My last Nvidia experience - The tale of woe.

[alienware]

The last decent graphics card I had was a 5900 ultra. This was years ago. After that I became involved in other things and PC gaming was no longer affordable or do able due to my work and life circs. I just didn't have the time.

In 2008 I decided I wanted to buy a gaming PC. I brought a cyborg (or bogey) green Alienware from Ebay for peanuts (£280) and decided to upgrade it. After looking around and not realising Nvidia had big problems I decided to buy a 280GTX. I managed to find one about 8 months after it released for £180 refurb from XFX.

Worst experience of my life.

I won't go on and on and on about it so I shall sum it up in pictures. I had the card six months. I was playing Dirt 2 one day when all of a sudden.

Oh dear. So I prt scrn that pic there, pasted it into a saved file and tried to reboot.

And again

And again

Eventually I managed to get into Windows (though how remains a mystery) and it looked like I was doing a warp in Star Wars. Then I opened GPUZ and I was hitting 107c. Wow ! I checked the fan and it was fine. So I tried a different monitor.

Nope, that won't fix him either. Shortly afterward it refused to do anything at all. The monitor light went out and that was all she wrote.

Now I look around and I see this fermi rubbish that apparently comes with a big yellow warning on it saying you should not touch it for a few minutes until it has cooled down.

ARF ARF. I also see how they also hit 106es in Furmark. I can see them lasting long then, not.

Shortly afterward I got a 5770 and then shortly after that I got another one and a different motherboard. I will never buy another Nvidia card as long as I live (and tbh it doesn't sound like Nvidia will be around for much longer any way).

The end.

 

[AMDFTW]

i dont think the 280's were desingned to hit over 100c maybe 70-80 it could of been a memory issue or driver problem even a TIM issue.

fermis can withstand high temps over 100c its just the way they are made,so they should last long

 

[Rastalovich]

£180 refurb & XFX.

Nuff said for me. XFX are by no means the company they used to be imo. Simple hastles people I know personally have had over the last year or 2 have been totally out of character.

They used to be the brand I'd look out for first. Alphadog, XXX and the like.

Nah no more. If I seen a XFX 5870 and a Store-Own-Brand 5870 (reference), I'd get the store one.

 

[alienware]

I just can't see those kinds of temps being good for anything really. I know GPUs are notoriously hot but the fact that they had to stick heat pipes on a stock cooler and put a large yellow sticker on the card warning you not to touch it is bad.

Even when it ran at 'normal' temps my 280 turned the room into a sauna. It was terrible in the winter (so bad I had to turn off my radiator) but in the summer it was just unbearable.

Something is definintely not right there. When I got my 5770s it was January time and my room was so cold I had to turn the rad back on and close the windows. God only knows what all that heat was doing to the rest of my components.

My 5770s idle at around 52 and max out around 59. On a summer's day my 280 would idle at 59 and soar to 80s when used for anything more than looking at the net. Crazy.

As for XFX? Well I'm only just getting back into PC stuff and tbh I hadn't heard of them before. I do know that three out of five friends who got 280s and 285s three of them have had to send their cards back. One was PNY and the other two were BFG.

Recently BFG ceased trading in the UK. I don't know if that has anything to do with anything but it could be down to mass returns.

 

[Rastalovich]

Ah you get those yellow warning things on a number of components these days. Probably from manufs that'd had complaints and their legal department are covering arses.

Think your biggest issue here is the aquisition of the refurb. They really shouldn't offer these out. You have no idea who/how/why it's been refurbed. Could be cos the power regulators weren't good enough cos some1 ln2'd it and overflowed the current during an oc. The oc'er wouldn't admit to that when they returned it. The some woman in a back office gets it in, replaces the cooler, boots windows and sticks it in a box ?? who knows. Never get them if your an enthusiast or gamer.

Last card I purchased with my own cash was a Palit 285. Non reference cooler, sweet as a nut. Christ that was ages ago. Ask me about a Palit years ago ? I would probably have passed on them.

Some of the makes that pass by my desk tho, from the eventual expensive to the very cheap - there isn't much in it. Custom stuff tho you can tell the professionals.

 

[alienware]

Hmm well I will avoid XFX in the future then. I did notice something about Pine group. I sure hope that's not the same Pine that used to make car stereos. The ones that used to smell of burning and stop working within a week after all the knobs had fallen off.

My Radeons are XFX because at the time of buying they were £125 each. That was January and I could not get any other 5770s or for that matter XFX because they were hard to get hold of. Mine were £15 less than anywhere else and actually in stock. They were new, though.

 

[Steve-O-]

You could have had the notorious driver that nvidia accidentally put out that fried quite a few GPUs. But really that's only one bad experience. Also my mobos NB gets hot too and you shouldn't touch it for a few minutes after heavy gaming and such, does that mean it's a bad product? No. Any graphics card really is going to warm up your room. I have two 260s and I've never had problems (except for getting Sli to work right, but that's a different story).

 

[thestepster]

ive have an xfx gts250 its overclocked and for the past 6 weeks or so been folding away 24/7 and never had an issue with it at all

 

[alienware]

ive have an xfx gts250 its overclocked and for the past 6 weeks or so been folding away 24/7 and never had an issue with it at all

I had a 9800GT for a while that did that also. It seems to be their high end cards that run brutally hot.

 

[thestepster]

i have a bfg 9800gt oc edition and that runs about 15 degree's hotter and there both on there stock coolers

 

[alienware]

You could have had the notorious driver that nvidia accidentally put out that fried quite a few GPUs.

Nah wasn't that. The problems began one day whilst playing Trine (god I love that game). The card whirred up so loud I had to put my headphones on. So the fan was definitely working throughout. I know a fair few people who lost a 8800GTX to that driver though !

I still have Nvidia cards (8600 GTS in SLI) but for high end now I wouldn't touch them. I mean sure the Fermi cards are fast as a single GPU card but at what price? The heat and noise levels out of them is ridiculous. And I don't say that as an ATI fanboy because I am not but I have seen living proof. Also the power consumption? good lord. Nvidia say that for air cooled you should leave 2 slots open between the cards. But that means you cannot triple SLI unless you go water cooled. Excuse me for sounding nasty but isn't that just dumb? There are tri SLI boards out there in abundance (I know I used to own one, a 680i) and they are saying that the cards cannot perform that function unless I alter them?

Lest we not forget the EVGA pseudo quad SLI board.

When a company has to contradict itself in order to sell its wares you know they have problems.

 

[Slayeristight]

Few years back I ran sli 7900gt's and they worked fine for about a year and then I started having problems like you had. I thought that the cooler might be plugged with dust but the cooler was still clean from the last dusting I had done. I decided to take the cooler off and see what was going on and low and behold the thermal paste was burnt brown and hard when it should have been white and soft. I scraped it off and put on some good Arctic Silver thermal paste and problem solved.

I don't know why they use the cheap thermal paste but they do and I would guess it is the cause of a lot of GPU failures.

 

[Rastalovich]

You could have had the notorious driver that nvidia accidentally put out that fried quite a few GPUs.

Was actually a non-story about apple mbp onboard graphics, and asus/msi/dell onboard oem that was picked up before they hit the shelves, that was expanded upon for entertainment purposes. The projected doomsday results didn't happen as the goods didn't hit the consumers.

It was however a good reason to put forward for some1's gfxcard failing, without finding out the real reason.