MSI GTX 660 Ti Power Edition - Second RMA

[Jcink]

I'm having so much bad luck with this card, I don't know what to do.

First of all: I have not ever overclocked it.

I installed it and left everything alone at the defaults.

When I first received the card, it seemed okay. I could play Borderlands and Saints Row 2 just fine, as well as other games. I tested folding@home out of curiosity, but it always failed to finish anything citing a hardware problem almost right away. I ignored this.

After 2-3 months it was giving me problems such as flickering and driver crashing. I tried various drivers and reinstalling/uninstalling. This was happening in simple games such as Worms Revolution.

I tried testing it with a different power supply and the same problem happened. Thinking it was maybe the computer, I finally tried it in a different computer and the same things were happening. This computer had a much better power supply than mine. Same problem.

In the different computer, I tested it with FurMark. FurMark ran for about 5-10 minutes until the screen blacked out and crashed. This test was done multiple times and it always crashed. Furthermore, games that were playable before, such as Saints Row 2, suddenly were not at all because of this.

I decided to RMA the card.

Today I got a card from MSI and put it in my computer and ran FurMark to make sure it wasn't defective. I completely ruined the card in maybe 10-15 minutes.

The computer rebooted during the test after a black out. Now it doesn't even recognize it at all, it thinks a non-nvidia card is installed and I get a crapped 800x600 resolution or whatever. Tried uninstalling/reinstalling/reseating the card. Nothing. Additionally when starting up, there are green lines and brown marks all over the windows start screen and lines on the desktop.

Can someone please shed some light on what might be going on here? At this point I now have to RMA this card too and I feel like this is going to be an endless process of warranty ping pong. I'm pretty upset about this and I need some ideas.

I have never had a SINGLE issue with the ATI Radeon HD 4850 12.4b hotfix - the last set of drivers for it , it always folded@home nicely, plays games, and continues to be my trusty card right now during this time.

 

[UNhooked]

Bad luck? This time when you get the replacement card, test it in the other computer before installing in yours. I suspect your mobo maybe ruining the cards

 

[ocre]

this is really bizarre dude. There are duds every now and again *no matter which brand you buy*
but the fact that you got 2 back to back? Wow. Thats some bad luck, i guess. Is this the same PC (components) you had your 4850 in? Have you tried the MSI card in another PC? Do you still have your 4850 to test your hardware with. Have you contacted MSI tech support?

Honestly, if i had that much trouble with a brand back to back like that I would really sway away from it. Strange it is that this is a very popular product that doesnt have a high rate of failure. They say lightning doesnt strike the same place twice but i dont know. Perhaps there is some divine force at work here, LOL. But for real, this is bizarre.

what are you gonna do? I know a couple people that never by AMD cause they had some bad experiences with ATI cards way back when. But when something like this happens, i can understand the distaste it must leave. I think if something like that happened to me i would really have a hard time being cool with it.

You story is interesting and i do think its a very rare thing but i doubt your feeling lucky.........Do keep us updated.

 

[Jcink]

I was wondering if the motherboard is somehow ruining the card. But I don't understand how that could happen. You would think that it would also ruin the ATI card, but it does not.

I am going to put it in the other computer when I get the next new one first to rule that theory out or perhaps prove it.

Yes this is the same computer that I had the 4850 in, which is my primary system. I am using my 4850 right now and have been since I did the first RMA. I'm using it in the exact same slot too, just in case someone was thinking maybe the slot was bad. I'm back to using it right now since the new card they sent died a quick death in this computer.

Indeed, the 4850 is just fine as usual and survives the FurMark testing even tonight without any problems.

I may try this card in a different computer like I did the last one. I'm actually not sure what to do with it right this minute so it's sitting in the box. I feel like this card is really junk this time and not even worth trying in the other one since unlike the first card, it gives me the "green lines" and graphical errors and is no longer recognized as a nvidia card. At least the other card would still work as long you didn't play any games and only watched videos. This is just complete garbage now.

I haven't contacted MSI tech support - I knew the card needed to be RMAed the first time and didn't want to be given the run around. Maybe I should contact them now and get this logged.

Honestly I'm not going to damn nvidia to hell for this and never buy one of their cards again. But I'll never recommend this particular card to anyone, especially from MSI.

 

[Jcink]

So I submitted the RMA request a few days ago now (should have done it a week ago but had other issues in my life) but the serial number keeps coming up as invalid. MSI's website says this is a problem and that it will need manual review. I checked multiple times and the serial number is correct. Is this normal during the second RMA process for an invalid serial number to occur? anyone know? already been 3 days and I'm in the dark on this. Probably going to contact MSI tomorrow.