I need help with my GTX 660 Ti

[LizardProtection]

Hey, I'm new here.
First of all I'm happy to be new registered part of Tomshardware community I've been visiting this web-site for quite a while now but I didn't use account so here it is.

I'll get straight to business
I bought MSI 660 Ti from local shop for $400

(I know it costs $300 but shipping + importing costs that extra $100 here so...can't do anything about it and it's not even the point now)

What I noticed is that it gives me really poor performance, it's not what I expected it to be you know?
I had GT 9800 until this and it worked WAY better than this one in some situations.
I wasn't measuring my FPS but I can tell you what, GT 9800 gave me 45+ FPS in SC2 Wings of Liberty on HIGH graphics that's for sure, I don't know what but this card gives me 36-42 FPS and doesn't go higher at no cost what so ever and also overheats like crazy I always have to keep fan speed on 50-70 to keep it under 60 grads.

My friend has kinda same specs he just has 550 Ti and on lowest settings in SC2 he gets 150-160 FPS when I get (on lowest settings) barely 110... isn't 660 Ti supposed to be BETTER than 550 Ti?

I even tried overclocking the thing and it just won't give me +1 fps, even more, when I try to overclock using MSI Afterburner my Video Drivers crash! I don't know if there's something wrong with Nvidia Drivers but I've tried most of them (even the on on CD which came with the card itself) and everything crashes.
I play on 1680x1050 Resolution and I'll tell ya what, even if I took my old 9800 GT and put it back into my rig it'd work better.
I don't want to take it back because I want to give it a chance you know? I live in Georgia (THE COUNTRY post-soviet one) and that's how stuff works here, if I take this video card back they'll just put it on the shelve somewhere for couple of weeks and then tell me that it's working O.K.
no refunds because it's been 2 months since I bought it and I still have Guarantee (1 year one).
The reason why I waited so much is that I honestly thought it was Drivers fault, and when updating drivers I never saw any significant updates to 660 cards at all...

Any help would be appreciated, I can take the card back but I want to avoid that if it's at all possible.

My Specs are:



PSU: 750W OCZ

GPU: MSI 660 Ti PE

CPU: i3 2100 3.1 Ghz Sandy Bridge

RAM: 1333Hz 8 GB

Windows 7 ultimate 64 bit

Motherboard: ASUS P8P67-M




P.S.

just a rant about this video card don't mind this: WHY CAN'T I INSTALL 2 VGA MONITORS ON IT!?! 2 HDMI ports 1 DVI => HDMI and 1 DVI => VGA ... come on I don't have HDMI Monitors ;( I have 2 VGA ones...

P.P.S.

sometimes it just randomly stops the fans and starts them again don't know what's with that, is it supposed to do that?

thank you for your time, I'll appreciate if you'd be able to help me somehow, thank you again and have a good day.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

A. Did you remove the drivers before you installed the new card.

1. Uninstall GFX drivers.
2. Run Ccleaner to remove all nVidia lines from the registry
3. Shut down and install card
4. Just say NO if Windows wants to do any driver installs.
5. Install latest nVidia drivers.

B. Call TechSupport and if they can't solve the problem.....

C. RMA the card

 

[Khalan]

May be a silly question, but have you connected the two 6-pin power cables to the card?

 

[swifty_morgan]

you said if you put the 9800 back in it will run fine......... did you try it?

go to windows update first. see what it has for your machine and install it.

 

[LizardProtection]

A. Did you remove the drivers before you installed the new card.

1. Uninstall GFX drivers.
2. Run Ccleaner to remove all nVidia lines from the registry
3. Shut down and install card
4. Just say NO if Windows wants to do any driver installs.
5. Install latest nVidia drivers.

B. Call TechSupport and if they can't solve the problem.....

C. RMA the card

hey, thank you for quick response, I did uninstall all drivers last week but nothing much changed.

is it possible that my CPU is hard Bottleneck for Video Card?

