WoW, AA, GPU temps bug

[zeropeorth]

A small PSA about a bug I've encountered for quite some time, and the solution I found searching (answer was a small old thread on EU WoW forums).

The bug: When AA is on, your gpu temps will max out (93 C for me) any zone, any time, any load (40-60% gpu usage, will still go up to 90s C and sit).


This might be NVidia only? My graphics card is a MSI 1080 Armor OC +175 core, +500 memory, fans at 100% above 60C, in a case with 6 140mm fans (Phanteks Enthoo Luxe with drive bays removed), nothing blocking the front fans to the gpu, and it has plenty clearance under its fans. Running on a 1080p 144 Hz freesync monitor.

Turn AA off, temps go down fast. It is usually in the high 60s if the load is lower, and low 80s if it is a big open area with lots of things to render near and far on a warm day. All other settings remain the same.

To be clear on this as well, I also play Destiny 2 now and then. Even when that game is at max settings with 150% scaling for fun to stress it, the card will be at 100% usage, but the temps stay in the 70s most of the time.


So if you are seeing unusually high temperatures for seemingly no reason; try disabling AA. I've reported the bug a while back. Searching the forum found an almost 3 year old post, mainly discussing AMD RX500 series card the OP had.

[Laqweeta]

A small PSA about a bug I've encountered for quite some time, and the solution I found searching (answer was a small old thread on EU WoW forums).

The bug: When AA is on, your gpu temps will max out (93 C for me) any zone, any time, any load (40-60% gpu usage, will still go up to 90s C and sit).


This might be NVidia only? My graphics card is a MSI 1080 Armor OC +175 core, +500 memory, fans at 100% above 60C, in a case with 6 140mm fans (Phanteks Enthoo Luxe with drive bays removed), nothing blocking the front fans to the gpu, and it has plenty clearance under its fans. Running on a 1080p 144 Hz freesync monitor.

Turn AA off, temps go down fast. It is usually in the high 60s if the load is lower, and low 80s if it is a big open area with lots of things to render near and far on a warm day. All other settings remain the same.

To be clear on this as well, I also play Destiny 2 now and then. Even when that game is at max settings with 150% scaling for fun to stress it, the card will be at 100% usage, but the temps stay in the 70s most of the time.


So if you are seeing unusually high temperatures for seemingly no reason; try disabling AA. I've reported the bug a while back. Searching the forum found an almost 3 year old post, mainly discussing AMD RX500 series card the OP had.

I have a 1070 (+600 memory, +142 core) fans @ 60%, 16GB ram and i5 7600K @ 4.6 GHZ. Max temp on WoW with everything @ ultra is 67c. This includes 8x AA. Maybe try reducing your core OC and up your memory OC?

[Aucald]

I am running a GeForce RTX 2070 Super (Nvidia drivers v445.75) and can report no temperature spikes in WoW with AA enabled. I'm running MSAA 8x in WoW currently - and my temperatures are all nominal, around the 50-60 C. range.

[Belloc]

Might be a drivers issue, a hardware issue (specific to your card), or even a cooling issue (thermal paste might need reapplied or GPU fan might need cleaned).

Only saying the above since the other posters in this thread are not having the same issue.

[zeropeorth]

Might be a drivers issue, a hardware issue (specific to your card), or even a cooling issue (thermal paste might need reapplied or GPU fan might need cleaned).

Only saying the above since the other posters in this thread are not having the same issue.

thanks for replies all.

This issue does exist outside my own little world though

https://eu.forums.blizzard.com/en/wo...ng-hot/33045/2

EDIT:
Removing Anti-Aliasing seems to have done the trick. Now its around 50-60% power usage.
If anyone has any other tweaking ideas please let me know!

I found the page in my browser history from several months ago. AA worked for them, worked for me ... well, sort of. I started playing around a bit more.

I have in game settings to max. Scaling to 111%, bicubic resample, 1080p monitor, RTSS capped 144 Hz, so I can use in game setting to do 1/2 refresh rate playing with gpu load and temps. I have cvars elevated past '10' such as draw distance plus fog pushed out to 12000.000000, particle and spell densities increased, ground clutter, mob distance, weather effects and all sorts of things increased past their normal max state. I do have 2xcolor/2xdepth and CMAA on now. If anyone cares, I can post all the actual settings and config files if wished. What I experience now is, temps mostly in the low 70s to mid 80s, I still see a spike of 91 on HWiNFO64. I can also grab some screenshots if desired. For example, from Krasus' Landing, I can see ALL of Suramar city and quite a bit of its surrounding area. I don't notice grass and ground clutter pop in any longer and it doesn't look as sparse. Mobs stay on my screen for much further distances. Darkmoon Faire path looks a bit ridiculous with tons of cans/trash the entire way, but the dead scar looks pretty crazy with the skulls and bones, like it should; but it also makes me want to push the draw distance of those objects a bit further, it seems grass is drawn at a much further clip than these objects.


I forget how old the 1080 is now, so will try to reapply thermal paste, have some pretty good stuff leftover from CPU re-application. I've also been looking into alternative solutions such as the Kraken G12 plus aio and some VRM copper heatsinks, as I don't want to go full open loop unless the pump, res, tubing, fittings, radiator, and block would come out cheaper than the other solution. It is the same PCB as the Gaming X model, would even consider trying to throw it on there if someone put a water block on theirs and it was just collecting dust somewhere in a closet

If it helps, I'll report back. Maybe I found that thread, tried it, worked well enough, moved on. It seemed to be just the trick where ever I was in Zandalar. I only recently dealt with it again as the game crashed while loading, reset my in game settings to default, and suddenly I had temp spikes I hadn't seen in a long time. Not one to always leave things well enough alone, I started poking again with all the settings, as I want to get the most out of my card without running at temp limit. Not necessary, but I can't help myself I play FFXIV off and on, and had gotten adjusted to the fidelity and beauty of their zones. I've also upped the gamma a bit to have a bit more vibrance in color and atmosphere in the night, as I still miss the old old days with really dark night cycles, and going down a dark path, say in Duskwood and having laterns light your path just looks nice to me.

I say all this, as a better explanation of where the settings are for the game, as people just saying 'my card doesn't do it' is a solid answer, but we might need to look just a bit deeper under the surface. What settings? What resolution? What targeted framerate? Any CVARS pushed past their normal limits? Blower style? AIB card with fancy heatsink? (I think almost any other card has a bigger, better heatsink than this card which sucks because I have my fans go to 100% at 60C). BTW, if I do 4x/4x or 8x/8x, it pretty much instantly jumps my temps above 90. I even went through Nvidia control panel to make sure something crazy wasn't going on in those settings as well.

Anyway, enough rambling, hope everyone is safe/well out there.