Graphics Card Only Running in 4x?

[Sean P]

So, I thought my graphics card was getting too toasty for my comfort; 30 degrees Celsius at idle and around 85 under load. It's an XFX HD 6870, so it's generally small but has a massive heatsink that comes in direct contact with the VRMs and RAM chips. There's about 5 years of smoker's dust on it, since I bought it used. I found some thermal paste on eBay that was supposedly silver-based, so I bought 2 of them. As soon as they shipped, I took apart the graphics card, which was fairly easy (I can tell this was the first time it has been cleaned, due to the warranty stickers still on the screws). I cleaned everything off with pressurized air and wiping. I put the new thermal compound on, and realized that it's a porcelain-based one, and I would've most likely been better off by just keeping the old one. I didn't really think this crappy paste would affect the temperatures that much, so I kept it on. Putting the GPU back on was a breeze. After everything was installed and what not, I turned on the PC, and right off the bat I noticed the graphics card was much louder, like it was already under load. My idle temps were now 45 C. Load temps were unbearable, going upwards of 107 C. I quickly made a much more aggressive fan curve for it, and tried to reduce load on it as much as possible. Then I fired up GPU-Z and noticed it was only running in 4x speeds. I will upload a screenshot.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6c914UGnTXKY0dTejIyWjBmUVE/view?usp=sharing

Does anyone know what might have caused this to run at this speed? Newer, more VRAM demanding titles such as American Truck Simulator and other open world games went from locking at my 75Hz refresh rate to basically unplayable 15 fps.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Viking2121]

Your card could just be idling at x4, I suggest you open ATS and set it to windowed mode, click on Drive! so there are graphics being rendered, Open GPU-Z and see if its still in x4.

If its still in x4, make sure the card is in the right slot. I can help you if I knew what your motherboard is. it would be as simple as shutting down the system and moving the card to the right x16 slot.

 

[hang-the-9]

If you did not fix the temperature issue, that is why the games are not running well, the card is basically shutting down to keep from cooking the chips.

Get some decent thermal paste, I just got a tube of Noctua NT-H1 since it seemed to be a good price/performance part. Re-do the heat sink with that, make sure it's installed properly and does not have gaps or is put on crooked so parts are not touching.