Hi everyone, I recently bought an AMD Phenom II X4 980 QuadCore 3.7 ghz, and it's a very fast processor, kudos AMD!

But, there was something I was wondering, because since my heatsink wasn't sufficient enough, I had overheating events when I didn't even know it. I got as hot as 91c, 98c hottest I've seen. When it would get as hot as 98c, it'd start studdering or the entire game would slowdown. It was really annoying, so I decided to search up the problem, and it singled it out on heat and I realized how hot it was getting. So I just stopped gaming ENTIRELY.

Question -- did I damage / degrade my processor? What're the symptoms I should look for? I'm a gamer, so I want to know what I would look for.

I have my new heatsink, and it's rather plenty for my processor.

ALSO: it's probably just my GPU, but it seems as if I wasn't able to handle shadows on GTA IV as efficiently as before when I bought it then when I got my new heatsink.

it was probabley throttling down to protect itself. i don't believe you did any real damage if it seems to work properley when its cool.

the temp seems realy hot. are you sure that was the cpu temp? if it was the northbridge temp or the gpu temp that could still be within specs.

if its the cpu, you need a better cooler, better case air flow or control over the cpu voltage.

look at this http://forums.amd.com/forum/me...d=153804&enterthread=y

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gigabyte ga-ma790fxt-ud5p bios f8h,
cpu amd 965-c3 @4.0, silenX efz120ha4 cooler
8gigs patriot memory pgs34g1600llka (1333 cl7), xfx 6970 gpu, xfx 750w power supply.
windows 7 -64