Ever since I upgraded to from Catalyst 12.3 to 12.10, I've noticed the card, HIS Radeon 5970 seems to be running with a high load (90-99% gpu usage) and high temps (85-90 C)  while idling on the desktop or netsurfing. I have no idea why this is happening. With previousdrivers, I believe temps were low and cpu/ memory clock speed was reduced while not gaming. Not sure what is going on, maybe 12.10 just isn't good for it?

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Intel I7 960 @ 3.87ghz *Intel DX58SO *HIS HD6970 2gb *Corsair TX650M *2x4gb Corsair XMS3 *WD Black 1TB *Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit *Gateway HD2401 24" 2ms 1920x1200  ***Asus N71Jq laptop *Intel I7 720QM Processor *Mobility Radeon HD5730 1gb *8gb Ram *Windows 7 64bit  ***Acer 5750 laptop

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Here is some additional hardware information.

 HIS Radeon 5970 2GB

 Windows 7 Home Premium 65 bit

 Phenom II x4 965 BE @ 3.4 ghz

 Seasonic SS-750HT 750W

 g.skill 2x2 gb DDR2 1066 (F2-8500CL5D-4GBPK)

Asus M3A78-EM motherboard

I'm no longer sure this is a catalyst issue, since I've gone back and tried the older versions such as 12.3 and 12.8 and the overheating  and high gpu usage problem seems to persist. Basically, gpu behaves like it's at full load during gameplay even when I'm not using any 3d application.

*update*

Oddly enough, I found that the GPU usage drops to 0 if and only if I open Windows Task Manager, and along with it, temps dropped from 80 c to 45c. Core frequency and stuff seems to have dropped too. Very curious...