Possible problems with shipping 7900series

[Beomagi]

numerous forums are reporting failures with the 7900gt/gtx
while it's mostly the factory oc'd cards, the normal ones are also failing (one person reported that UNDERCLOCKING by quite a lot fixed his card's freezing/glitch issues)

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1029419513#post1029419513
http://www.maximumpc.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=39436
http://www.maximumpc.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=39974
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?threadid=181805

Oh i forgot to mention aswell that XFX shut there forums down due to too many complaints about these cards.

http://www.short-media.com/forum/showthread.php?t=45749

I bought 22 of these cards for a gaming centre, not realizing the problems people were having. Well, now I know. After putting them in systems and testing them out, 4 are going back to be replaced. Thats almost 20% bad cards, very poor QC from EVGA here...I'm very disappointed in them.

http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthread.php?s=374d5e2a0e6768ec1f9370f5644f2e75&p=477387#post477387


PC-PER has a full article on it
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=235

Until these issues are cleared up, I'd recommend the ATI x1800xt or x1900gt. It's one thing to quibble about a few frames tweaks and what quality settings we want - but I prefer to avoid possible failures.

In the words of Fry Farnsworth, "Fix it! Fix it! Fix it! Fix it!!!!   Fix it! Fix it! Fix it! Fix it! Fix it!!!"

[TriniXaeno]

dammit

and I just bought one for my birthday. Would hate to have to RMA the card.

Should have listened to w1ntry and went with the x1800xt

[W1nTry]

Until these issues are cleared up, I'd recommend the ATI x1800xt or x1900gt. It's one thing to quibble about a few frames tweaks and what quality settings we want - but I prefer to avoid possible failures.

In the words of Fry Farnsworth, "Fix it! Fix it! Fix it! Fix it!!!! Fix it! Fix it! Fix it! Fix it! Fix it!!!"

GASPS!!!!! did beo just say X1800XT?? damn that sucks for Nvidia

dammit

and I just bought one for my birthday. Would hate to have to RMA the card.

Should have listened to w1ntry and went with the x1800xt

That would SO suck Baego... hopefully you'll not be 1 of the unlucky ones....

[Beomagi]

Recall my criterion W1nTry

AND you like to overclock/tweak, your best choice is the 7900GT.
.
.
.
I wholeheartedly would recommend an x1800xt to non tweakers, especially since they offer rebates at times that can drop the price to $250.

I've been recommending the x1800xt to those that dont overclock.
When i buy a card, I go for the best I can get, without a care as to which company it's from. It's why I have a 6800GT and an x1900xt.

As an overclocker, I go for what would generally be faster for me, and while the 7900gt provides that, I sure as hell hate waiting while a card is RMA'd

As a side note, i'm not finding anything consistently wrong with the 7600gt or 7600gs series. Looks like they're fair game.

[W1nTry]

It was a j/k beo lighten up but that being said... that still sucks though. Is it a widespread problem or isolated cases???

[Beomagi]

Sorry if i seem too serious man. Some forums have people that jump on you sorta the moment you say something nice about one company or bad about the other. Getting to used to CMA (covering my a.... )

Widespread. Each forum has members of that forum - names not present in the other forums - of individuals coming forward saying yes, they've had problems.

If xfx closed their forum because of complaints then it's a big problem - and xfx is one of nvidia's bigger distributers. The EVGA cards are where most of the complaints are coming from though.

I don't believe it's something as minor as overclocked cards as the article on pc-per makes it out to be - people with normal, or lower oc'd cards are having problems. I'm holding off for a month, and if the complaints are still rolling in, then to the FX bin with this line

[W1nTry]

Hmm interesting... I for 1 don't like XFX b/c of a bad experience a while back. When I was upgrading from meh Geforce 3 to either Geforce 5xxx I bought a XFX Geforce 5900XT. Nice big fancy box, nice blue card, nice that IT NEVER F^&(ing WORKED!!! 200TT to ship down, another 200 to SHIP BACK and the DAMN thing NEVER WORKED. I bought meh 9800Pro instead. Never looked back to Nvidia since. But that could change... however maybe next cycle.

[Spazosaurus]

Some people report that with good cooling concentrated to the voltage regulator (which seems to be the trouble part) the cards dont die. Reports seem to be mixed so I guess part of it is luck of the draw. In light of this development, I for one would steer away from them and go the ATI way which has proven to bestable and robust so far. I cyah handle this RMA thing.

[TrinireturnofGamez]

 my 6600gt  !%*#@! explode!  and it wasn't even playing a game!   running my old 8500 now , got the card cheap ,  overclocked the hell out of it , fan on it fail from old age.. and it still working!
    Nvidia needs to set higher standards for 3rd party manufacturers ..

