Does anyone know in detail what causes GPU's to burn up under certain loads?

[LokiFire]

For instance if i play Napoleon Total War on my 580 i get to 78c... if i play Crysis 62-72c

If i play BF4 i barely break 65c.

 

So what is the deal?

 

[SeanAngelo]

Just now, LokiFire said:

For instance if i play Napoleon Total War on my 580 i get to 78c... if i play Crysis 62-72c

If i play BF4 i barely break 65c.

 

So what is the deal?

textures, more things to render

[JebKerman]

lots and lots of electrical pulses thousands of times per second.

[PlayStation 2]

Really depends on what. Compute performance can hammer the GPU cores itself hard, while other tasks might really hammer VRAM usage, etc.

[LokiFire]

Just so you guys know i use Vsync in Total War, but the GPU is pegged at all times at 99% and i sometimes dip to 45FPS if i zoom into the action, the card is rendering so much stuff it's unreal, plus it is DX9 so hardly the best thing for a DX11 GPU.. DX9 is not as efficient.

[Dragacane]

Thing with the Total War games are that you have hundreds of dudes to render, then there is the environment, extra detail, post processing, etc

 

EDIT, YOU MADE A POST WHILE I WAS TYPING: You say that it dips to 45 FPS when you zoom in because with you being zoomed in the game make the dudes look better then if you where zoomed all the way out.

[Morgan MLGman]

THERMI

[Stefan1024]

Usually a programm can't utilize all the performance of the GPU. It is stalled by waiting for data and the pipeline gets interrupted. But by doing so, it can save a lot of power and stay cool.
Other programms like furemark are designed to utilize all aviable recousses. Therefor the GPU heats up more.

as the usage depends on the game, you see differnt temperatures with wifferent games.