MSI video card quality

A

Autochthon

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 28, 2005
Messages
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I thought I'd ask some opinions on MSI video cards.

I tend to keep hardware until it breaks or I pass it along to a relative.
I'm considering buying a 1080ti as I'm tired of using the 650ti I "temporarily" replaced my 6950 with after it failed, this was like 2 years ago ;) . I'm currently using a number of different monitors and TV's for my desktop one of which is 4k/60k with HDMI only input.

After looking over some of the 1080ti offerings only the Asus OC Graphics and MSI Gaming X appear to offer 2 hdmi out ports + dvi. Though the 2 hdmi aren't strictly necessary it would be convenient .

Unfortunately -
1. Asus asks a premium then has customer support that seems unworthy of that title.
2. Of the varied Video cards I've owned through the years I've only had two outright fail and both were MSI. One was a r6950 twinfrozrII - It lasted about 2 years; the other a NX8800GTS that lasted maybe 4 years. Neither was particularly abused but the 6950 had been shader unlocked to a 6970 (though voltage was kept at 6950 defaults). The 8800 was in sli with a XFX 8800GTS which still runs to this day.

So was my experience with MSI quality a fluke? I know many of you go through video cards like potato chips and wouldn't think of keeping a card even 2 years but I'd rather not buy a top end card to have it fail before I was ready to upgrade.

So any long term MSI owners out there?
 
I have 2 MSI 1080s, which I got at launch so not even a year yet. So far no problems. Also got an MSI RX 460 like a week ago and that is running well, but it's been 1 week.

I'm a little unique in that I like to sample different brands. Was a hard-core EVGA guy for a few generations, but eventually started branching out. I haven't had many major problems with any brand, though of course you can have failures at any time.
 
I've had a MSI 980Ti Gaming 6G since summer 2015. Still running with no issues at all.
But I don't have good experience of any Asus products except motherboards. Their Vulcan headphones are junk, their routers have died on me and one of Windows 10 tablets I bought years ago had to go to RMA a couple of times. I've had 2 Asus 670 before my 980Ti and both are dead now. I had them in SLI and when one died I just bought a single 980Ti (and later upgraded to SLI 980Ti, Inno3D), and I sold the second card to a friend of mine. And of course that one died within 6 months.
I just ordered 1080Ti Gaming X. According to reviews it doesn't overclock as high as Asus Strix or Gigabyte Aorus, but it's close and I would rather not get any Asus cards again. I'm pretty sure I had an Asus 6800 Ultra that died years ago.
On a side note, while Asus stuff has been failing on me left and right, I can only say good things about their customer service, at least here in EU.
I still have a working EVGA 8800GT somewhere! And also a 570 in my dad's computer, but I don't remember which.
 
I've been mostly happy with my MSI 980 Ti but it does have coil whine but it's only noticeable in menus in some games. Otherwise no problems. Have had Gigabyte 970 and ASUS 770 before that and all worked as expected.
 
If you really need the dvi-out, you should know that a 1080ti comes with a dp->dvi adapter. If thats okay for you, it should expand your candidate list a bit.
 
Koween said:
If you really need the dvi-out, you should know that a 1080ti comes with a dp->dvi adapter. If thats okay for you, it should expand your candidate list a bit.
Click to expand...
Keep in mind that it's a passive adapter, though, meaning only single link bandwidth.
 
Anecdotally, my 8800GTS failed in approximately the same time frame. It was an EVGA unit and I got a 460 as a replacement (if I'm remembering right).

For big name board manufacturers you'll find that it's much the same as hard drives. Brand doesn't matter too much unless there's something positive about that brand you're looking for. Some model lines will be toxic death, some will be amazing, but most will be really close to industry average.
 
I've owned many MSI products through the years and never had one fail. Anecdotally, I have heard that their RMA process is fairly painless. I will say that I did have a compatibility issue between an older MSI X58 motherboard and a newer video card, and their engineers sent me a beta BIOS (despite the product being 2 years past the EOL date) to try and resolve it. It ended up being an issue they couldn't fix since it was a bug with the AMI BIOS, but the fact that they tried when they very well could have told me I was SOL was impressive and confidence inspiring. I have bought two more MSI motherboards since then without issue.
 
alaricljs said:
Anecdotally, my 8800GTS failed in approximately the same time frame. It was an EVGA unit and I got a 460 as a replacement (if I'm remembering right).

For big name board manufacturers you'll find that it's much the same as hard drives. Brand doesn't matter too much unless there's something positive about that brand you're looking for. Some model lines will be toxic death, some will be amazing, but most will be really close to industry average.
Click to expand...
Absolutely this.

