Im looking for software that will allow me to monitor the temperature of my graphics card whilst playing a game. All the ones ive found require you to minimise which takes time so I can't identify the true temperature at full load.
Try getting one which records the temp. Also, how are you getting out of the game? Just press the windows button or ctrl-alt-del and it will go straight back to the desktop. The game will still be running so the temp probably wont drop at all. alt-tab might even work if you just open the game and the temp program.
Usually when you minimize a game, the cpu usage drops, and the memory usage drops too, i think the temperature of the GPU also drops, once i could hear the fan on my graphics card, and then i minimized the game, and the fan dropped, as when i come out of a game, the temperature of the core suddenly drops, and also sometimes i can take ages to load the desktop.