Graphic Cards ASUS GTX 660TI : Should I go for RMA ?

[akashk]

Hey.

So I setup this rig over a year ago.

Intel Core i5 3450 + Gigabyte B75M-D3H
Corsair Vengeance 4x2 GB
Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 1 TB
Dell S2340L
Coolermaster Elite 430
Asus GTX 660 TI
PSU: Corsair 450W or 400W (not sure)
APC BR1100VA IN (No longer using it because of annoying sounds and no power cuts)
Sound card: Asus Xonar DX

I have not overclocked anything. I did not really game much for a year and it ran with no issues. I used to play Witcher 2 and GTA IV, both ran maxed without any issues. 2 months ago I played Shogun 2 for 2 weeks, 5-6 hours everyday continuously. Sometimes my game would hang, display would go blank and come back on again. Maybe it was due to overheating?

Since last week or so my display driver randomly crashes, even on stock drivers while using chrome or watching youtube videos. When I play Witcher 2, the GPU heats upto 80 degrees C within 5 mins and the game starts lagging endlessly (fan speed goes upto 55%). Basically games are unplayable at high settings but non gaming wise things are ok, with random driver crashes here and there. Idle temp is around 40 degrees.

I thought it could be some virus/malware, but the problem persists even after formatting.

My card is still in the 3 years warranty.
Should I go in for RMA ?
Hows the Asus/Digi RMA in Mumbai ? How long would it take for them to resolve the issue ?

My room temps are around 32 degree c, and humid (I live near the sea). I think somethings definitely wrong with the card because this is a heavy duty, overclockable card (with asus GPU tweak) and is stuttering in normal usage.

Thanks !

 

[MoJoLoJo]

Is your windows update turned on? If yes, then uninstall your current video drivers and update them to the latest version.
If the problem still persists, stress test your GPU with FurMark: http://www.ozone3d.net/benchmarks/fur/
Make sure you stress test on the default clock values. Don't overclock!
If you experience the same issues then something is definitely wrong with your GPU, and yes you should RMA it!

 

[akashk]

Is your windows update turned on? If yes, then uninstall your current video drivers and update them to the latest version.
If the problem still persists, stress test your GPU with FurMark: http://www.ozone3d.net/benchmarks/fur/
Make sure you stress test on the default clock values. Don't overclock!
If you experience the same issues then something is definitely wrong with your GPU, and yes you should RMA it!

I updated the driver and have attached the result from the 15 minute test.

Seems to run fine with default values but when I increase AA the score drops drastically.

Played Witcher 2 for 15 mins. The temps go up to 80 degrees but it's not lagging like before.

Maybe things are ok now ?

 

[chrome9812]

I am no expert but I used to live at close proximity to the sea and I can attest how vulnerable your electronic products are. I had incredible bad luck with my GPUs because they'd get rusted inside so easily. If I were you, I'd take it to the service center ASAP. Digicare is generally pretty good, you should get your card in a week or so. Thank god that you are not dealing with a company like Rashi who had rejected my few months old 5850 card after keeping it for two months because the card was discontinued under the lame pretext that there were some rust on the screws which made the warranty void. 13k rupees down the drain. Digicare has always been kind and quick to me no matter how frequent I go there with one problem or the other. Last time when there was a lightening strike and my card got fried, they replaced it with a brand new card in a week.
Good luck and let us know how it goes.


Edit: Just read your second post. Beware- 80 degrees on an AMD card would have been dangerously high, no idea about your nvidia card but I suggest you to check the optimal/max temperatures and depending on that and your own extent of risk you are comfortable with, make your decision.

 

[akashk]

I am no expert but I used to live at close proximity to the sea and I can attest how vulnerable your electronic products are. I had incredible bad luck with my GPUs because they'd get rusted inside so easily. If I were you, I'd take it to the service center ASAP. Digicare is generally pretty good, you should get your card in a week or so. Thank god that you are not dealing with a company like Rashi who had rejected my few months old 5850 card after keeping it for two months because the card was discontinued under the lame pretext that there were some rust on the screws which made the warranty void. 13k rupees down the drain. Digicare has always been kind and quick to me no matter how frequent I go there with one problem or the other. Last time when there was a lightening strike and my card got fried, they replaced it with a brand new card in a week.
Good luck and let us know how it goes.

