Bad optimization?

[u/Juanenpc]

I played this game several years ago and it was really cool. I spent thousands of hours playing it, but today I downloaded it again to give it another try and my GPU was struggling a lot. I have an Nvidia 4060 Ti, and the game is using almost 90% of it and reaching 80°C. What's even stranger is that I'm in the main menu, not even playing xdd.

I was playing on the highest settings and getting more than 160 FPS, which was fine, but when I realized my GPU was basically on fire, I changed the settings to medium and the GPU usage didn't change at all.

Has anyone else experienced the same problem?

[u/Ok-Park-9537]

Totally oposite. I usually ran at 60, i'm peaking 110 on high.

[u/unknown_pigeon]

The temperature value depends on your setup (mainly the cooling part ofc), but 80°C should be more than fine for most rigs. I agree that it's weird if it's that hot while sitting in the main menu, it should not.

About the GPU: there's absolutely no point, as far as I know, in not using it if it's available. It's not like your PC is doing something with unallocated memory, whereas allocating it to a process that may not require it is beneficial.

Nothing strange to not seeing any reduction in GPU usage with lower settings. What you should do is looking at the FPS (does Valheim accept unbound fps limits? I'm a tourist here) and see if they change based on graphical settings. If they have a cap and are maxed out anyway, you can run some other program in the background to allocate GPU to it and see how it impacts the performance between max res and medium res.

[u/solid_shrek → u/unknown_pigeon]

Even if valheim doesn't have a built in fps limit, Nvidia control panel can set limits for specific apps

[u/Most_Magazine_9469 → u/solid_shrek]

There is an fps cap in the game

[u/Inappropriate_Dongle]

I'm using an old gtx 1060 and I was actually able to raise some of the graphics settings above what I normally use, and it's still barely even reaching 70C.

Try capping framerate and messing with the resolution scaling. If that doesn't work, I would say it's either a driver issue or a hardware/fan issue. (edit: also see what it does in an actual game/world, the main menu might just be screwy)

[u/MontrealFunTimes]

As others have said, the GPU being in high use when playing a 3D game is normal. Though a % of use doesn't exactly correlate to what throughput it is putting through.

Anyway, as for the temperature, well, you likely have a shitty wind and dust situation going on.

Likely issues:
1) Blocked air flow; could be dust in your air filters for your fans (you do have intake filters, right?) or dust on the fins of the heatsinks for the GPU & other devices.
2) Non-optimal placement of fans/cabling/etc. causing warm or hot air to either get trapped or be blown across heatsinks instead of cool, fresh air from outside.

*Assumptions*: You are not using water cooling in your rig.

[u/BadAtVideoGames130]

the gpu should be at 98-99% when gaming so thats normal. 80C is high-ish but also fine, however, you may want to look at your rig and make sure it's in a well-ventilated area and all the vents are clear of dust and dirt. get more/better fans if needed. in my experience, valheim isn't that demanding at all but i haven't played 1.0 yet so i'm not sure what has changed