[Beomagi]

Powercolor had a bad rep for a long time and many people steer clear of them - and that's ati's camp. Unfortunately they cannot force other companies to comply with standards. e.g. The 7800 series could support dual link dvi - but only a few companies actually implemented it.

I dont think it's the companies, I believe this time it's a problem with nvidias design.

[W1nTry]

I agree with you there Beo. The reference design could use some work, but that's not to say the 3rd parties couldn't tweak the design a bit. Look at how many carbon copies there are out there (eVGA being one of the worst offenders... funny their cards are failing the most...). Take for instance HIS, Gainward and then there are after market coolers like from Artic Cooling, etc. I am sure with a lil effort they could tweak the pcb a bit, use higher quality parts, etc. But before you counter my arguments, i'll admit that nt ALL the 3rd party manus can afford that kind aR&D not to mention it would push the price up for R&D + better parts. So we the consmer would pay more... but then what do u suppose is better, take reference and it fails, u get upset consumer and lots of RMA and still have to redeisgn or pray Nvidia does, OR tweak the design from the start, absorb the cost, knowing it will cost you less in the long run.

[Beomagi]

Actually they are tweaking - nastily

In the pc-per update, some of the new bios options for those cards, while they overclock some parts of the core, they underclock the parts they think are causing the problems - the vertex shaders. THAT imo, isn't a fix, but a temporary spit and bailing wire approach.

Nvidia wont wont the responsibility of selling cards unfortunately. The margins are sooooo low. So many companies went out of business with them.

oh some comapnies are amazing though Gainward with their 7800 and 7900 on agp, higher grades of memory, HIS with their x1800gto that unlocked to (*GASP*) x1800xt and better coolers, Asus with a complete redesign, power adapter for a dual chip 7800gt - but yeah - these companies have been in the business a long while (especially asus) or have income from other areas, so they can afford it.

Ironically, you'd have wanted the xfx or evga for their warranty :/

[Spazosaurus]

In my experience, each model card in each brandname card differes from series to series. One series may be manufactured and have very little failures, while another series in the same brand just flops. For example, the BFG brand is pretty well known and respected....their 7800 line was very solid with little cards needing to be rma'd while their current batch of 7900's have capacitors falling off the pcb's by the time they reach the users. There seems to be a good bit of failing E 7900 cards while the 6800 was bess.

[W1nTry]

More supporting the 7900GT issues:

7900 GTs frizzle, while Nvidia shrugs

Warranty wrangles wrangled


By Fuad Abazovic: Wednesday 31 May 2006, 17:56

 SOME NVIDIAN 7900 GTs, especially the ones that are heavily overclocked, can fry up rather easily.
With card-makers pushing Nvidia's chip to its limit, with overclocking and hyper-cooling, some its sheems aregiving up the ghost.

And, with the way Nvidia manages its warranty issues, Nvidia's channel partners might be looking at a costly overhead in replacing these Kentucky-fried graphics boards and chips.

End users should not worry too much, a Nvidia assures us, apart from the hassle of replacing their kit, that is.

HardOCP started the whole thing and I do advise you to read it here.

With companies pushing the chips to the limits, there is a high RMA (Return Merchandise Authorisation ), much higher than usual.

It is Nvidia's obligation to replace the fried chip for the first year but the vendor has to support the product for at least two to three years.

Some companies are even offering a life-time warranty. So companies such as EVGA, XFX, Gainward, BFG or other have to replace every single card within the warranty period, at least for two years. After the first year Nvidia doesn’t care about the chips, as it offers just a year of warranty.

It is very expensive for any company to RMA a card as it has to get the card, fix it, if possible and ship it back to the end-user. That costs a lot of time and money.

If your RMA is less than one per cent the Nvidia partner company is happy but Hard OCP suggested that the RMA on a 7900 GT is close to ten per cent. That's a lot. And certainly it means that all the top overclocking companies such as XFX, BFG, EVGA stand to lose serious money on RMA cards.

It is always pain for end users to pack the card up, ship it and get the new one. We have to wait at least a week if not two or more to get the fixed card or a new one. I guess Nvidia allowed its partners to push the chip a little bit too much this time. µ

They didn't mention 7900GTX though... if that were happening in the highend too that would seriously hurt...

[TriniXaeno]

RMA sucks indeed

I think (hope) part of the equation that may be contributing to this, is the market overclocking these cards even further.

Someone tech savy enough to buy a "pre-overclocked" 7900GT video card is very likely to try overclocking it himself.