[Grizzly]

and I still can't run Mass Effect 2 with more than a few minutes of more than 50 FPS performance,

Upgrading your card will not change that at all. Mass Effect 2 'tunes' itself to run between 22 fps - 62 fps to prevent stuttering due to FPS spikes (it smoothens performance). It's a feature, not a hardware problem.

Looking at your system, I am quite sure you will be able to run the game fine on ultra high. There is no difference between 30fps and 50 fps anyway (not visable), so why bother?

[Admiral LSD]

Surely though having a faster system would influence how it tunes itself, no?

[Grizzly]

Surely though having a faster system would influence how it tunes itself, no?

No. There's just an 'cap' on the FPS rate.

[General Battuta]

Doesn't sound like the issue Hades is having. Even with this tuning his FPS should stay consistently high. If it drops off rapidly in this game as well as others something else is going wrong.

[Grizzly]

Doesn't sound like the issue Hades is having. Even with this tuning his FPS should stay consistently high. If it drops off rapidly in this game as well as others something else is going wrong.

It depends. I would not worry if my FPS rate drops below 50, as there is is no notable difference...

But yeah, if it starts to stutter... That might not be graphics card related, as his card should be capable of the job.
But if it goes to 30 fps or something, don't worry. ME2 just tries to use the minimum amount of system resources.

[haloboy100]

30 FPS is playable, I agree. Though I really have no idea what they expect the performance you're supposed to have when you're system meets the "Recommended" requirements.
I find the difference of 30-50 FPS very drastic. 30 is easily noticeable and annoying but playable, 40 is less noticeable and ignorable, 50 is relatively unnoticeable when you're not paying attention, and anything above that is irrelevant.
20 I find very annoying. anything lower than that I find completely breaks immersion.
Though of course, those are my subjective opinions. Call me a nit-picker, it's just what I am.

I have a large feeling my problem is something to do with system resources. If I minimize the game for more than a minute or two I can usually get my FPS right back up to solid 60s without any performance decrease. Then after a while it starts to crawl down to the 20s again, even if I stay in the same area, without any loading screens.
This could be a cooling problem, but seeing as how my card isn't overclocked and my case isn't modified in anyway (though sometimes I play with a large fan running next to it because I'm paranoid), I don't see why my card's heat would be a problem. Using some utilities (and from almost burning my finger myself) I find that my card runs at around 90 degrees Celsius, even when idling. Though I've come to expect that as normality from GPU's of my 8800s time.

This is just my naive speculation, though. I don't expect to be correct in anyway. Though like I said, this problem is even more dramatic in Crysis, where at moments my game goes to 15/20 FPS for a while and then suddenly spikes up to 60 again. However in Crysis the 60 spikes are rather spontaneous, and again with absolutely no relation to what is happening on screen.

[CP5670]

If you're getting 90C on idle, you definitely have a problem there. Some cards do get that hot on load (although it's rare for the 8800s) but an idle temperature that high suggests a bad heatsink contact or some other hardware issue.

Upgrading your card will not change that at all. Mass Effect 2 'tunes' itself to run between 22 fps - 62 fps to prevent stuttering due to FPS spikes (it smoothens performance). It's a feature, not a hardware problem.

This cap can be disabled. It's in almost every UE3 game, and the first thing I do in those games is to go into the ini files and turn it off. The fixed 62fps looks really bad with vsync on most refresh rates above 60hz.

[haloboy100]

If you're getting 90C on idle, you definitely have a problem there. Some cards do get that hot on load (although it's rare for the 8800s) but an idle temperature that high suggests a bad heatsink contact or some other hardware issue.

Well, around 85C, but that's just details.
My bigass fan does nothing to cool my card, so I guess my cooling problem is unsolvable without spending money, which I'd rather save for a new card altogether.
This cap wouldn't fix my problem if it was off, would it? Keep in mind that if I run at a lower resolution (1024x768 on my other monitor) I get absolutely solid ~60 FPS throughout the whole game, suggesting to me that it's a hardware issue.

