On my Thinkpad W500, it seems to peg the CPU. It will eventually shutdown depending on what is being rendered. I found a workaround by using the thinkpad power management profiles (probably similar programs out there). Set the CPU to run at low speed mode. This keeps the system cool even though the cpu is 100% all the time. The game performs well even with low cpu frequency.

See attached screenshot.

I don't know if it helps in this case, but some games overheating issues can be "resolved" by forcing V-Sync on, which causes a racing GPU to render fewer frames giving it a "break" in between frames it otherwise might not get. Older games especially seem to cause overheating issues on fast cards if the game doesn't impose any limits on FPS.

If I had to guess some games aren't computationally taxing for the CPU so the GPU ends up rendering obscene numbers of frames without any chance to breath in between them. Even though they are less complex than a higher end game, it's burning though more frames which means doing more page flips and whatever else is involved per frame which causes the card to over heat when it works fine for a higher end game.

It seems counter intuitive, but almost every time I've read about a game causing frequent overheating half the people are wondering why it's the low requirement game that is doing the overheating. It seems to fit, though its just a guess. Anyway try V-Sync

Yes good post by gooberking. Theres nothing to be gained by running the game hundreds of frames per second.

Use v-sync.

If that doesnt help, limit the framerate to even lower , like to 30 to 20 fps with either your GFX card settings or 3rd party frame rate limiter program.

Most of all, keep your GFX card drivers up to date. Might even help to use some compressed air (or vacuum cleaner - but be careful with that) to get the dust off your computer.

Hi, please can you tell me if King's Bounty : The Legend has a working in-game option to turn v-sync on ? I don't own the game yet and I'd like to buy it, but I've had problems with another game (Painkiller here on gog) that made my card heat a lot and that doesn't have a v-sync option ! I couldn't turn v-sync on even by forcing it in the catalyst control center (my graphics card is a Sapphire HD 7870), so I ended up not playing the game (which I didn't find very good anyway).

Yes it has. You can switch on/off virtual synchronization in the options.

Thank you !

You are welcome. It's an amazing game btw. I spent a lot of time with it!

I had the same overheating problem. My HD 5770 was overheating despite the fact it was working only under 60% load. Disabling in-game antialiasing option reduced the load to 40% which in turn solved the overheating issue. Since I really like AA, I also checked some other AA options and I'm really surprised by the results:

- I forced 4x AA in my graphic card panel and I achieved the same level of antialiasing if I had turned it ON in-game but the load was only 53%.
- But the true surprise was using the InjectSMAA program which even on LOW preset has something like 4x AA and it makes my card work on mere 42%. The only issue of using InjectSMAA compared to other AA options is the fact it also blurs the UI.

All in all, the in-game AA option is poorly implemented and it makes your card work under higher load than it should.