Bear in mind as well that most of us don't upgrade anything more often than every couple of years, so by the time any given person cycles through buying something Asus, something else Asus, something MSI, something XFX, something Gigabyte, something EVGA, chances are good that 10 or 15 years have passed. Very few companies resemble themselves from 15 years ago - it's a competitive marketplace. You adapt, improve, or die.

Any company with failure-rate problems that are still evident after 10-15 years, quite simply wouldn't be a company anymore. Problems happen. Lines are misdesigned. Production quality slips at a certain factory. But these problems are resolved far faster than they occur, usually only affect a small number of products for a short period of time, and if the company as a WHOLE had a quality control problem, it wouldn't remain a company for very long.

Examples of this include Soltek, Abit, BFG, and many others. Companies with problems that weren't solved immediately, or that encompassed too many of their product lines at once, for them to be able to remain afloat financially.

The fact MSI are still here, still popular, and have been both of those things for a very long time, is a very good indicator that they know of the transient nature of problems like this, and are good at fixing them as and when they occur, rather than allowing them to propagate through the company and cause further issues.

Same goes for XFX, Asus, Gigabyte and most of the other usual suspects.
 
I had an Msi motherboard that I openly admitted to the RMA department that I bent pins on. They still swapped it out for free (they even covered shipping both ways).

I think they've come a long way over the last few years.

Not a video card, but same idea I would think.
 
Asus will most likely have two versions of their card. STRIX (top of the line with added blinky bits) and DUAL which is a much simpler set up. Personally, I recommend the dual line up. Dual HDMI's should be standard at this point. I like the idea of running HDMI sound to a receiver and HDMI video to a TV.

But maybe I'm one of the few people with a HTPC.
 
No complaints. This MSI RX 480 gaming X has been flawless. Installed a couple MSI 1060 in other systems and they are good too.
 
MSI makes some damn fine video cards. They are at the top along with a few others. Quite frankly, the "big three's" video cards have come a long way in the last five years.
 
Been happy with MSI. Had a 890FX of theirs that lasted me a number of years before failing. My co-worker bought a MSI RX 480 (believe their Twin-frozr line, or whatever weird name they have for it) and he's been extremely happy with his GPU.
 
MSI is at the top of my list along with Gigabyte.

However, I haven't owned any of their cards for more than 2 years as you're concerned about. I upgrade video cards like changing underwear. Well, maybe a little less frequent on the video cards. They last about 18 months before I scratch the upgrade itch.

MSI customer service & RMAs were great however, thinking about my mining days. They replaced video cards where there was burn damage on the VRMs. They've given upgraded models, and were always very responsive. Gigabyte was the same way. I once got a Radeon 390 as a replacement for a failed 280x.
 
J Macker said:
MSI customer service & RMAs were great however, thinking about my mining days. They replaced video cards where there was burn damage on the VRMs. They've given upgraded models, and were always very responsive. Gigabyte was the same way. I once got a Radeon 390 as a replacement for a failed 280x.
Click to expand...

Yar, their customer service I can attest to as well. They were super helpful during the whole 'AM4 shortage', tracked down a shipment and hooked me up with a vendor to purchase it. Their response to my e-mails were within an hour or so.
 
MSI's gamer and armor series are some of the cooler, quieter cards you can get. They were at the top of my list, but pricing put me into an XFX card.
 
My last 3 Video cards (2 970's and 1 1080) are all MSI, none have issues.

Well, I thought the 1080 had issue, I RMA'ed it, came back again, no issues.

Though I wouldn't use my experience as a 'benchmark' for customer service quality, since I literally went to their field office here, handed the card, in, a few days later, they told me it was ready, I picked it up. Asus also has a field office here, and Gigabyte too, though I have never used Gigabyte's office (my brother did with his laptop), and so far no issues with any of them. MSI didn't complain it wasn't their card, but Asus was pretty good.
 
I'm using EVGA Precsion X with my MSI card find it just works better....

Micro Star Inc. is straight out of Taiwan

This is the fist MSI card I ever bought I used to stay away from them because their motherboards used to crappy like 10+ years ago.
 
My favorite gpu ever was an MSI 6950. Overclocked like a sumbitch with unlocked shaders and ran beautifully even in crossfire.
 
Autochthon said:
I thought I'd ask some opinions on MSI video cards.

I tend to keep hardware until it breaks or I pass it along to a relative.
I'm considering buying a 1080ti as I'm tired of using the 650ti I "temporarily" replaced my 6950 with after it failed, this was like 2 years ago ;) . I'm currently using a number of different monitors and TV's for my desktop one of which is 4k/60k with HDMI only input.

