Fixing overheating on Gainward RTX 2060 in Judgment
Walking through the streets of Kamurocho, I'd get these tiny, annoying micro-stutters. They weren't constant, but they absolutely killed the immersion. Monitoring showed the Gainward RTX 2060 was hitting 83℃, triggering a hardware-level thermal throttle that tanked the clock from 1710MHz down to 1300MHz. I first tried lowering the Ambient Occlusion settings, which gave me 5 more FPS but didn't stop the overheating—a timid approach that got me nowhere. I eventually went into the control panel and set a steep fan curve to hit 85% speed as soon as the card touched 70℃, while dropping the power limit to 90% to reduce heat output. RivaTuner showed frametimes tighten from 15-30ms to 12-16ms. The fans were way too loud at idle at first, so I had to set a zero-RPM mode for anything under 40℃. Core temps now hover around 74-78℃. 3DMark confirmed no more drops, and the card is finally behaving.
