MSI Caught Overvolting GTX 660 Ti, 670 Power Edition Cards

[FormatC]

If a company changes its product in the middle of a production run after an error becomes public, you know something’s fishy. If Nvidia steps in as well, that’s a good indication there’s something serious going on. Here’s what happened at MSI.

MSI Caught Overvolting GTX 660 Ti, 670 Power Edition Cards : Read more

 

[CaedenV]

lol, 9.3V! That's an awful lot of power for small parts!

 

[pjmelect]

With the capacitor in the position shown in the circuit diagram the voltage regulator will not be doing anything and would not be needed. I think that this is a layout error and not deliberate and should have been picked up when the board was tested by the manufacture. It is amazing that the board worked at all with this error.
It does however raise a more serious point that as the development cycle time reduces between boards being released the testing of the designs is being cut back on.

 

[Darkerson]

Having used MSI products in the past, I have to say Im very disappointed in them and will probably not be using them again.

 

[csf60]

What the hell were they thinking??? Didn't they test these cards before release or what?

 

[pacioli]

That looks intentional...

 

[alidan]

so what was the end result of this in a gameing sense?

not a system wont boot, or card dies sooner, lets assume everything went fine

what did the card gain?

 

[zero messiah]

*we’ve worked with NVIDIA to ensure that new production models will limit this FREE overclock boost you currently get*
On behalf of consumers everwhere, i would like to thank you MSI for trying to make us feel guilty.
And in the future, i will try not to feel entitled to having a working graphics card.

`Sincerely,
Joe Q Public.

PS. Burn in hell @ 9.3 volts.

 

[dextermat]

xmas list:

NOT buying msi video card : check

 

[proffet]

BUSTED....
And I have been a MSi TwinFrozr and PE (Power Edition) nVidia models fan in the past.
I wonder if some legal action is soon to come like a class-action or something.?
Consumers mad because they blew their hardware up..

 

[officeguy]

My momma told me if I don't have anything good to say, don't say it at all. So, I am not going to say anything.

 

[dudewitbow]

[citation][nom]proffet[/nom]BUSTED....And I have been a MSi TwinFrozr and PE (Power Edition) nVidia models in the past.I wonder if some legal action is soon to come.?[/citation]
at the least, they will probably have to do what evga did, and ask users with these models to return them and they have to ship them a new gpu(evga users returned an OC version for the FTW version for the 670)

 

[Pennanen]

Asrocks mobo capacitors, gigabytes pcie 3 mobos and now msi.

I actually tought msi was one of the more trustworthy gpu companies out there.

Oh how wrong i was.

 

[Guest]

Sure, MSI won't even include cpu vcore offset on their motherboards, but they'll cook the video cards. LOL

 

[boiler1990]

While this wasn't a smart move by MSI, I think this points out a limiting feature of the Kepler GPUs - the voltage caps are very low. I think the 6xx GPUs would OC much better if there were more freedom in voltage tweaking - and I'm guessing that's why AMD's competing cards have better success in OCs

 

[ricdiculus]

Never cared for MSI since a tried to flash one of there motherboards and it bricked. They sent me a new bios chip and guess what, still bricked. These shananigins don't surprise me.

 

[bystander]

I don't understand how this was "cheating". They are selling an OC product. This isn't a reference design, so they don't have to adhere to specific clocks.

However, they definitely screwed up by exceeding engineering specs.

 

[jasonpwns]

[citation][nom]bystander[/nom]I don't understand how this was "cheating". They are selling an OC product. This isn't a reference design, so they don't have to adhere to specific clocks.However, they definitely screwed up by exceeding engineering specs.[/citation]

This gives nvidia a bad name too. Since if people get a dead card they usually don't care to investigate what's wrong with it and pass the blame straight to nvidia or amd. They usually never point the finger to the company they actually got the card from.

 

[back_by_demand]

[citation][nom]csf60[/nom]What the hell were they thinking??? Didn't they test these cards before release or what?[/citation]
Of course they did, but this reminds me of the scene from Fight Club

A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.

Is the risk of getting caught worse than the financial benefits? It depends how many times they have done things like this before and not been caught

 

[Guest]

*sigh* just ordered the 670 P.E. last week... what to do now...

 

[lamorpa]

"That can’t be good for its life expectancy in the long run"?

What could this statement mean? Life expectancy is the long run by definition.

"That can’t be good for its life expectancy in life expectancy."?

 

[ddpruitt]

Is only one model affected or are they doing these to other cards, say Radeons?

If it's only one card it could have been a mistake, but I doubt it. But then why wouldn't they do it to other cards so they show the same performance boost?

 

[Guest]

I bought the MSi GTX660Ti PE OC a few weeks ago, to keep it short, it doesn't work well.

One of the two fans on the cooler is noticeably louder than the other, computer hangs at random etc. this happens on both my computers. I tried to RMA it but the place i bought it from said they found no problems and the noise of the fan was "acceptable", what a joke, they even asked me to send them my computer so they could see if there is something wrong with my computer, what the hell, they insist that it's my PSU which it isn't, i'm currently running my old GTX470 again without any problems so go figure.

For all of you wondering the PSU is a Be Quiet! DPP 10 850W and the motherboard is a MSI P67A-GD65, tried both PCI-E slots, that didn't help.

 

[FormatC]

Is only one model affected or are they doing these to other cards, say Radeons?
If it's only one card it could have been a mistake, but I doubt it. But then why wouldn't they do it to other cards so they show the same performance boost?

Only MSI GTX 660 Ti and GTX 670 Power Edition. And this is a general problem in wiring of this two cards.

 

[aicom]

[citation][nom]boiler1990[/nom]While this wasn't a smart move by MSI, I think this points out a limiting feature of the Kepler GPUs - the voltage caps are very low. I think the 6xx GPUs would OC much better if there were more freedom in voltage tweaking - and I'm guessing that's why AMD's competing cards have better success in OCs[/citation]
There's a reason those caps are as low as they are. Remember how Intel said the maximum supported voltage of RAM running on their IMC was 1.65? Turns out Intel knew what they were doing (imagine that?) and reports started surfacing of dead CPUs after running for extended periods above 1.65 V.