GPU issue in Fallout 4

It's fine. Don't mess with it. My 390 sits at right at 50. AMD drivers have changed to let idle temps creep up before turning the fans up.
 
The card's operating as intended. You have 'high idle temps' since it was designed to be silent/quiet at low loads, sacrificing thermal headroom instead.
You can always reapply the thermal paste and see if there's any temp differences.
I'd probably advise against this. On my 6950 it had some extra thermal pads that, if weren't completely lined up correctly on the reference cooler, would immediately spike to ~95C and throttle for any sort of load whatsoever.

Tempted to suggest an Accelero cooler or something, but you could buy a better card for what you'd spend on a cooler.
 
Okay I think there is a genuine thermal issue with my 6950. Here's whats going on:
1. Card is idling at 50C-55C, which is kinda high.

2. When playing Fallout 4 at low quality, the FPS is a steady 60 and the fan is around 30%, but after ~10 minutes in game my GPU temp spikes to around 80C, the fan ramps up to 100%, and my FPS drops to the 40s until the card cools down, then I get 60 again, and this process repeats obviously.

NEW ISSUE
3. In TF2, for the 3 years I've had this PC, TF2 has played perfectly fine... until now. In TF2, the card almost never went above 60C and the fan always stayed silent. Well, now, as soon as I launch the game, my GPU temp spikes to the 70s-80sC and the fan ramps up real fast, yet I still get a solid 60FPS.

To my knowledge, the drivers are up to date, and I blow dust out of the card weekly. It is a Sapphire Radeon 6950 2GB from 2010 with stock clocks on it, no OC. When I look at the card in my PC it is noticeably sagging and the little motherboard part of it (the blue thing with the chips and capacitor things) is bending a bit.

This is the what my card looks like:
Sapphire-Radeon-HD-6950-1GB-GDDR5-(11188-01-40G).jpg
 
The card sagging is normal. That's why you want to get cards with backplates.

Run a DDU and do a clean driver install. Otherwise your "issues" sound pretty much like normal usage to me.

Okay I think there is a genuine thermal issue with my 6950. Here's whats going on:
1. Card is idling at 50C-55C, which is kinda high.

Did you even read what @beers and I said? Him and I both run AMD cards, and have for a while. We know how they function and have explained this to you already. This is not a problem.

NEW ISSUE
3. In TF2, for the 3 years I've had this PC, TF2 has played perfectly fine... until now. In TF2, the card almost never went above 60C and the fan always stayed silent. Well, now, as soon as I launch the game, my GPU temp spikes to the 70s-80sC and the fan ramps up real fast, yet I still get a solid 60FPS.

This by definition, is perfectly fine. You say the temp "spikes" its' just getting hot like it should when it runs.

This is the what my card looks like:

Thank you. This picture is very helpful in identifying your problem.
 
The card sagging is normal. That's why you want to get cards with backplates.

Run a DDU and do a clean driver install. Otherwise your "issues" sound pretty much like normal usage to me.



Did you even read what @beers and I said? Him and I both run AMD cards, and have for a while. We know how they function and have explained this to you already. This is not a problem.



This by definition, is perfectly fine. You say the temp "spikes" its' just getting hot like it should when it runs.



Thank you. This picture is very helpful in identifying your problem.
Okay I was just concerned there may have been an issue but appearently not. Thanks.
 
50-55C at idle isn't that high for a graphics card anyway? At least it seems you don't have any issues.
 
50-55C at idle isn't that high for a graphics card anyway? At least it seems you don't have any issues.
It's fine. Don't mess with it. My 390 sits at right at 50. AMD drivers have changed to let idle temps creep up before turning the fans up.
The card's operating as intended. You have 'high idle temps' since it was designed to be silent/quiet at low loads, sacrificing thermal headroom instead.

Why do high idle temps seem to baffle people? This is how the card is supposed to operate as repeatedly stated by me and @beers. My 390 is sitting at 48oC right now at idle. If it creeps up past 50oC the fans kick on and cool it back down. It's become pretty standard, at least on AMD cards, to have a set "idle temp" that the fans keep the card under. Once the card is at that temp it will turn the fans off to eliminate noise and extend fan life. Some cards are "set" at 60oC, others at 50oC. This is NORMAL.
 
1. Card is idling at 50C-55C, which is kinda high.
As Darren and Beers have been saying, this is totally normal. Even my 980Ti idles at 45 C, 50 C in the summer. Even more so, idle temps don't mean much of anything, so quit focusing on them.

2. When playing Fallout 4 at low quality, the FPS is a steady 60 and the fan is around 30%, but after ~10 minutes in game my GPU temp spikes to around 80C, the fan ramps up to 100%, and my FPS drops to the 40s until the card cools down, then I get 60 again, and this process repeats obviously.
Your card is pretty old for this title, even if it does eat CPU fairly well. This isn't the card breaking, it's the card showing it's age. In a game that stresses it to it's limit, it's going to get hot (like any CPU/GPU should and will), then the fan turns on to cool it off, and in reaching that 80 C, you're getting a tad close to the ceiling in temps for the card, hence the minor throttling you are noticing here. Nothing in this is strange or unexpected. You have an old card, trying to play a new game.

3. In TF2, for the 3 years I've had this PC, TF2 has played perfectly fine... until now. In TF2, the card almost never went above 60C and the fan always stayed silent. Well, now, as soon as I launch the game, my GPU temp spikes to the 70s-80sC and the fan ramps up real fast, yet I still get a solid 60FPS.
Perfectly fine == solid 60 FPS. The card is probably getting a bit old, and is going to heat up easier and more often, you need to accept this, or replace the card.

To my knowledge, the drivers are up to date, and I blow dust out of the card weekly. It is a Sapphire Radeon 6950 2GB from 2010 with stock clocks on it, no OC. When I look at the card in my PC it is noticeably sagging and the little motherboard part of it (the blue thing with the chips and capacitor things) is bending a bit.
It's likely been sagging since the day it was installed, and has gradually gotten more saggy as time went on. Backplates aren't intended to be a fashion statement, that's simply a convenient side-effect of having a sturdier card.


Nothing you are mentioning here (repeatedly, I might add), is an issue. The card is aging, and therefore getting hotter than it used to. That happens. You aren't going to reasonably fix that. What I suggest, is to listen to Darren. Save your money. Look at parts a bit (tentatively, don't make any plans, because things will change). When you have the money, then you can start making real parts list and getting help and advice.

In the meantime, make the fan curve more aggressive (for God's sake don't put it at a fixed percentage o_O), and live with the temps and performance.

We've all (some of us repeatedly) told you in this thread that this isn't an issue, so please believe us. You're going to give yourself a hernia if you keep worrying about idle temps and mediocre performance on a 5 year old card this much.
 
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