Overheating Video Card Due to Code Question?

[Bryan21cag]

sorry if this is not the rite area for this question but i could not find an exact match and it is a rather technical question.

I was hoping that some of you tech people out there in TV land might be able to explain to me what exactly was going on that was causing Video cards to run really hot when the game was first released? I am just curious as this problem instantly went away after the first couple of patches but i still would be interested to know for my own knowledge.

What happens in a programs code that can cause a video card to run at max GPU utilization and screaming high temps 85-90C even with fans at full speed and then after a change to the programs code now you still have full GPU utilization but can easily keep the card at 65C with just a little bit of fan speed profile increase and run the game?

I made no changes to my video card settings what so ever between the time it did this and didn't do this, and ran the game on all the different graphics settings.

I am just ignorant to such things and was hoping someone could educate me thanks