HD 6950 Heat Issues

[yousefk]

Hello,

I have an HD 6950 and it is having some heat issues. When idle, it stays at around 45-47 degrees celsius. This is fine, right? But when under stress (WoW @ ultra 2560x1440), it goes to 80 degrees celsius and usually stays at 75-83, 83 being the highest it's ever gotten.

I'm not sure why this is happening. My PSU is a few inches under it, but it expels heat out the back of the case. The card is getting sufficient airflow. HWMonitor shows everything else having a nice temperature while gaming.

I have also noticed that when it is at 80°C GPU-Z shows the card is only using 30-35% of the fan and it shows 1900-2100 RPM.

What could be the problem?

Also, I'm thinking of getting an HD 7970. Will it be able to play WoW 2560x1440 Ultra @ 60fps? I assume it can from it's benchmarks, but I haven't actually found one for WoW.

 

[5T34LTH]

Hello,

I have an HD 6950 and it is having some heat issues. When idle, it stays at around 45-47 degrees celsius. This is fine, right? But when under stress (WoW @ ultra 2560x1440), it goes to 80 degrees celsius and usually stays at 75-83, 83 being the highest it's ever gotten.

I'm not sure why this is happening. My PSU is a few inches under it, but it expels heat out the back of the case. The card is getting sufficient airflow. HWMonitor shows everything else having a nice temperature while gaming.

I have also noticed that when it is at 80°C GPU-Z shows the card is only using 30-35% of the fan and it shows 1900-2100 RPM.

What could be the problem?

Also, I'm thinking of getting an HD 7970. Will it be able to play WoW 2560x1440 Ultra @ 60fps? I assume it can from it's benchmarks, but I haven't actually found one for WoW.

I rather recommend a GTX 660 or 670 for price/power effiency

for your heat problem try:
1 blowing the dust out
2 updating drivers
3 Use MSI afterburner to turn the fans up a bit

 

[mace200200]

I'd use afterburner, or whatever other software came with your card (not sure what brand you have) to turn up the fans, 35% isn't very high at all, I let my fans run about 50% under load +/- 10% or so for when it's working harder or not as much. Your 6950 should be enough to max out wow, my 7770 does just on a much smaller resolution, but if you want to upgrade you'll need to go for a nvidia, blizzard games work a lot better on nvidia cards.

 

[yousefk]

Best answer selected by yousefk.

 

[yousefk]

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I set the fan at 50% using MSI afterburner, and it stays at around 60 degrees under load.

I plan on purchasing a 680 instead of an hd 7970, since I mainly play WoW and WoW-type games.