The problem with the GPU

[tschilpi]

Hello guys,

 

I spent a lot of time modding my Skyrim, thus finished with a SkyRe install and then recognized that I'd rather want to play Requiem, so I installed Requiem with mods instead.

The game was then running pretty stable with 120 Mods +  (STEP:Baseline and Requiem)  and a not so new gaming rig.. I have 8GB of Ram, an AMD Phenom x4 955 and a HD 5850.

 

FPS are around ~30-35 with some view distance and shadow lowering, plus ENB. The problem now is, on desktop, my GPU already is about 66 degree Celsius hot. Then, when I start the game, it instantly heats up to 90 Degree, and I believe that it will go over 100 if I keep playing for hours. Also, the FPS go slowly down minute for minute, so that only 16-20 FPS are left in the end and I loose those essential ones.

 

Maybe I can fix this problem by taking a look at my GPU, like dust cleaning looking for good air passage etc..

 

But then I had in mind to buy a new one, since I bought my HD 5850 4 years ago.

 

I thought about the R9 270x and found this offer here: https://www.techmania.ch/details.aspx?sessionID=1210&hersteller=Sapphire&produkt=11217-04-20G

It's an 4GB VRAM one with an OC Boost. That, for approxiamately 30 Francs more than a normal one.

 

This sounds to good to be true. For those 220 Francs (178 Euro) I get a super fast GPU ( like twice as fast as my old one), with 4GB VRAM for all the Skyrim Mods?

Is it worth it or did I miss something. Maybe the card has a shorter lifespan because it's overclocked (I've never oc'd) or it is just slower than the 2GB Vram pendant?

 

With it though, Skyrim should be running super smoothly and I'll have a new horizone for Skyrim modding. I could extend my STEP: Baseline install into STEP:Extended, for example, and get better Textures. But I ask myself how I would do that... if the best way would be to just wipe off my HDD and do a fresh install (what would be pretty annoying though, since I've spent months for my actual setup) or somehow update the mods I already have. Hmm..

 

Your ideas/suggestion/help is really appreciated, since people in this forum really know stuff. :D

 

Greetings

[Glanzer]

New gpus do help a lot even without any other changes. For example, I played Skyrim with an nVidia 570 (1.2GB VRAM) for many months, but a couple months ago I bought an nVidia 780 (3GB VRAM) and the difference was amazing. I was getting about 30 FPS and even down to 5-10 FPS in places, but now I get a solid 50-60 FPS everywhere. And don't worry about a card that is factory overclocked, my cards have been OC'd at the factory and I've never had problems. Well actually I did have some trouble with artifacts playing Battlefield 3 on my 570 OC, so I just solved the problem by DOWNclocking the card to stock levels which was easy to do (it turned out to be a driver issue). btw, I never OC the GPU myself because it just doesn't seem to pay off like OC'ing the CPU does (I overclock my CPU to 4.2 GHz).

 

In terms of HDD, if you got an SDD that would help a lot. Short of that just keep your drive defragmented.