I was in store yesterday they told me to bring in whole computer (the case itself) and they'd test it there in their service center but the thing is I don't know what to expect, I mean how do I explain my problem? because I'm pretty sure that "oh I'm getting 40 FPS in SC2 on High settings when Tomshardware charts say that I should be getting at least 67 on this resolution and set-up" is not a solid reason to RMA it...also, I noticed that when I played metro 2033 it didn't really have that much problem 40-50 FPS to be honest (The Tesellation was off but metro is pretty unplayable with tesellation so...)

also any ideas why would it crash drivers when OCed?

 

[LizardProtection]

May be a silly question, but have you connected the two 6-pin power cables to the card?

uhm? yes I'm pretty damn sure [I checked by the way like right now].

 

[LizardProtection]

you said if you put the 9800 back in it will run fine......... did you try it?

go to windows update first. see what it has for your machine and install it.

no I haven't tried it because I gave the old video card to my friend, I can ask him to bring it to me just to do some testings but that will take couple of days...

 

[swifty_morgan]

they still do things by wagon train in Georgia?.... LOL. Did you go to windows update? I still think it has something to do with software.

just joking about the wagon train. hope things stay smooth and the commies don't come back.

 

[swifty_morgan]

also, power down. pull card. pull ram. re-seat ram and reinstall video card.
if that didn't help, then reset cmos.

what happens?

 

[Khalan]

The reason I asked about the 6-pins is that some cards will still work without them but are restricted to a low power mode. If the 6-pins aren't firmly connected to the card (or the PSU if it's modular) then you'll get poor performance.

You could try downloading http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/ to check that the card is running at the proper specs (reference setting is 915-980MHz core clock for a 660ti).

 

[LizardProtection]

The reason I asked about the 6-pins is that some cards will still work without them but are restricted to a low power mode. If the 6-pins aren't firmly connected to the card (or the PSU if it's modular) then you'll get poor performance.

You could try downloading http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/ to check that the card is running at the proper specs (reference setting is 915-980MHz core clock for a 660ti).

yeah I just checked it again and those 2 are indeed 6 pin PSU cables so the problem may not be in that.
Is it possible that newest Nvidia drivers aren't supporting 660 Ti ? the last update they did (it was yesterday or today for some people) have me 30 FPS boost in SC2 on ultra settings (I had 60-72 fps instead of 36-42).
if so, do you have any suggestions which driver version should I use?

 

[Anik8]

It may be only SC2.Try some other games or it'd be best if you can try running the latest unigine heaven 4.0.I get 28 fps here,so if you get about 26 fps or up then you're fine actually and it might be driver problems with SC2.

 

[LizardProtection]

It may be only SC2.Try some other games or it'd be best if you can try running the latest unigine heaven 4.0.I get 28 fps here,so if you get about 26 fps or up then you're fine actually and it might be driver problems with SC2.

which settings are you running your heaven on?
what about tessellation? normal? high?
give me exact specifications and I'll see, I did run heaven but I don't remember results. I will do that once I get home.

edit: I do think that you're kind right on that, last nvidia driver update gave me 30 fps boost on ultra settings, now I have 60-72 instead of 36-42, here's the thing, is it possible that driver gives me THAT MUCH FPS loss?

 

[Anik8]

preset: custom
directx 11
quality: ultra
tessellation: extreme
3d: disabled
multi monitor: disabled
anti aliasing: x8
Full Screen
1920x1080p

And this is the latest version of heaven (4.0).So check yours' first.I haven't played SC2 but it does astonish me that one got 30 fps increase from a mere driver update.

 

[LizardProtection]

preset: custom
directx 11
quality: ultra
tessellation: extreme
3d: disabled
multi monitor: disabled
anti aliasing: x8
Full Screen
1920x1080p

And this is the latest version of heaven (4.0).So check yours' first.I haven't played SC2 but it does astonish me that one got 30 fps increase from a mere driver update.

Actually that 30 FPS boost just disappeared somewhere after I reinstalled windows (power shortage came, computer started disk check or smth when I turned it on later and it deleted some files and windows wasn't loading so I had to re-install it)
now I have fresh windows no ,,extra'' programs just Nvidia Drivers, Realtek Drivers, Steam, Msi afterburner, Skype, Mozilla firefox.

