Temp issues with HD 7870

Hey guys,

Fairly new to the community so I hope I am posting this the right way/in the right section. 

 

I am running an XFX AMD 7870 2GB graphics card at its stock clock and I'm coming up on a year of owning the card. It has performed very well up until now it seems. I have been playing a lot of Diablo III which shouldn't push this card as hard as I am seeing it be pushed.

I have played other games that are much more intensive like Castlevania LOS, Borderlands 2, The Witcher 2, Far Cry 3, Bioshock Inf, etc and can run them all at 60+ fps with some of them being maxed out. The highest temp I have seen through my monitoring software was 76C on the Witcher 2 and 70-71C on Bioshock Inf.

The issue I am having is Diablo III is running at 68-70C consistently and I even drop frames down to as low as 25 fps...

Diablo has never run this hot nor dropped frames ever. I have done all I can think of to fix the problem. I have made sure both fans are working, there is no dust clogging the fans/heatsink, there is nothing in the way that would constrict airflow in or around the card, case, etc.

Additionally, awhile back my ambient temps went from 32-35C to about 40-42C with the ambient room temperatures staying the same so I even went as far as to replace (very carefully) the stock thermal paste with higher grade/more efficient paste. I did this because, (and talking with my friend who has done this before) the stock paste typically is not as efficient and replacing it with better quality paste can make for better temps overall.

All drivers installed and up to date.

 

In writing this I ran Bioshock Inf again to see if I got the same temps or higher in comparison to Diablo... Bioshock runs normally (all settings on high not ultra) and I run 68-70C with no visual frame rate drops. I honestly can't believe for a second that Diablo III requires as much power as Bioshock does. And to see Diablo report the same temps and fail to sustain at 60 fps or higher is unnerving and honestly ridiculous. 

My friend's HD 7770 runs cooler than mine does and even my friend's laptop runs cooler than I am.

So, at this point I have 2 questions... Is it my card? or is it just Diablo for some odd reason? Typically, from what I can remember, I ran diablo III maxed out with v-sync off because the card is honestly more than capable to do so and never went above 60C if I'm remembering right. But, because its always a good thing to check all angles, yes I did turn it back on and tested for another few hours and it did not help.

Un-install + Re-install does nothing and the client is up to date (obviously).

 

Sorry for the long post but I wanted to include as much detail and info as possible. Thanks for any help on this issue and for your time reading/responding!

 

- Lin

Its a Diablo issue mate, if your card performs fine and dandy in everything else then its in the hands of the software gods to fix the problem.

Your temps are fine btw, 70c @ load is relatively low.

The xfx cards are notorious for haveing to much bad thermal paste on them changeing the thermal paste and giveing it a clean out will dramatically reduce temps on that card.

However 70c isent very high for a 7870,80+ will be high temps for that card.

Great, thanks guys! 

Yeah, I do know 70C @ load is fine, it was just that D3 running that high spooked me a bit since it shouldn't need to do that at all. 

Thanks again! :)