I started playing Enslaved: Odyssey to the West on Steam today, but I noticed some weird graphical issues, particularly during cutscenes. My graphics card is a GTX 570. I have a feeling it's a heat problem, as MSI Afterburner was showing temperatures of around 97 C during gameplay (and is showing an idling temperature of 73 C right now...)

So if it is a heat problem as I suspect, do you have any suggestions on how to get it running any cooler? Thanks!

@bbalpert: It's nothing to do with heat, so don't worry. I've seen this with other games as well and it's just the result of low resolution shadows or a poor shading implementation. Not much you can do about it I'm afraid.

Really? Well that's a relief then. Thanks.

While that's not an overheat issue, you are running too hot. Do you dust your fans regularly, and vent out to an open area?

I dust it out from time to time, although I haven't gotten in and around the graphics card lately. I've been meaning to pick up a can of compressed air and get that cleaned out. The wires and cables in my case are also kind of a mess, so I figure that airflow is a problem too.

97 is the max your GPU is designed for, which probably means it's undervolting itself to prevent a complete failure. It should not be getting that hot.

You should do whatever you can do get the temperature down. Running at that heat isn't healthy for your machine.

Yeah, I'd definitely get that taken care of ASAP. That's dangerously hot.

Damn, that's super hot even for idle. Doesn't leave much overhead. Idle for my CPU is around 30-33 C while my GPU is currently 29 C.

looks like poor shading and shadow rendering. Probably not anything to do with your graphics card and more to do with it being a port of a console game so the shadows just aren't very well rendered (as it renders better that way on consoles).

@bbalpert: This has nothing to do with overheating in this case. Enslaved is a really bad port. There is a guide that you can find to address this and a number of other graphical issues in the game.