The Mother Board

[Roach412]

brief update.

was involved with the battlefield 3 alpha, and then closed and open betas. initially i had no issues, but eventually started to get some strange artifacting in BF3b. it complained everytime i started saying i needed to update my drivers - basically the beta said you NEEDED to have the most-recent beta version of NVIDIAs drivers, but i wanted to continue to use the WHQL's. it actually worked fine with the "outdated" drivers.

eventually i updated the drivers and it seemed to help...then tried to play battlefield bad company 2 - got all sorts of issues. messed with settings, etc, rolled back to WHQL drivers, still having issues. even started having really really bizarre things showing up in Company of Heroes...so, got pissed off and threw in my 260 that was sitting in my old carcass box. worked perfect. problem with this card is it runs so effing hot...

sent off my GPU to MSI for an RMA - so i'm really hoping that fixes the issue. when it was running well in the alpha it was so smooth and looked excellent.

-Roach
_________________
Lian Li Lancool First Knight Series PC-K59W
Intel Core i7-960 Bloomfield 3.2GHz
EVGA X58 FTW3 132-GT-E768-TR
EVGA GTX 560ti FPB
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 12GB (3 x 4GB)
Crucial M4 128gb SATAIII SSD
Corsair Professional Series HX850 PSU

[Roach412]

ANOTHER update.

had yet another faulty card from MSI.

sent it in again for RMA, with a rather stern communication about what is starting to become a serious quality issue. the second card died within a month of getting it, replacing the 3 month-old now-dead card before it.

sent in the RMA december 20th, received the replacement yesterday.

unfortunately i had to run to my bowling league immediately after work - so didn't have time to unpack/inspect/install/test the new card, but after bowling i needed to get that thing back where it belonged - in my computer.

got it installed, grabbed the newest drivers - started poking around, and noticed that it identified as a 560ti, not the standard 560 GPU.

checked the sticker on the board, and sure enough - they sent me the "ti" version of the 560 to replace my boring old Twin Frozr II OC version. card retails now for 60 more than i paid for the standard 560. so, 2 RMA's and ~25 bucks in shipping later i get a 60 dollar more expensive card. i'm okay with it now as long as there no quality issues yet to come!

-Roach
_________________
Lian Li Lancool First Knight Series PC-K59W
Intel Core i7-960 Bloomfield 3.2GHz
EVGA X58 FTW3 132-GT-E768-TR
EVGA GTX 560ti FPB
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 12GB (3 x 4GB)
Crucial M4 128gb SATAIII SSD
Corsair Professional Series HX850 PSU

[evasive]

Rooting for you this one is from a different production line, is aimed at the elite so has better overall build quality.
_________________
We hate rut, but we fear change.



System error, strike any user to continue...

[Roach412]

so...the new card started doing the same thing AGAIN.

i'm beyond frustrated at this point, so i decided to do some more trial/error.

system is in my sig, so the PSU has it's single non-modular cable cluster, which contains 2 PCI-E 12v power connectors - i used these to power the video card these first times. now i swapped in 2 modular cables and plugged into empty power plugs, and moved the card to my other 16x PCI-E slot. fired up the PC and it worked! problems went away.

BUT...they came back a few days later.

this time i swapped the card back into the #1 slot, leaving the power plugs the way they were, and the problems went away again...WTF.

i noticed that when i swap the card to the other slot my computer doesn't recognize my USB keyboard, and i have to plug in a PS/2 one to boot, and then windows reinstalls all the drivers for them again. it'll work perfectly after that for a few days, but that first reboot fails on a keyboard error. anyone seen something like that before?

waiting for the next issue to come up again, and i'll see what i can think of then to try. my main guess would be the motherboard, then maybe the PSU. it runs my old nvidia just fine for weeks/months at a time though.

-Roach
_________________
Lian Li Lancool First Knight Series PC-K59W
Intel Core i7-960 Bloomfield 3.2GHz
EVGA X58 FTW3 132-GT-E768-TR
EVGA GTX 560ti FPB
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 12GB (3 x 4GB)
Crucial M4 128gb SATAIII SSD
Corsair Professional Series HX850 PSU

[Roach412]

third faulty card.

i've replaced my motherboard, hard drives, and power supply. swapped in my old evga gtx260, works like a dream. put back in the 560, and it dies when minimally stressed. even pukes within windows 7, constantly recovering the display driver...

entirely unimpressed with MSI - so, i'll be getting my next RMA replacement and will sell it without even opening it. going to buy something else at this point. out about 100 bucks through all the RMA shipping i've done at this point. hate to say it, but beware MSI's 560 series cards...i couldn't recommend them to anyone.

-Roach
_________________
Lian Li Lancool First Knight Series PC-K59W
Intel Core i7-960 Bloomfield 3.2GHz
EVGA X58 FTW3 132-GT-E768-TR
EVGA GTX 560ti FPB
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 12GB (3 x 4GB)
Crucial M4 128gb SATAIII SSD
Corsair Professional Series HX850 PSU

[evasive]

update your signature... thanks for the heads-up
_________________
We hate rut, but we fear change.



System error, strike any user to continue...

[amadnei]

You could try the gigabyte 560 ti soc
Same price I believe, incredible result , and gigabyte is doing very good product overall.
or in the same price range you could go with amd

[Roach412]

i have a feeling i'll go back to my old friend EVGA. although they're big, heavy and loud...they run forever.

-Roach
_________________
Lian Li Lancool First Knight Series PC-K59W
Intel Core i7-960 Bloomfield 3.2GHz
EVGA X58 FTW3 132-GT-E768-TR
EVGA GTX 560ti FPB
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 12GB (3 x 4GB)
Crucial M4 128gb SATAIII SSD
Corsair Professional Series HX850 PSU

[amadnei]

good luck
hopefully this one wont break