4K gaming temperature

piwo2805 · Feb 24, 2017

Hello everyone
I bought a MSI RX 480 Gaming X last year. It's been great so far, great performance and low temps (never above 73° at full load with the Witcher 3). I replace my 1080p monitor with a 4K monitor and when I game the GPU temps picks at 80-82°C (at 4k playing the Witcher 3).
If I set the game to 1080p temps go back to 73°. Why this happens if in both scenarios the GPU load it's 100%?. Also at lower resolutions than native my CPU runs hotter (45°C @4K and 50-52°C@1080p)

hazzyboy3 · Feb 24, 2017

What CPU cooler do you have?

piwo2805 · Feb 24, 2017

hazzyboy3 :

Intel stock cooler. My CPU it's a i5 6400 btw.

atomicWAR · Feb 24, 2017

4K is crushing our GPU so thats why your temps are hotter for your GPU at 4K and on the same note temps are lower on you CPU on 4K because it doesn't have to work as hard at 4K as 1080P since the frame rate of the GPU is lower at the higher resolution. This is all to be expected.

atomicWAR · Feb 24, 2017

Also stock coolers stink so adding an after market cooler would help your CPU temps at all resolutions.

hazzyboy3 · Feb 24, 2017

Yes please defintley buy an aftermarket cooler

Draqone · Feb 24, 2017

Hmm... might be something to do with how much VRAM is actively in use. It might heat up the entire card.

Or, a simpler explanation:
The fact GPU shows 100% load doesn't actually mean it's 100%, and it only reaches full performance when you run 4k.

piwo2805 · Feb 24, 2017

atomicWAR :

But doesn't make sense to my why at 4k gets hotter under 100% load than at 1080p under the same 100% load. Are those temps safe?

piwo2805 · Feb 24, 2017

hazzyboy3 :

Are those temps dangerous for the CPU? I thought under 60°C everything was ok

hazzyboy3 · Feb 24, 2017

piwo2805 :

atomicWAR :

But doesn't make sense to my why at 4k gets hotter under 100% load than at 1080p under the same 100% load. Are those temps safe?

Because 1080p is less intensive to run than 4k

Sakkura · Feb 24, 2017

Measuring load percentage isn't necessarily perfectly accurate. Maybe the higher resolution is putting more load on the memory controllers and ROPs, but the load is mostly measured at the shaders. So it doesn't display the actual difference in utilization between 1080p and 4K.

Anyway, just over 80C is not dangerous for the GPU. It does mean there's no more room left for overclocking though.

And the CPU temperature is totally fine.

piwo2805 · Feb 24, 2017

Draqone :

i think it migh be this. I have the 8gb ddr5 version. I´ll try to load the game at 4k and lower the texture quality and see what happens. underclock the memory would cause any instability on the sistem?

piwo2805 · Feb 24, 2017

Sakkura :

wich temperature would be dangerous for the gpu? Mine is factory OC so i´m not planning to overclock it. I think it might be the memory. Playin Rome 2 total war at 4k (wich only detect 3gb out of the 8gb vram) my temps are around 70-74ºC

atomicWAR · Feb 24, 2017

any temps cpu or gpu under 80-85C is safe. when you get into the mid to upper 90s that's when you start to worry because thermal throttling kicks in to prevent damage to CPU....for nvidia they start to throttle at 84C but can handle up into the 90s as well.

Sakkura · Feb 25, 2017

I'd want to stay below 85-90C for sustained use. But shorter temp spikes above that won't necessarily do any harm.

atomicWAR · Feb 25, 2017

Sakkura :

absolutely. If your under 100% load for 15-20 minutes before you hit those temps and you don't stay there long they are fine.

Stacey s · Jul 1, 2017

Had the same problem never got to testing out 1080 p but when playing 4k even when lowered settings to get 60 fps it goes to 82 celsius. It was at 82 again for runescape rpg i play but i had anti aliasing to ultra and v sync off when i lowered anti aliasing and put on v sync it lowered to 60 celsius max. But lowering settings didnt drop the temp apparently 4k is really taxing on the gpu causing those higher temperatures.

4K gaming temperature

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