After looking over some of the 1080ti offerings only the Asus OC Graphics and MSI Gaming X appear to offer 2 hdmi out ports + dvi. Though the 2 hdmi aren't strictly necessary it would be convenient .

Unfortunately -
1. Asus asks a premium then has customer support that seems unworthy of that title.
2. Of the varied Video cards I've owned through the years I've only had two outright fail and both were MSI. One was a r6950 twinfrozrII - It lasted about 2 years; the other a NX8800GTS that lasted maybe 4 years. Neither was particularly abused but the 6950 had been shader unlocked to a 6970 (though voltage was kept at 6950 defaults). The 8800 was in sli with a XFX 8800GTS which still runs to this day.

So was my experience with MSI quality a fluke? I know many of you go through video cards like potato chips and wouldn't think of keeping a card even 2 years but I'd rather not buy a top end card to have it fail before I was ready to upgrade.

So any long term MSI owners out there?
Click to expand...

I sell a lot of MSI graphics cards at the shop I work at and haven't had any come back in the 7 months I have worked there. We deal with the 1st year warranty as well so in theory they're lasting a year. I've owned a MSI FX5600, RX390, RX390 and all gave me no issues for the time I had them. Just my experience.
 
MSI is my preferred GPU. Never had an issue with any of their cards.
 
I've had the MSI 670GTX Power Edition OC in my sig since 2012, great card, doesn't OC for shit though.
I also have a MSI mobo in my sig, that I've had since 2011, great mobo except for the cold boot bug from having all slots populated.

I've also have had over 8 MSI mobo's in the past and only had one die on me, but that was my fault.
I always run MSI mobo's on my gaming builds if I can help it.
 
My experience with MSI has been generally good. Had a 560Ti Twin Frozr from launch up until mid 2015 when one of the fans seized and by then it was overdue for an upgrade so I didn't fix it. Had a MSI AM3+ MB and it was great, lots of features and it overclocked a 1090T to 4 GHz on all 6 cores no issues for years. Did have a problem with a dual socket Pentium 3 MB back in the day. I RMA'd it and they sent me another without question but it had issues too which I got tired of fighting with so I sold off the extra CPU and retired the MB and went single socket. Heard at the time there was a few issues with those dual socket setups unless you were running server hardware so not sure if it was all MSI or not on that one. I'm running all EVGA's right now as the deals have been better locally and I've had several of their cards over the years but I'd have no problem opting for a MSI or Gigabyte videocard. The Twin Frozr and Windforce coolers are excellent and quiet and they both have quality components
 
MSI fanboy, have owned MSI 7870, MSI R9 270X, MSI GTX970ME, all work well, the R9 270X surprisingly i had fail on me, even though its in essence a 7870 with big cooler. RMA was painless and fast, dont have one complaint on that end. But here is the real perk, they allow you to remove the stock heatsink and manipulate the thermal paste etc without voiding the warranty as long as you replace the stock cooler back onto it. To me, thats a free perk of buying MSI.
 
I'm a first time MSI graphics card owner and also a client what I thought to be a bad card at first in late March the problem I had with the card was a Nvidia Driver issue that was fixed in the latest release last week. Basiscally I was getting bad eyestrain from how the drivers mingled with the card or Win 10 creators update now it's Rock solid using a Displayport to DVI adapter since my card didn't have a DVI port to start with.

381.89 using those drivers I had luck but not the last two sets were driving me crazy started changing cables and colors on the screen used HDMI for a while and that didn't mingle. I just had to wait around for the drivers to mature a bit which I did in the past by buying the card a few months later.
 
In the past, every MSI part I bought died, 4830, 470 GTX, 6600 GT.. I hear they don't suck anymore? I like the features of my Tomahawk mobo for the money..
 
Sodapopjones said:
In the past, every MSI part I bought died, 4830, 470 GTX, 6600 GT.. I hear they don't suck anymore? I like the features of my Tomahawk mobo for the money..
Click to expand...

When I usually buy a video card. MSI is the first company I look for. They make top notch video cards. I have bought a few of their motherboards over the years. No issues either.
 
I had been testing several of MSI's RX400 series cards, albeit not the 1080TI, but never the less they are very similar. The cards are well built and the coolers seem to work quite well. I do think the nVidia variants are bit more solid, but I can't really knock either of them.
 
alaricljs said:
Anecdotally, my 8800GTS failed in approximately the same time frame. It was an EVGA unit and I got a 460 as a replacement (if I'm remembering right).
Click to expand...

Same. My EVGA 8800GTS was the only card I've had outright die.

I just got an MSI GTX1080, no complaints so far. My previous MSI GTX970 gave me no troubles, and my old Z77a-gd65 mobo was a beast that's still trucking. No issues so far with any of my MSI products.
 
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