Hi Chrome !

Thanks for answering. Sounds like Digi are very customer friendly. When my sound card died on me, I visited Rashi last year and they replaced it within a week without an fuss. Maybe Rashi have also improved recently.

What I did was, I modified the default Fan Curve using GPU Tweak so that it hits 100% fan speed before reaching 80 degrees. Now the peak temperature is around 70-71 degrees. I was able to play Far Cry 3 with high settings, MSAA X2 and Company of Heroes 2 at full settings, without any issues. However, having to modify stock settings to get default performance does mean that the card is not working as intended. I still have around 18 months warranty so I will pay Digi a visit sometime in the near future.

It has also been my experience that sea air spells doom for electronics.

 

[chrome9812]

Now the peak temperature is around 70-71 degrees.

After looking at other sources from Tomshardware, I think this is perfectly fine even if you had to tweak it:

In general (so CPU and GPU), 90C+ is dangerously hot. 80-90 is too hot, 70-80 is acceptable, with 60-70 being optimal. So the cards max temp under gaming load is 72C, its fine temp wise.

I think 76C is safe. I have 2 GTX 660Ti's in SLI and that's pretty much your best bang for the buck. I get like 50% better performance than a GTX 680. So if you want to upgrade in the future you'll have one killer setup.

My GTX 660 Ti's run at about 66C a piece while gaming and about 70C during a burn in test. I think they are safe up until about the low 80's. That's as high as I owuld go.

My overclock on these cards is about +100 on the core and +400 on the memory. Which I think is about 1150Mhz clock speed. You gotta watch on these cards though. An overclock will play benchmarks fine and some games too, but then one certain game will crash. I own the EVGA version and it's sort of finicky. I can't really get above where I'm at.

As for Far Cry 3. On the GTX 660 Ti you can put everything on Ultra or close to it as long as you only have 2x MSAA or lower. Any more MSAA than that and you'll have to dial the settings back a little. You like to have 60 FPS always. And that's what I get with one card will all settings on close to ultra with only 2x MSAA. The whole reason I got 2 cards is to run this game and some others with more MSAA. It seems that MSAA really brings these cards to there knees on SOME games.

Your perfectly safe . Infact even if it goes upper 80 don't panic, normaly the lowe the temperature the better, but depending on games and overclock GFX CARD temp can verr from 60-90c no problem

They are all responses to 660TI owners who are concerned about their temperatures. So I can infer that high temperatures upto 90, while may decrease performance, they are not particularly dangerous to the life of the card (from a user's perspective atleast. A less than 1% additional risk may not mean much to you or me but from the manufacturer's perspective, that could translate to thousands of card needed to be replaced and hence their stated optimum temperatures are low). I think you are more than safe at 70 c and given that your card performs just fine currently, you fixed your own problem.

Regarding the issue that the card may not be working as intended, I get what you mean - the fact that the default settings don't turn the fan speed to full even at 80 when there is a decrease in performances may at first seem like the manufacturer did not intend a performance dip at "just" ~80c but then again I feel it's not a problem with your card but with the default settings themselves because logically, 55% fan speed at 80c implies the manufacturers are more than okay with it running 80+ (given that they could have increased the fan speed to the full at that point and brought it down! At that point, their concern wouldn't be about the noise generated from the fan ) and no matter how you see it, 80 is high, the manufacturers would not have intended the card to be run at 80c+ regardless of performance issues being present or not, given that they're responsible for the after sales service and if anything, they'd rather it be running few degrees below ideal than above just to be on the safe side Besides, if you are still concerned that there might be a problem specific to just your card, you could always RMA it towards the end of it's warranty period (or earlier if a problem comes up).

 

[akashk]

After looking at other sources from Tomshardware, I think this is perfectly fine even if you had to tweak it:




They are all responses to 660TI owners who are concerned about their temperatures. So I can infer that high temperatures upto 90, while may decrease performance, they are not particularly dangerous to the life of the card (from a user's perspective atleast. A less than 1% additional risk may not mean much to you or me but from the manufacturer's perspective, that could translate to thousands of card needed to be replaced and hence their stated optimum temperatures are low). I think you are more than safe at 70 c and given that your card performs just fine currently, you fixed your own problem.

