Advice on Video Card (mainly for 2.0)

[darkm0d]

Also, do not get factory overclocked. This causes instability in the card makes games crash. If your going to overclock get one that isn't factory overclocked and do it yourself.

That's not really true. Overclocking is not as dangerous as most people think. Plus, a factory overclocked card comes with the same warranty as any other card comes with. Claiming an OC arbitrarily causes instability is silly. Companies do not sell products without QC'ing them.

The 660 TI I got was MSI's OC edition, making it as good as the 670. Saved $100 and get almost identical performance. Biggest key point in OC's is cooling. With a factory overclock they have spent hundreds of hours bench marking and stress testing the cards with the aftermarket cooling system to ensure it can perform as expected under hours of full load.

OP, also, I had a 250 before the 660. The 660 is a massive improvement. It's price to performance ratio is absolutely the best out there on the market. It might not run games at max settings in 5 years from now but for the price, you're going to be able to play the games you want at great settings without any issues.

[Kluya15]

That's not really true. Overclocking is not as dangerous as most people think. Plus, a factory overclocked card comes with the same warranty as any other card comes with. Claiming an OC arbitrarily causes instability is silly. Companies do not sell products without QC'ing them.

The 660 TI I got was MSI's OC edition, making it as good as the 670. Saved $100 and get almost identical performance. Biggest key point in OC's is cooling. With a factory overclock they have spent hundreds of hours bench marking and stress testing the cards with the aftermarket cooling system to ensure it can perform as expected under hours of full load.

OP, also, I had a 250 before the 660. The 660 is a massive improvement. It's price to performance ratio is absolutely the best out there on the market. It might not run games at max settings in 5 years from now but for the price, you're going to be able to play the games you want at great settings without any issues.

When i get home (I'm at work) i can check my power supply, I believe it's a 750. But what kind of power supply does the 660 require? I remember someone telling me, generally, you do the video card's power supply requirement +20~25% for stablity.

[Saieno]

When i get home (I'm at work) i can check my power supply, I believe it's a 750. But what kind of power supply does the 660 require? I remember someone telling me, generally, you do the video card's power supply requirement +20~25% for stablity.

The power supply requirement is for when the card is at maximum load. I have a 670GTX with a 750Watt PSU, it doesn't even come close to use the full potential. If I had two 670GTXs then I'd be just below the limit of the PSU, so you have a TON to work with.

[darkm0d]

When i get home (I'm at work) i can check my power supply, I believe it's a 750. But what kind of power supply does the 660 require? I remember someone telling me, generally, you do the video card's power supply requirement +20~25% for stablity.

As Saieno said, 750w is more than fine. You will need 2 6-pin plugs for the 660 (I would assume the same for 670, 80, etc). Your PSU will most certainly have that. My PSU is 700W and it's fine, so yeah not going to be an issue.

The MSI edition of the 660 also supports triple monitors + a duplicated 4th. However it's memory buffer is a bit low to really crank out actual tri-screen gaming. But it is a nifty feature to have if you want to throw a video to a tv or something.

[Saieno]

The MSI edition of the 660 also supports triple monitors + a duplicated 4th. However it's memory buffer is a bit low to really crank out actual tri-screen gaming. But it is a nifty feature to have if you want to throw a video to a tv or something.

Actually that is a standard feature of the 600 series if I'm not mistaken. So far the 660, 670, 680, and 690 all have the ability for triple monitors and a mirror out.

[Zumi]

That's not really true. Overclocking is not as dangerous as most people think. Plus, a factory overclocked card comes with the same warranty as any other card comes with. Claiming an OC arbitrarily causes instability is silly. Companies do not sell products without QC'ing them.

The 660 TI I got was MSI's OC edition, making it as good as the 670. Saved $100 and get almost identical performance. Biggest key point in OC's is cooling. With a factory overclock they have spent hundreds of hours bench marking and stress testing the cards with the aftermarket cooling system to ensure it can perform as expected under hours of full load.

OP, also, I had a 250 before the 660. The 660 is a massive improvement. It's price to performance ratio is absolutely the best out there on the market. It might not run games at max settings in 5 years from now but for the price, you're going to be able to play the games you want at great settings without any issues.

Too many times have I bought something that was factory overclocked and it would end up crashing, I actually went back and underclocked it. Some companies are really bad at overclocking their cards, so I would just stay away from them alltogether.

[Saieno]

Too many times have I bought something that was factory overclocked and it would end up crashing, I actually went back and underclocked it. Some companies are really bad at overclocking their cards, so I would just stay away from them alltogether.

If you're going to buy a factory over-clocked card, make sure you trust the manufacturer and the chipset of the GPU. I had EVGA Nvidia GeForce 7900GTX SLI cards over-clocked and they were unstable, but it wasn't the fault of EVGA. The 7000 series from Nvidia just had stability issues at the time across the board, it is what it is. However I have the EVGA 670 GTX SC over-clocked edition and it's a DREAM to work with. If I ever buy a over-clocked version of hardware its usually from EVGA, Gigabyte, MSI, or Zotac; in that order.

[Fear]

Too many times have I bought something that was factory overclocked and it would end up crashing, I actually went back and underclocked it. Some companies are really bad at overclocking their cards, so I would just stay away from them alltogether.

What? An overclock is an overclock whether you do it or the manufacturer your game can't tell if you or someone else did it....

And no manufactuer will ever push a card so hard that it requires its voltage being raised.


And on that subject I used to use a 6950HD and recently upgraded to a XFX R7950 DD Black (a factory overclocked card) and all my games play perfectly fine, being able to have a big warranty on a card I don't need to overclock is nice to all for an extra £7 over the standard versions cost.

[Soukyuu]

Too many times have I bought something that was factory overclocked and it would end up crashing, I actually went back and underclocked it. Some companies are really bad at overclocking their cards, so I would just stay away from them alltogether.

Been using a MSI factory OCd card for years now, without any problems. If it crashes, it's faulty and that can happen with non-OCd components too.

The advantage of factory OC is that the manufacturer guarantees you it will work at those clocks. If it doesn't, then you get a replacement, simple as that.

I'd go for a 660Ti at this point, the 600 series have good performance and are more efficient than 400/500 series. In the end, paying more for a 660Ti will be outweighted by the power costs a cheaper 500 series will cause.