Xsever wroteHey Practo,
It definitely seems like the video card is faulty. It is failing during high loads which are causing high temperatures. Not all games, although they raise the temperature to the same level, utilize the GPU the same way. Therefore, some games cause it to lock up while others don't.
LoL, WoW, SC2 are less GPU demanding than Half Life 2, Portal 2, Cities XL 2012.
Yes, although these are older games, they pull much higher framerates, thus causing a higher load. For example, starcraft II caused GFX cards overheating on the MAIN menu, simply because they didn't include a framerate limiter when at the menu, causing the graphics card to render in the thousands of frames.
Not all games raise the temperature to the same level. Since a GFX card is multiple units clumped together (shaders, cache, memory controller, RAM chips, etc...), a game may utilize the shaders at close to 100%, but not the memory controller. There are also different types of calculations. Hence even if they load the GPU to 100%, it's only one part of the GPU that is saturated to 100%. Now furmark shows GPU load to be less than 100% (it varies between high 80s and high 90s), but it stresses almost all the components, for example the memory controller (I have seen 60%), although it's a core / shader focused stress tool.
@practo: 102C is incredibly close to the thermal threshold that the GTX 460 can withstand (according to Nvidia, and set by default as overheat protection), hence it shuts down. The card will not last at those temperatures. 65-66 degrees is TOO high on idle. Do you set fan speed manually, or automatically? Did you OC, overvolt, etc...? Download GPU-Z and check clocks, temperatures, voltages, and post them here.
@AvoK95: How can the PSU impact the graphics card's temperatures? The card will accept voltages within the ATX specifications (11.4V - 12.6V), beyond those boundaries the GFX card is not supposed to function. On the crappy PSU I had, as soon as voltage dropped below 11.4V, the PC would restart. Since there are no power - related errors apparent (they are heat-related), then even if the PSU had a problem, it's not the problem at hand.
I think you meant reseating your card. Practo, do that, and if you have a blower, clean the card from any dust, then reseat it. Do not tamper with it if you expect warranty, but you can remove the dust, of course.
