GTS 450 low fps and stuttering in game.

[Soulhunter90]

Hello all. Yesterday I had to replace my burned out gts 250 with an spare Asus GTS 450 I had lying around. It was my brother's so I know it was working fine before.

Problem is, when I start a somewhat demanding game (I'm using Skyrim as parameter), its runs fine (60+ fps easily) for the first 10 seconds, and then the cooler accelerates to max speed, while the fps start to degrade down to 20- fps plus heavy stuttering. If i Alt tab away, and then back to game, same drill: good fps to bad in a few seconds.

I used GPU temp to take some measures as It sounds just like temp issue; these were the readings when stuttering was ocurring:

95-99ºC Core temp,
99% Core load
40% memory use.

I don't know if that is working temperature, but It won't go higher; so I'm assuming some kind of powerdown protection, hence the lag, but it's not reflecting on the core load which stays put at 99%.

System specs:
Q6600 @ 3.0 Ghz
p5n-t Deluxe
4 Gb RAM
Extremely low end PSU: 14 amp at 12V rail.

After trying the basic stuff, I'm planning on:

> Opening the gpu up, removing the cooling cuirass, cleaning it and the board, and replacing thermal plaste.
> Replacing PSU (despite it working fine with the 250,which according to nvidia specs page its more power hungry than the 450, UNLESS It had something to do with killing the 250?)

I'd like second opinions on the issue before taking those risks. Maybe someone with similar problems as I never had this happening.

Thanks in advance!

 

[jackstrr]

Take the heatsink of the gpu and replace it with good thermal compound asap, 99c is way to high and soon it will break

 

[Soulhunter90]

Take the heatsink of the gpu and replace it with good thermal compound asap, 99c is way to high and soon it will break

Thanks for the quick answer. Now that you confirm that 99c is in fact high, I'll try replacing the thermal compound. I have no access to it right now but tomorrow I'll try to get some, and post results. Again, I appreciate your help.

EDIT: that was it. Replaced the thermal paste and cleaned the board and now 60° C max at nominal load. Thanks a lot.

 

[Jellypickaxe]

Maybe you are expecting to much of this card and your parts. Either there is a bottleneck, probably the CPU for skyrim as thats CPU bound. Also maybe you expect to much from this card so look for some youtube videos using comparable rigs. The 450 is comparable to a gt 630 or for AMD a 5750-5770.