I ran Heaven benchmarking and here are my settings

preset: custom
directx 11
quality: ultra
tessellation: extreme
3d: disabled
multi monitor: disabled
anti aliasing: x8
Full Screen
1680x1050 (my screen runs on this resolution)

and here are my ,,scores'':
min FPS 7.3
max FPS 73.2

General FPS 31.2

Score 785

Platform: Windows 7 (build 7601 Service pack 1) 64 bit
CPU: intel(R) Core(TM) i3-2100 CPU @ 3.1 GHz x2 <<< what does this ,,x2'' mean here?
GPU: Nvidia Geforce GTX 660 Ti 9.18.13.1407 (2047Mb) x1

So it's not the video card that's causing this problem then?
I think my CPU is just bottlenecking it. I will open new topic to figure that out later, I think, until then, thank you for your responses.

if you know anything about this bottleneck thing can you assist me in this one? I am trying to get i5-3750k (http://www.amazon.com/Intel-Core-i5-3570K-Quad-Core-Processor/dp/B007SZ0E1K) but it'll take quite a bit since I don't have spare money right now. I need to be sure if my i3 is the cause of this problem and not the video card.

thank you again, have a good day.

 

[LizardProtection]

The reason I asked about the 6-pins is that some cards will still work without them but are restricted to a low power mode. If the 6-pins aren't firmly connected to the card (or the PSU if it's modular) then you'll get poor performance.

You could try downloading http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/ to check that the card is running at the proper specs (reference setting is 915-980MHz core clock for a 660ti).

here's the screen of GPU-Z

and also here's sensors screen of GPU-Z (I'm just on windows nothing heavy running in background just mozilla firefox)

it may be running on higher settings because it's overclocked edition, but I don't know much about it so I won't talk much about something I have no clue about

 

[LizardProtection]

also, power down. pull card. pull ram. re-seat ram and reinstall video card.
if that didn't help, then reset cmos.

what happens?

I did everything, Nothing happened. except I didn't reset cmos, forgot about it, will do when I'll have to turn down and/or restart my PC next time.

 

[Anik8]

your cpu isn't that bad,you will at max be 5 fps behind the i5s or i7s
try using the card on another system may be your friends' so you can evaluate which pc component may be affecting this.Normally a bad PSU can generate these problems.A 750W PSU is enough to handle may be 2 660 ti-s but you can never knw if its faulty one which is somehow running your pc.

 

[LizardProtection]

your cpu isn't that bad,you will at max be 5 fps behind the i5s or i7s
try using the card on another system may be your friends' so you can evaluate which pc component may be affecting this.Normally a bad PSU can generate these problems.A 750W PSU is enough to handle may be 2 660 ti-s but you can never knw if its faulty one which is somehow running your pc.

so how do I test my PSU? how do I know if it's faulty? do I kinda RMA it?

 

[Anik8]

like i said try running your gpu on another system.Note which components differ from yours.

 

[LizardProtection]

like i said try running your gpu on another system.Note which components differ from yours.

that'll be a bit tricky...I'll try, thanks for the answer.

 

[swifty_morgan]

can't return card to shop or bring machine to shop and get new card?

 

[LizardProtection]

can't return card to shop or bring machine to shop and get new card?

I just ran a 3DMARK test and the thing I noticed is that my ram sticks are from different developers, one is kingstone and other one is Crucial, both are 1333 Mhz but still can that be causing problems when overclocking? they are "working" together but hell knows what happens after they get some pressure on their backs...

 

[swifty_morgan]

buy 2 2gig stick of the same appropriate memory from the same manufacturer...... buy a boxed set........ scrap what you have.

 

[FLanighan]

I run a 7870 and Pentium G2020 at 2.9GHz and I average 35 fps in heaven @ stock and 40.0 fps with the 7870 at 1100/1450.

Settings:

preset: custom
directx 11
quality: ultra
tessellation: extreme
3d: disabled
multi monitor: disabled
anti aliasing: x8
AF: 16x
Full Screen
1920x1080p


if my 7870 at stock clocks beats your 660 ti then there's definitely something wrong.