After my first GTX 660Ti I sent it back, and got a new one from EVGA. Hasn't been causing the same problems I had last time, which is great. Unfortunately, new problems. Well, maybe.

First I noticed a flickering red outline effect over everything in Don't Starve. Not the game, appears to be a hardware problem. In Orcs Must Die 2 I am getting yellow squares flickering around the screen randomly. Now, in Far Cry 3 I am getting red squares flickering around the screen.

Is this a GPU problem, and should I send it back again?

Your graphics card is overheating.

@Garfield518: OK. Well, it isn't doing anything it doesn't normally do. Why would it overheating during Orcs Must Die 2? That game doesn't require much.

Yeah, sounds like it's overheating.
 
@AlisterCat said:

@Garfield518: Why would it overheating during Orcs Must Die 2? That game doesn't require much.

@ajamafalous: My logic is that graphically intensive games require more power, and generate more heat as well.

Idle: 33 degrees

Ocrs Must Die 2: Averaged 70 during fighting. No graphical glitches first game as it climbed from 30 to 60. Started second game at 60 degrees and lots of black and yellow squares.

Far Cry 3: 75 degrees during intro scene, couldn't get any artifacting to happen this time.

Fan speed was below 50% at all times.

33 Celsius idle & 60 to 75 Celsius is perfectly normal for a GPU under load, so it's not overheating, unless those numbers are lying. Raise Your eyebrow when you see it at over 85 Celsius. But as far as the Logic With graphically intensive games; if you have unlimited frames on a game - usually done by turning off Vsync or playing games in windowed mode - it has the same effect since the GPU will read more frames - if it's fast enough - even if the refresh rate can't pick it up. Obviously it has a lot to do With how intense those frames are. A game rendered in 120 frames will require more Power, causing more heat, than the same game rendered in 60 frames. But I digress, I'm not quite sure what the problem here is, but make sure you have clean updated the drivers & that anything is plugged in correctly.

@FritzDude: I did a clean install of the most recent drivers before recording those temperatures. I almost always enable Vsync as well. You can force it on the control panel now, which is useful.

Only a few games seem to suffer from this. I'm not sure why.

@FritzDude: @ajamafalous: Bit of an update. Had another crack at farcry 3. With no Vsync and Vsync 1 frame I had the artifacting. With Vsync 2 frames I didn't, but I had a much lower framerate. Then I switched to no vsync and watched a bit more of the intro, the image froze, went to desktop with the exe still running. It did this before with Orcs Must Die 2 today, except then it reported a driver crash. This is on a fresh driver install, but this time I didn't get a reported crashing. I've also had some kind of driver crash while playing flash videos as well, and since they're GPU accelerated I am going to assume it's my GPU that's messing that up too.

try reseating it?

@AlisterCat said:

After my first GTX 660Ti I sent it back, and got a new one from EVGA. Hasn't been causing the same problems I had last time, which is great. Unfortunately, new problems. Well, maybe.

First I noticed a flickering red outline effect over everything in Don't Starve. Not the game, appears to be a hardware problem. In Orcs Must Die 2 I am getting yellow squares flickering around the screen randomly. Now, in Far Cry 3 I am getting red squares flickering around the screen.

Is this a GPU problem, and should I send it back again?

I had artifacting like that a long time ago on a graphics card. I'm pretty sure it's done for.

Does the problem present itself in a variety of other games, as well? I'm asking because I have a similar problem with OMD2 where the game starts to perform poorly after the first game (dip in framerate, stuttering, etc., restarting the game fixes this, but as soon as you finish a map the problem will occur again). Started having this problem after the most recent game patch that was released a couple of weeks ago, and I also use a nVidia card.

Is it a factory overclocked version? If so lower the clock speeds to standard (research what the standard 660ti clock speeds are). Usually companies will overclock cards without touching the voltage, causing instability. 

@AlisterCat: I'll second the question of whether your clock speeds are stock or not. If they have been modified and it wasn't done carefully, that could very well explain the artifacting. I don't think messing with gpu clock speeds is worth it personally.

I had a card that had similar artifacting issues. I had to lower the clock speed to get it to work; I would recommend returning the card if it's not functioning to spec.

@warxsnake: @Subjugation: @Chrjz: It is the 'Super Clocked' edition by EVGA. I haven't altered any of the clock speeds manually. It is clocked at 980Mhz, as described, and running at 0.987 V, but I don't know what the regular version runs at. I'm a bit dubious at increasing the voltage myself for a factory overclock of 65Mhz (the regular runs at 915Mhz).

@Zomgfruitbunnies: Only in those that I have mentioned. Most games are fine. Played a few hours of hitman. Played all of Dishonored. Plenty of Borderlands 2. Saints Row 3. Dungeon Defenders. That's just in the past week or so.

@warxsnake: @Subjugation: @Chrjz: It is the 'Super Clocked' edition by EVGA. I haven't altered any of the clock speeds manually. It is clocked at 980Mhz, as described, and running at 0.987 V, but I don't know what the regular version runs at. I'm a bit dubious at increasing the voltage myself for a factory overclock of 65Mhz (the regular runs at 915Mhz).

@warxsnake: What would constitute a little for voltage? From 0.987 to 1.000 or 0.988. Might try that.

@warxsnake: What would constitute a little for voltage? From 0.987 to 1.000 or 0.988. Might try that.