Players are asking me to do something about GPU heating. I did what I could, but still in some locations of the game there is GPU heating up to 75-80 degrees and a little higher. Some developers told me that it’s normal if the game gives a normal FPS.
I’ve tried replacing materials with simpler ones, using CullDistanceVolume, Instanced Meshes, and other methods. In my game, one location is quite large, it’s the ocean. I can note that large locations warm up the GPU.
LOD, lower poly models, fewer/smaller textures being rendered, and certain VFX being disabled can help reduce the GPU workload, at the cost of visual quality ofcourse. I’d say optimize your project as much as possible while maintaining the aesthetic your wanting to create. At the end of the day though, GPU heating up is just part of gaming, especially with larger games or ones that push the limits of rendering capabilities. Have you ever noticed when playing a game like call of duty or a Bethesda game it feels like the heater is on in your room after a couple hours. It’s just part of gaming. Apart from game optimization, the capability of the graphics card, the rigs setup/cooling hardware and ventilation/airflow outside of the machine can all effect overall system temp. If a particular GPU is heating up significantly with a more “lightweight” game, that may be an indicator of a need for some system maintenance
This is my " Desert " location. Nothing almost there. Epic games default material, something from …sand… series. Landscape made with engine tool. This work with heat up 70-80 degrees. Just sky. No any tick related options. But location really large, have 3 " city imitation "(I remove much parts of those actors).
I suspend landscape eat many resources… May be I will make it land in Blender with simple.
Location Ocean have 3 islands with trees and grass. this most loaded with meshes in game.
may be I do stream leveling, in 5 version I hear removed, but this 4.27. stream leveling not easy to customize…
My GPU Nvidia GTX 1650. Not most powerful. Players says they feel heat on better GPU. Really my computer case not hot, but other players get heat, as they say.
Like I said before, playing games or working with any sort of rendering software is going to put a workload on the GPU and it will warm up. If your experiencing higher than safe temperature id considered upgrading your GPU, unreal is very GPU/CPU demanding. You will be limited by your current hardware the further into your project you go
Hi, make sure to cap the frame rate at some limit (e.g. the refresh rate of the monitor or something like 60. You can use the console commant t.maxfps EnterDesiredFramerateHere to set a frame rate limit). If the frame rate is unlimited (by default it is unlimited), then either the CPU or GPU will always run at full speed (whatever bottlenecks), even if a much lower speed would be enough to get a sufficient frame rate. So if the frame rate is umlimited, then even if you would have a RTX 4090 it might/would still get hot.
If the framerate is limited, then the other step would be to optimize the game to reduce the load on the GPU. There a different resources for optimization, what I usually use is the gpu profiler (easiest to use, just type the console command profilegpu then optimize what takes up most of the frame time). The more in depth tool would be render doc. Render doc will show you the times the individual materials take up.
All of the responses here are good calls. I run a 3060 myself and I hit 80-83 degrees constantly in any graphically demanding game or in heavy scenes in UE. It’s not unusual at all. I actually use MSI Afterburner and limit my GPU power down to about 75 degrees(65 ish power). I hit FPS walls sometimes. But, it keeps my GPU cooler. It’s built to run high like that. I just turn my down because it heats up my whole room.
You could try removing the volumetric clouds if they are not critical for the game. There are sky assets / systems on the market place that have better performance and similar visual fidelity.
Im curious, in your OP you said the GPU is heating up undesirably in “some locations” perhaps you can post screenshots of these locations? Or if you have any guestimates on what could be causing these areas to tax the GPU more heavily the community may be able to offer more precise/ helpful advice
On some pics you can see big water texture… I can see when is actor on sheep in ocean, GPU not hot… I thought water texture overheating. This engine water texture.
Those locations still hot. May be this my videocard problem, may be I need service it… But I have complaints from some users.
And what I see. In the beginning game no big heat, it appear after 30-40 minutes of game… May be game collect some garbage cache…
Your graphics card definitely isn’t the most powerful, I won’t say an upgrade wouldn’t help your problem. One thing I noticed, and please correct me if I’m wrong, but it appears as though your using alot of marketplace content to assemble this project. The marketplace is a great community with tons of awesome content, however creators on there aren’t necessarily optimizing things for every game or project. I always recommend learning the skills and creating your own, as you can ensure from the ground up all of your poly counts, texture sizes, material functionality, and much more are optimized for your project.
Learning to create your own assets is definitely not easy, but I’m the long run will drastically help with optimizing your projects. Start simple, with little props and basic textures, and over time you’ll advance to things like character modeling and animation and creating higher detail textures. I’d say it’s definitely worth the effort