Regarding the issue that the card may not be working as intended, I get what you mean - the fact that the default settings don't turn the fan speed to full even at 80 when there is a decrease in performances may at first seem like the manufacturer did not intend a performance dip at "just" ~80c but then again I feel it's not a problem with your card but with the default settings themselves because logically, 55% fan speed at 80c implies the manufacturers are more than okay with it running 80+ (given that they could have increased the fan speed to the full at that point and brought it down! At that point, their concern wouldn't be about the noise generated from the fan ) and no matter how you see it, 80 is high, the manufacturers would not have intended the card to be run at 80c+ regardless of performance issues being present or not, given that they're responsible for the after sales service and if anything, they'd rather it be running few degrees below ideal than above just to be on the safe side Besides, if you are still concerned that there might be a problem specific to just your card, you could always RMA it towards the end of it's warranty period (or earlier if a problem comes up).

I came across those threads on Tom as well. For me, the issue was not just high temperature but the driver that kills itself at 80 degrees possibly as a safety measure to prevent the insides from getting fried. I never even noticed the temps until the drivers started crashing. The cooling on this card is really silent and barely audible even at high speeds, so I dont mind (or notice) fans spinning faster. I think the default fan setting is meant for the main markets like US or Europe where the overall climate is cool and non humid. My default fan curve was set at 80% speed around 90 degrees or so.

Thanks anyhow !

 

[chrome9812]

Yea, but the default fan setting still doesn't make sense Regardless of the location being India or US, 90 degrees is 90 degrees and it would fry the card! The one saving grace is US or Europe is that because of the lower ambient temperature, it would be harder to reach 90 degrees but that doesn't justify the settings being inadequate to handle at that temperature!

 

[crossbow]

In my opinion, issue may be with your power supply as well.

http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gtx-660ti/specifications

What PSU are you using ? As per the specification, 660Ti would require 450W minimum power supply. Max temp this card can handle is 97 C (again, as per the specs). I understand that if card runs continuously above 60 - 70 C, there can be a cooling issue (Or any other issue). But if your PSU is not of sufficient output, there can be many severe issues, of which some, you are noticing.

When you notice issues, does your system shuts down abruptly ?

 

[klk]

Got an asus 660ti dc2t, while playing heavy games the temps are around 70-80 and i too play 4-5 hurs but never had a problem , personally i have ran the card @99'c and also at 90'c , never faced the restart or shut down problem,
but i never tweaked the card, i just click on gaming mode in gpu tweak and play , only 1 time i faced the system reboot problem when i oc to all settings to max lol

 

[akashk]

In my opinion, issue may be with your power supply as well.

http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gtx-660ti/specifications

What PSU are you using ? As per the specification, 660Ti would require 450W minimum power supply. Max temp this card can handle is 97 C (again, as per the specs). I understand that if card runs continuously above 60 - 70 C, there can be a cooling issue (Or any other issue). But if your PSU is not of sufficient output, there can be many severe issues, of which some, you are noticing.

When you notice issues, does your system shuts down abruptly ?

I am using a Seasonic 520 W PSU.

Actually maybe last month my system was infected with a bitcoin mining malware that would pretty much rape my GPU in burst fire. It would suddenly go from 0% usage to 100% usage while idling on desktop. It took me a couple of weeks to figure out it was actually a malware and the GPU itself was fine.
The malware was so ferocious that the GPU would heat up faster than it could cool down. After some time the GPU could not handle it anymore and the pc would lag, finally crashing the driver. A few mins of lag later the system would reboot with no display, which makes me presume that the GPU got too hot for the driver to activate it.

I managed to remove the malware with malwarebytes but the problem occurred again while using chrome. I formatted & reinstalled windows and since then have been using firefox just to be safe. (sorry chrome9812!) I started this thread because AFTER that issue was resolved, my card was having issues on stock settings.

Could it be that the GPU got a little messed up due to the nasty malware?

