Do you have access to another video card temporarily, just to try it out? One borrowed from a friend or the like? If you had your system made when Oblivion came out that would make the card five years old. Their average lifespan is between three to five years, without overclocking (depending on how much you game). (IMO, DA is far more taxing than Oblivion, even if only because of the memory leaks and other shoddy work on the back end of the coding. Really, it uses way more processing and graphics power than it has any right to looking like it does. DA2 is less taxing on my system, and that's with the directx 11 enabled.)
If it does end up being your card something like this will keep you going for under $50. I'd highly recommend going a few dollars more for this one, though. (Twice the ram, but I also personally think zotac makes a better card than sparkle. I've got this card now and adore it head and shoulders above my old evga.)
It may not necessarily be overheating, per se. It could just be the motor dying. If it takes longer to get the fan spinning, to get enough power to the card... well, that would explain why things seem worse on a cold boot until the card has a bit of time to "warm up," so to speak. That it's getting progressively worse also speaks to hardware failure, not software. A glitchy mod or whatever isn't going to get worse over time. Bad code is bad from the get go.
If something that once worked no longer does there's got to be a reason. There haven't been any patches out recently, you even went back to the vanilla unmodded game on a clean install. The software has remained consistent. That leaves hardware as the likely culprit.
If you start getting random full system crashes when the video cuts out, or artifacts, you'll know for sure, though. I've been there. It sucks.
(hates to be the bearer of bad news, but my day job does involve having to know about this sort of thing)
no subject
If you had your system made when Oblivion came out that would make the card five years old. Their average lifespan is between three to five years, without overclocking (depending on how much you game). (IMO, DA is far more taxing than Oblivion, even if only because of the memory leaks and other shoddy work on the back end of the coding. Really, it uses way more processing and graphics power than it has any right to looking like it does. DA2 is less taxing on my system, and that's with the directx 11 enabled.)
If it does end up being your card something like this will keep you going for under $50. I'd highly recommend going a few dollars more for this one, though. (Twice the ram, but I also personally think zotac makes a better card than sparkle. I've got this card now and adore it head and shoulders above my old evga.)
It may not necessarily be overheating, per se. It could just be the motor dying. If it takes longer to get the fan spinning, to get enough power to the card... well, that would explain why things seem worse on a cold boot until the card has a bit of time to "warm up," so to speak. That it's getting progressively worse also speaks to hardware failure, not software. A glitchy mod or whatever isn't going to get worse over time. Bad code is bad from the get go.
If something that once worked no longer does there's got to be a reason. There haven't been any patches out recently, you even went back to the vanilla unmodded game on a clean install. The software has remained consistent. That leaves hardware as the likely culprit.
If you start getting random full system crashes when the video cuts out, or artifacts, you'll know for sure, though. I've been there. It sucks.
(hates to be the bearer of bad news, but my day job does involve having to know about this sort of thing)