Fps Drop (Details Inside)

Hello. I have a problem with FPS in GuildWars. When I first start Guild Wars, I sign in and on my character selection screen, I get ~65 fps. With out selecting a character, within under a minute, my fps starts to drop, to ~32 fps. I had my case in a cabinet in my desk, so I took it out to see if it was the heat. I took the side panel off of my case and directed a fan to blow towards my video card. Now, if I let the fan cool my tempatures on my video card to idle tempatures, start Guild Wars, and get to the character selection screen, I stay at ~65fps. If I turn the fan off, my frame rate begins to drop almost immediately. Now, heres the funny thing, the differences between the tempatures of my video card and processor, while my fan is turned on and while its not, are within a few degrees. I can see the tempature of my CPU, GPU, and GPU ambient. So what I think is happening is the ram on my video card or some other component, that I cannot see the tempature of, is getting too hot. I have installed the newest drivers for my motherboard, video card, and DirectX. So my question is if it could be the ram on my video card getting to hot that lowers my fps?

Here are my computer specifications.
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 4000+
MotherBoard: Epox 9npa+Ultra
Video Card: nVidia XFX 6800GS with a Vantec Iceberg 5 cooler
Memory: 2x 1GB G.Skill
Thank you

What fan does your computer have? This is clearly an overheating problem. Seeing that it works fine with your fan blowing towards the computer, you might just need a more powerful cooler. Water cooling is great but fans are good too.

Hi, I have an Aspire X-Plorer case with one 80mm fan(intake) in the front, one 80mm fan(intake) on the side, and one 120mm fan(outtake) on the back. The fan on my CPU is stock.

Ok, I read a review of your case and it says that the case has a fan control knob. Are you sure that the fan speed is at full speed?

A few degrees can be all it takes to have your video card or motherboard throttle the frequency back. I doubt your RAM is the culprit in this situation. Your case appears to have decent ventilation, but you never know when a component (CPU and GPU especially) is just barely within the manufacturer's tolerance to run at a given speed. That is really the difference between good and bad yields at a given clock for IC fabrication.

Try underclocking your cpu (try the multiplier then the bus speed independently) and gpu. This may lower your temp on a given part enough to see if the FPS becomes more consistent so you can narrow down the problem.