MSI GTX 660 Gaming Reliability

[Dizzysquirrl]

So about four or five months ago I bought the MSI GTX 660 gaming. Knowing this card is suppose to replace the twinfrozr III, I thought it would be just as good if not better. I knew full and well that it hadn't been reviewed very much, but I took a shot in the dark because I know MSI makes good cards. Anyway I've been looking back onto the reviews of their gaming (twinfrozr IV) series and I've seen some bad reviews. I usually don't trust reviews on newegg because people will much rather post one if something bad happens than if something bad doesn't. I really wanted to know personal experiences with the card, so if you've had it for a while and think it's a good card please tell me. I can't afford to be out $200 and I really don't want to have to sell it and get another card. I'm almost done with my pc build and before I boot for the first time I would like to know. Thanks for any responses.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

all gtx 660's are pretty similar. I wouldnt pay more for a premium model with a slightly higher overclock for the sake of 1fps. I say just get the cheapest 660. Or alternatively amd's comparable card 7870/r9 270x.
I had some issues with both my gigabyte 660's downclocking and crashing, which i could never 100% fix, from my experience 660's can be a bit of trouble and has put me off recommending them. that being said there are reports of 7870's and 270x cards doing similar things. The other thing about 660's is the strange memory setup, its not really a 2gb card, its a 1.5gb + 512mb card. 1.5gb of the ram is on the 192bit bus, and the other 512mb is on a 64 bit bus, the card tends to cap out at 1.5gb usage (assume the driver avoids using the slower ram)

 

[Dizzysquirrl]

all gtx 660's are pretty similar. I wouldnt pay more for a premium model with a slightly higher overclock for the sake of 1fps. I say just get the cheapest 660. Or alternatively amd's comparable card 7870/r9 270x.
I had some issues with both my gigabyte 660's downclocking and crashing, which i could never 100% fix, from my experience 660's can be a bit of trouble and has put me off recommending them. that being said there are reports of 7870's and 270x cards doing similar things. The other thing about 660's is the strange memory setup, its not really a 2gb card, its a 1.5gb + 512mb card. 1.5gb of the ram is on the 192bit bus, and the other 512mb is on a 64 bit bus, the card tends to cap out at 1.5gb usage (assume the driver avoids using the slower ram)

Well I plan on running the card in silent mode (reference clock speed) so that's not the case. I mainly got the card for it's cooling factor and the fact that it was in my price range. I've heard good things and bad things, but it looks like if it isn't 5 stars it's 1.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

all gtx 660's are pretty similar. I wouldnt pay more for a premium model with a slightly higher overclock for the sake of 1fps. I say just get the cheapest 660. Or alternatively amd's comparable card 7870/r9 270x.
I had some issues with both my gigabyte 660's downclocking and crashing, which i could never 100% fix, from my experience 660's can be a bit of trouble and has put me off recommending them. that being said there are reports of 7870's and 270x cards doing similar things. The other thing about 660's is the strange memory setup, its not really a 2gb card, its a 1.5gb + 512mb card. 1.5gb of the ram is on the 192bit bus, and the other 512mb is on a 64 bit bus, the card tends to cap out at 1.5gb usage (assume the driver avoids using the slower ram)

Well I plan on running the card in silent mode (reference clock speed) so that's not the case. I mainly got the card for it's cooling factor and the fact that it was in my price range. I've heard good things and bad things, but it looks like if it isn't 5 stars it's 1.

The problems people are having from what i have come across on forums, are the ones i had with my gigabyte card, downclocking to ~500mhz for no apparent reason until next reboot, and crashing. Not all cards seem to do this, and for me it didnt happen in all games. But i had 2 cards and both did the same thing. got frustrated with crashing, stuttering (caused by clock speed fluctuation) and downclocking, although i found a workaround with forcing clock speeds with nvidia inspector for the downclocking. Like i said, many people have had no such issue, maybe an incompatibility with certain software/hardware or something, who knows. Thats probably why you get some that will give 1 star, some 5 stars.