX 1G ram & Windows 7 64Bit 4Gig Ram Card is running at 61 Deg full load all maxed out no problems.
first i recommend downloading a app to test your air circulation in the pc as http://event.msi.com/vga/afterburner/download.htm
run a stress emulation at 100% and then see what your card is running at and tweak your fan speed to stabilize your temp.

What i found is that this game is using 100% of my card and FINLEY a game that can use the full potential of a card is good for me.

If this helps any one
(I had to tweak my fan to run permanently at 90% for this game & saved it under Settings 1)

jetah · May 2013

dont forget to actually post what video card you have and what driver version you have. for nvidia get the beta drivers.

also nvidia has new beta drivers which "added sli profile for neverwinter". 320.14

misternasty813 · May 2013

fientelo wrote: »

My GPU is on constant heat between 90-105C when playing neverwinter, its only at 75-80 in other games and thats with graphics on the highest in other games and neverwinter only on the next-to-highest.

That will kill your gpu, do you have a custom fan curve program?

warpet · May 2013

my gtx 550ti works on 60-70c and game is maxed only physic debris option is on low since is bugged and do huge fps drop for nothing

homedragons · June 2013

Radeon HD 3600 Series, i use MSI Afterburner to kick my ventilator speed to atlleast 85-90% sometimes i write it up to 100% speed.
Temperatures hits 106,107~

I will quit the game if this isnt adressed soon since i dont want to brake my GPU at this moments.

shagohodscorp · June 2013

I have the same problem after latest patch.I m using a 580gtx and had no problems before latest patch everything was maxed out and the temp was 80c at worst and now im getting 95c.Im not going to continue playing unless a fix comes out.Im not willing to kill my GPU for this.

rajey0402 · June 2013

My card caps at 65-70, max settings. Unsure if this is a universal problem.

shagohodscorp · June 2013

rajey0402 wrote: »

My card caps at 65-70, max settings. Unsure if this is a universal problem.

universal no,very common yes.

mewbrey · June 2013

Only started happening to me after the patch this morning (.27) I run a Nvidea 680 GTX 4GB.
I run the game capped at 60 FPS and it is still capped at that since the change.

Edit: updating my drivers to the latest (non-beta) seamed to work, also used the new game experience tool and it increased my gfx even more... >< it did however make me go from fullscreen-windowed to fullscreen.

Edit:
After running a dungeon, it is not the case, my PC is putting out some serious heat now.

taltamir · June 2013

65-70C is mid-low temps for a video card. Hot is 80-90C.

It is also perfectly safe. Hardware damage isn't even a risk until 90C and for some its as high as 105.

And all modern cards self regulate such that they should not ever go above their safe temperature (with the result being performance degredation and lag when it throttles the GPU/CPU when it gets too hot)

Just lower the settings. This isn't a bug unless cryptic does something stupid (eg, forgot to frame cap a 2D menu which could result in FPS in the tens of thousands... it shouldn't hurt a properly built card but it will waste a lot of electricity which is environmentally unfriendly, makes your room hot, and costs you money)

shagohodscorp · June 2013

taltamir wrote: »

65-70C is mid-low temps for a video card. Hot is 80-90C.

It is also perfectly safe. Hardware damage isn't even a risk until 90C and for some its as high as 105.

And all modern cards self regulate such that they should not ever go above their safe temperature (with the result being performance degredation and lag when it throttles the GPU/CPU when it gets too hot)

Just lower the settings. This isn't a bug unless cryptic does something stupid (eg, forgot to frame cap a 2D menu which could result in FPS in the tens of thousands... it shouldn't hurt a properly built card but it will waste a lot of electricity which is environmentally unfriendly, makes your room hot, and costs you money)

i must disagree with the bug thing cause if it wasn't a bug it should happen also before the latest patch.Again,before the latest patch i was around 75c and after that my gpu became a nuclear weapon.

GPU Heat going ballistic with Neverwinter

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