Hi Morfanos,
Sorry for delay in response, Yeah still have my game set to low and I am still getting decent fps in combat, but it seems to drop a lot in menus lowest it went was 1 fps when loading in to a mission? I do have Afterburner installed ran that and it showed my GPU was getting up to 83.c in some combat but was running normally at about 43 to 50, have not found the option in Aterburner to show gpu load though? I did not change any settings in Afterburner and the temp showed all the wy through my game play time which was around 3 hours.
The difference between high and low is just a feeling not measured it yet, may try it tonight.
That 1 is normal, it's common in games(or anything really) to have the software "freeze" so to speak, or slow down, when loading something, so RTSS will show you 1 fps or something like that. Mine is usually in the low 10-15 for a few seconds and that's with the second fastest video card on the market, a fast SSD and a much faster CPU than yours. Nothing to worry about here.
That 83 is much higher than it normally should BUT, it could be perfectly normal seeing it's a pre-built Dell(they have very poor cooling, especially in older system) and that it's possible(now that's just a theory) that you haven't cleaned it in a while and that dust is preventing proper airflow. In a properly cooled scenario, it would normally be a little below 70. Do not worry about it, this card should be able to handle temperatures up to 95C from what I was able to find. Clean your PC and the temperature should go down.
If you say that outside of combat, you're getting 43 to 50 degree, that's good and I would say your system is running as expected, that there's no "out of control" GPU problem here.
Still, looking at the GPU % Load would be a good idea. I've taken screenshots that should help you do that:
In Yellow, the detach option to get to the second screenshot and also, the scroll-down bar that still allows you to see the other metrics without have to detach the menu.
Here you have access to all the information. Note the wider you make the window, the more time you'll be able to see.
EDIT: I forgot to say, if the FPS is low in the main menu, the one with the "movie" playing in the background, that's more likely related to having a very old and slow CPU, not the GPU.