Got an asus 660ti dc2t, while playing heavy games the temps are around 70-80 and i too play 4-5 hurs but never had a problem , personally i have ran the card @99'c and also at 90'c , never faced the restart or shut down problem,
but i never tweaked the card, i just click on gaming mode in gpu tweak and play , only 1 time i faced the system reboot problem when i oc to all settings to max lol

What driver and which software/add ons are you using ? I swear my GPU never crosses 80 without crashing !

----

Here's a screenshot of my default fan curve. Where's Gaming mode in GPU tweak ?

 

[crossbow]

If malwarebytes was successfully able to remove malware, issue should be solved. But again, I am speculating. I think something went wrong due to that only. I think you can try downloading the drivers from nvidia UK. AND check whether issues get solved or not. If that also does not solve it, than you can try adding your friend's GPU, just to make sure that issue indeed is with your 660ti only. And if so, RMA.

Also use driver sweeper latest edition from guru3d to remove old drivers. Before installing new ones.

 

[klk]

see the screen shot , but my card is 660ti dc2t the top edition card , also do what crossbow said and also try inserting gpu in other slot and see if the problem stays[DOUBLEPOST=1400516903][/DOUBLEPOST]

 

[akashk]

see the screen shot , but my card is 660ti dc2t the top edition card , also do what crossbow said and also try inserting gpu in other slot and see if the problem stays[DOUBLEPOST=1400516903][/DOUBLEPOST]View attachment 40708

Wow, I just realized there are 3 versions of the card. I have the basic DC2 card and I guess the others have slightly better architecture and higher factory overclock.
I just realized I have G mode too, but for me the offset increase is 20 in GPU boost and 40 in Memory clock. Maybe that translates into 1 FPS more, not worth the hassle of switching modes back & forth.

Thanks for the screenshot.

 

[klk]

buy another 66oti and do sli if u want more fps , there is one 660ti dc2t on sale in forum

 

[akashk]

buy another 66oti and do sli if u want more fps , there is one 660ti dc2t on sale in forum

Tbh I am not much of a gamer anymore. I used to have more fun on ps2 when I was still in school. Those were my best gaming days.
Now I have an xbox 360 with 15-20 titles and my pc is loaded with the best rated pc games, and I haven't played most of them.
Every now & then I come across a decent game and get hooked for a while. I dont care THAT much about FPS or high settings.
For me things like gameplay & story matter more and I also dont have so much free time. 4-5 years ago I could have more fun playing stupid games than I do now playing the most sophisticated games. I thought getting a decent graphic card will "revive" the gamer in me, but that didn't work out ! I guess my time's up.

 

[klk]

@akashk so is the RMA done ?

 

[akashk]

@akashk so is the RMA done ?

Around 10 days ago I grabbed a screw driver, took a deep breath and removed the graphic card from my system. In that instant, all my problems relating to display crashes and system resets were solved. I went to Digicomp Andheri & within 2 days the RMA was approved by Rashi (who are the distributors or something).

However, until now they have not reverted with Digicomp on whether they are offering me a replacement or reimbursement.
I probably should not have wasted so much time in going for RMA as I might have gotten a higher value for my card earlier.

I was asked to take the RMA certificate and go to Rashi myself, and possibly keep following up with them until they figure out what they can do. Instead I called up Asus customer care and explained my case to them. They said they will revert within a day and let me know whether Rashi is going to replace or refund.

It's around 1.5 years old now and I had bought it for 22k INR. If current market rate is around 15-16k for brand new, what refund can I expect ?

In hindsight, I feel a mid-range graphic card is a wiser buy than a higher range graphic card.

 

[klk]

i Dont think they give replacement according to money , i think they give replacement according to performance though not sure , let me know what you get from RMA,

so i can do mine too

 

[akashk]

i Dont think they give replacement according to money , i think they give replacement according to performance though not sure , let me know what you get from RMA,

so i can do mine too

I finally went to Rashi with my DOA certificate.

I got an offer to accept GTX 760 DC 2 (not TI), OR suggest alternate cards that fulfill my requirement, OR ask for Refund.

So more tech enabled people, can you please help me out on this one ?!

The guy who is incharge of this is going on leave next week, so if I dont tell him by tomorrow I will waste another week with no result.