[Jeff Vader]

My laptop is at 85-90 C during basic desktop usage. Except immediately after booting, when it might be as low as 65 C. Sometimes, for no apparent reason, it ventures into ~95 C, stays there for an hour or so and then shuts down because of overheating.

Fujitsu <3

[General Battuta]

My computer runs at 35. 

[S-99]

My system runs at 40C. Idk about everyone else, but there's a clear difference between Farenheight and celcius. Unless haloboy and jeff vader just don't give a **** about their computers being very close to the temperature that boils water.

[Jeff Vader]

Idk about everyone else, but there's a clear difference between Farenheight and celcius. Unless haloboy and jeff vader just don't give a **** about their computers being very close to the temperature that boils water.

Oh damn, I actually meant Kelvins.

Yes, I know the difference between C and F. Yes, I care about it. Yes, those are the readings I'm getting. At least according to Rainmeter, which gets its intel from Speedfan. And the damn thing certainly feels like it's that hot.

[haloboy100]

My GPU card feels the same as an oven to touch. My CPU runs at around the mid-high seventies, which I checked is standard temperature for mine. I used to have huge overheating problems with that, too, but that was solved when I finally bought a new CPU fan with actual working screws.

[Klaustrophobia]

the latest generations of cards (at least ATI, not sure about NVIDIA but i would assume so) have been built to take high heat.  the ATI 4k series reference design idles above 80c.  manufacturers really only attached the giant heatsinks for consumer comfort for those who have been conditioned that those temps are way too high.  and more overclocking room i guess.

[CP5670]

They load around that level. I haven't seen them idling anywhere near that high. Maybe it could happen with a high room temperature and with very bad case cooling. This shows what idle temperatures typically look like. My 280 idles at 50C and loads in the mid-80s.

Laptops are a different matter, and I can imagine it happening there given how poorly most laptop cooling setups are designed.

[haloboy100]

Hell, I remember back when I played with the right side of my computer case off, I could lay my hand on it and feel the motherboard bearing being quite warm. When my fan is sitting next to it, the CPU typically cools by 10-15 degrees, and the bearing feels cool to the touch, at least compared to the rest of the room. sure doesn't budge my GPU temperature one bit, though.

[Hades]

Doesn't sound like the issue Hades is having. Even with this tuning his FPS should stay consistently high. If it drops off rapidly in this game as well as others something else is going wrong.

You mean Haloboy100, right?

[S-99]

You really see the difference between nvidia and ati driver sets when you use linux. The ati driver going opensource for linux has been surprisingly good. The nvidia proprietary driver on the other hand is another matter since it's proprietary, but it's also of good quality. What really sucked in the beginning was the ati proprietary driver for linux. Then the opensource driver sucked when it first began. But, it's all good, you have ati hardware, no need to install a driver anymore when you install linux. The linux intel driver is also awesome.

[asyikarea51]

The ATI proprietary drivers on my laptop on Linux for some reason result in my computer not shutting down properly; I have to force shutdown and that's no good to me for my case. Though the driver loaded does not match the exact card model, only the closest equivalent.

The fix I have for this, just switch between cards and ignore driver installation - the Intel chip lags horribly in heavy work, can't play games and it screws things up horribly when going into projector mode, video streaming sites take a total crap and irritating screen switching with the resolution also taking a crap among other things (I've done project presentations on it, it sucks to take the flak from the Windows/Mac masses, but that's the life of it), but in normal use it's better.

So far so good, hmm I guess I'm more neutral these days but still a bit partial to the green camp (even though I'm neither fond of the idea of video game market cornering with nV specific programming nor their tendency for shameless price tags)...

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XD at the hades-haloboy confusion. another one of those strange things to me... =\

[haloboy100]

I think it's because I'm only a little bit older than Hades and our usernames both start with an H...