I recently tried my Gtx 660 in a secondary computer, only to find out that the clock rate and memory rate was stuck at 324 Mhz. Mind you it still works and plays games, its just seriously underclocked and underpowered.
The next thing I noticed was it was using 460% of it's TDP according to GPU-Z, MSI Afterburner said the same thing. I didn't think anything of it as I was using a custom power supply to power it (Poweredge PSU wired to power the 12V rails).
After searching online I found someone else with the same problem, and it was concluded that the VRMs were dead and therefore the gpu wouldn't clock any higher.
I then remembered accidentally touching the GPU against a metal case two months ago when testing that it worked, and there being a large spark and burning smell, but thought nothing of it when it still worked.
I took off the cooler and low and behold, two of the mosfets (I think) had small burn marks on their GND return (again I think).
If I was to remove the capacitor or inductor so the vrm phase was seen as non-existant (there are apparently 4 phases, effectively removing one) would the PMW detect there were only three phases and readjust and detect nothing was wrong, or would my card be dead? I dont need to overclock, I just want my clockrate to be back at 1000Mhz, not 324Mhz.