For days I have been wrestling with my NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT 512mb.
It's been running 90c-100c after gaming for about 20 min.
I even went to the lengths of lowering everything to the lowest possible settings and was still getting high 80c to low 90c. It spiked to 105c once even!!!!
So.... I uninstalled, as a last resort, my 196.21 drivers.
I installed the 195.62 drivers. My Computer is currently running at nearly full settings and hasn't gone above 80c since.
I'd highly recommend you go with the 195.62 Drivers and follow the following settings:
Basic:
Enable Rumble: Off
Enable Camera Shaking Off
Audio:
Digital Signal Processing: Off
Graphics Options:
Display Mode: Fullscreen
Fullscreen Resolution: 1152x864 (4:3)
Fullscreen Refresh Rate: 75 Hz
Brightness: 100%
Aspect Ratio: Auto
Monitor vertical sync: Off
Half Resolution: Off
Antialiasing: 2x (Medium Quality)
Dynamic Lighting: Off
Lighting Quality: High
Shadows: Off
Max Lights per object: 2
Max shadowed lights: Irrelevant
Texture anisotropic filtering: Off
World texture quality: 100%
Character texture quality: 100%
World detail distance: 75%
Terrain detail distance: 75%
Character detail distance: 75%
Show high detail objects: On
Max physics debris: 50
Postprocessing: Off
Visual fx quality: Medium
Soft particles: Off
Bloom Quality: Off
Bloom Intensity: 0%
Screen space ambient occlusion: Off
Cinematic focus: On
Underwater view: Off
Reflection quality: Low
Framerate stabilizer: On
Auto-stabilize framerate: On
Limit CPU usage when inactive: On
Multi-core Renting: On
Use full detail character animations: Off
GPU-accelerated particles: On
Reduce file streaming: On
Software Cursor: Off
Minimum shadow buffer bias: Off
Reduce CPU/GPU usage: On
Limit Frame Rate: 30
With these setting all my heating problems have been fixed!!!!!!! Don't forget to get the 195.62 drivers instead of the 196.21.
I rarely go over 81C with this setup and Driver.
Sincerely,
ArmyX
PS. I hope this works for you all as it has worked for me.