[Bandanawedgie]

So here's my system specs:

Asus Maximus IV Gene Z
i7 2600k at 4.6ghz, 1.38v
MSI ATI Radeon HD 7950 Twin Frozr @ 1100mv, 1100mhz core clock and 1575mhz memory clock (OC'd) or stock @ 1018mv (slightly undervolted), 880mhz core clock and 1250mhz on the memory clock.
g.Skill 1600mhz 8Gb (2 x 4gb)
Corsair TX750

My lovely ATI 7950 is truly, truly lovely. It runs every game without a problem - never going above 60 degrees (Centigrade), and thus never being noisy. Witcher, being an old game, I presumed it would be fine. It is, kind of.

My 7950's only fault is coil whine. If you don't know what that is, it's a whining noise that happens at certain times that sound like a fan is hitting a wire, but isn't due to fans - in fact, it's usually quieter than the fans. It only really whines on game menus, Warhammer 40k: Space Marine and Witcher are notable for having it louder than others.

The fix for it is to leave the game on for a long period of time to "whine out". As The Witcher's coil whine is louder than Space Marine's, I chose that, and left my computer with it running.

I returned, and the fans on my graphics card are going crazy - louder than the whine - and the card has reached a whopping 75 degrees! Way more than Skyrim or even Crysis can push it. I roll'd back to stock clocks with a tiny undervolting and it still pushed it to 70 degrees.

So I found out some figures for the GPU load while playing the Witcher:

Menu load = 99%
Game load = 52%

I don't feel safe running this whining-out session on this game while it's putting that much stress on my brand new card, and I also fear the electricity bill!

Is this normal? Is there any fix for this?

Thanks.

[Vinterberg]

Have you tried enabling vsync? That should cap the GPU usage in menus etc..