There's probably much larger gains to be made elsewhere in the graphic system. As you say polygons are old news, so, modern GPUs eat polygons for breakfast.

I think it's unity and the shadows/lights system. As I said, I had the exact same problems with other unity games who wasn't optimized until they were and the changes are massive.

what's that saying is that your gpu can't handle to be used at 100%, valheim is just the first game that push your gpu power at 100%.
Unity is a trash engine that use way more gpu power than any other engine for the same amount of stress on screen. Still your gpu should work at 100% if properly cooled.

At OP, what resolution are playing in? 1080p high-med this behavior would be odd, in 4K or 1440p widescreen max and this game will cook your card and eat it for breakfast. So lowering resolution could help, also as others have said make sure your fans are working properly and you have good ventilation in your case. The more info you can give, the more we can try to help. What is your hardware specs? What's your in game graphics settings? What games are you playing that you have decent temps in? Any or all of this would help.

My steamdeck is crying for mercy, I had to turn everything down/off for the Plains (and during rain in the Mistlands)

your graphics card should be set up to turn off if it gets above the danger temp, and that should be either mandatory or slightly configurable in the driver or bios settings for it.
if its not in danger, running hot is fine. You can check its fan, make sure it has good cool air supply. If its overclocked, turn that crap off.

the game seems to lack an optimization pass. The crude graphics (not a diss, but in truth, they ARE crude in terms of polygons and textures) should zip along without a lot of horsepower; its not a lot more intense than like wolfenstein 3d that ran on a 1MB graphics card in 1991. More pixels, due to screen res (and that matters) but all in all, it shouldn't be that big a pull.

try some external settings. Limit your FPS for the game to 35 or so. That is as good as original TV/movies. You can also try other external hard limits, but that one would help.

your card is towards the end of its life ... its an older card and even the 8gb version is still falling behind. If you can afford it, a new one may be helpful, but this game shouldn't require that.

The "low graphics" (pixelated textures) are by design, not for performance. Build pieces for example render all sides, even invisible ones. Lighting, smoke, etc effects are all modern and graphics churners. There's also a lot going on in the background: calculating angles for effects, spawning mobs/trees/dungeons/etc in the distance, etc.

In short this is a demanding game. However the RX 580 is listed as recommended on Steam, so you have every right to expect good performance. IMO Steam/Iron Gate owe you decent performance, or a refund (and retention of the game) as well as updating the listed system specs.

Download MSI Afterburner, it lets you set a maximum temperature: https://www.msi.com/Landing/afterburner/graphics-cards

Originally posted by jonnin:

your graphics card should be set up to turn off if it gets above the danger temp, and that should be either mandatory or slightly configurable in the driver or bios settings for it.
if its not in danger, running hot is fine. You can check its fan, make sure it has good cool air supply. If its overclocked, turn that crap off.

the game seems to lack an optimization pass. The crude graphics (not a diss, but in truth, they ARE crude in terms of polygons and textures) should zip along without a lot of horsepower; its not a lot more intense than like wolfenstein 3d that ran on a 1MB graphics card in 1991. More pixels, due to screen res (and that matters) but all in all, it shouldn't be that big a pull.

try some external settings. Limit your FPS for the game to 35 or so. That is as good as original TV/movies. You can also try other external hard limits, but that one would help.

your card is towards the end of its life ... its an older card and even the 8gb version is still falling behind. If you can afford it, a new one may be helpful, but this game shouldn't require that.

Thanks for the reply. I'm aware of all those things you said about cooling. I have changed the thermal paste twice and clean its interiors countless times. It's by default a hot GPU but not THAT hot. The fans went up to 100. It's undervolted which improved even more its temp.

And i think the reason is that, the almost NONEXISTENT optimization, Unity can be very demanding if you just put some shaders and shadows and call it a day. A similar game, which it isnt graphically demanding, had this problem too, Stationeers. The shadows were killing the game, even to 40 30 fps. They did a pass on this, and just a few months backs the fps went from 40 35 to 60, WITH THE SAME GRAPHIC OPTIONS. And the gpu was also struggling. Not anymore. So yeah, it is the lack of optimization. I asked because there is probably something i was missing in terms of software, some technical ♥♥♥♥♥♥ i can do to improve this. But alas, i will probably wait.

And no, buying a new one is not an option. A new one costs the same as my monthly salary and some more. Impossible. My 580 is good enough for my daily use. How i can run games like CP2077 and rdr2 at a fine detail with stable fps and temp, and not this game.

Anyways thanks again for the reply. Cheers.

Originally posted by FissionChips:

The "low graphics" (pixelated textures) are by design, not for performance. Build pieces for example render all sides, even invisible ones. Lighting, smoke, etc effects are all modern and graphics churners. There's also a lot going on in the background: calculating angles for effects, spawning mobs/trees/dungeons/etc in the distance, etc.

In short this is a demanding game. However the RX 580 is listed as recommended on Steam, so you have every right to expect good performance. IMO Steam/Iron Gate owe you decent performance, or a refund (and retention of the game) as well as updating the listed system specs.

Yes, this game is looks like this by design, but by no means it isn't demanding. At all. In fact, it asks for a medium range system. I think.

The thing is, i played this game when it just went out, and it was fine. Even i had less ram, i know it doesn't matter that much, but anyway. Ah, and in an hdd. Now it sits at my ssd. I think they went and did updates on content but the optimization isnt there, like at all. Its just the same game optimization wise that was when it launched. But with more things to load and show on screen. My 580 its perfectly capable of playing this and almost every other game out there.

Valheim is still in early access. They appear to be working on their own core code and content, they have a lot of fighting the unity engine ahead of them - as I understand development there's not a lot of point in doing that until their own engine and content is settled. It'd be like icing a cake before it's baked.

I understand it looks like that by design, and I understand that does not ensure performance. But when they optimize it, the truth is that with reduced polys & textures, they can use less memory & processing to generate this stuff. My graphics coding is rusty -- not a game programmer, though I did a couple of small scale flight sims -- but I get the basics.

Who said they've optimised it? And who said they can reduce polys? The problem with merging pieces to reduce polys is each piece in this game is distinct, taking distinct damage, etc - you'd just have to break them apart again later when something happens, possibly at a performance penalty for all the calculations, e.g. which distinct subpiece of a merged piece was even hit?

Originally posted by mifunE.:

So, the title. I have an RX 580 8gb version. It goes to 90c. i'm on summer, but my living room is cool.

I play more demanding games at 20c less. This is the only one that goes this high. Even tested EVERYTHING low/off. Nothing changed. Any help or something im missing? Playing with vulkan api. Since logically works better with amd.

i just think this game hates amd gpus
played it on a gtx750 with 40fps on max
now i switched to a system with an rx6800 and it chugs at 15fps on minimum
my system plays all other games perfectly except this one

Originally posted by FissionChips:

Who said they've optimised it? And who said they can reduce polys? The problem with merging pieces to reduce polys is each piece in this game is distinct, taking distinct damage, etc - you'd just have to break them apart again later when something happens, possibly at a performance penalty for all the calculations, e.g. which distinct subpiece of a merged piece was even hit?

Not at that level. Talking single piece, often you can take away a surface/triangle and hide that with an updated texture. And they may not have to go to that level of detail, there are literally hundreds of things to try when optimizing graphics these days, its a large task and what I know is 15+ years out of date, so the crude ideas I throw out are just that. At the end of the day we know it needs to be done, whatever that really entails.