Hate

[Sky]

Welp, it's late. I'm about to hit the sack and I check my email. I'm pissed and I'm done being quiet about it. TIme to spread the word.

Remember that evga 8800 gtx wtfexpensive gpu? Well, the RAM on it is defective, has to be underclocked to work properly. This is a widespread issue with the evga cards and they're trying to keep it quiet. They promised me a cross-shipment, and things seemed cool. They shipped me a vanilla 8800 (mine was factory overclocked). I contacted them to return it, and heard nothing for two weeks (I contacted a different person in their rma dept every couple days during that time without a response).

Finally I said fuck it and just returned the vanilla card using the return postage they sent (and the vanilla card appeared to be a used or refurb card!). Finally a guy wrote me back after I wrote their manager about the lack of contact and how I sent the card back. One guy said send it back, another wanted me to take a picture to verify I wasn't lying!

The card took another couple weeks to be considered delivered. It was delivered to a guard a few days after I sent it, but all I heard for the next several days were threats of charging my CC for the full amount of the cross-shipped (wrong) card if I didn't return the defective card. Then I get an email saying the RMA is complete, as if there was no problem and I had sent back the defective card. This was over a week ago, haven't heard from them since.

So I'm pissed, and tired of evga. So I fall back on the good ol' egg. Which brings us to the present.

I'm covered for a year replacement through the egg. So I shoot off an email to their rma, they've always been cool. But since I contacted the manufacturer first, they claim it voids my warranty and tell me to deal with evga, the folks who pissed me off so much I contacted the egg in the first place!

What the fuck. I zipped off an angry email to the egg, I do thousands of dollars a year through them personally and professionally, both these companies are supposed to be great customer service. Right now I'm righteously pissed with a fucking expensive (nice, I'll grant you) video card with underclocked memory (because it won't perform at stock speeds). And my only apparent option is to deal with the manufacturer who is sending out refurbs for a card I paid premium dollar for!

Just thought I'd pass this along in the hopes it helps someone else avoid a problem. Next stop....BBB.

[Trippy]

Well that sucks. My current card is an eVGA but I'm going to skip them for my next card. I'd talk to Newegg again and talk to somebody else over there.

[Strazos]

Yeah, since you had a service plan through Newegg, I'm honestly not sure why you skipped them first. They're probably technically correct in denying your RMA on the card, seeing as you don't have it anymore, and they would need that card to get their money back from eVGA (I imagine). I always just go through Newegg first if I can help it.

As an aside, my BFG card has been working flawlessly, so I would heartily recommend them.

[schild]

Eeek. I was almost going to get an Evga mobo. Le Sigh.

[Engels]

I recently had a fiasco with New Egg myself. Something I payed Next Day shipping on didn't get to me for 5 days after it left their facility, and I spent over 7 emails 'convincing' them that I should be refunded shipping costs. The blessing/problem with New Egg email customer support is that your 'case' is handled by one rep the whole time. If that rep turns out to be a retard, you're stuck.

I finally got through to the rep, with an elaborate argument that included time lines, quotes from the rep herself, ontological arguements on the meaning of 'late' and several charts and graphs illustrating my declining satisfaction with this particular rep's ability to cogitate the days on a calendar, etc.

I still like New Egg, mostly.

[Strazos]

Ouch. Somehow, I've had nice agents when I've needed them. Especially when I wanted to send back a card that was about a year old, but I didn't have all the original pack-in stuff. That particular rep didn't care.

Also, sometimes actually Calling them can be helpful.

[Sky]

Yeah, since you had a service plan through Newegg, I'm honestly not sure why you skipped them first. They're probably technically correct in denying your RMA on the card, seeing as you don't have it anymore, and they would need that card to get their money back from eVGA (I imagine). I always just go through Newegg first if I can help it.

As an aside, my BFG card has been working flawlessly, so I would heartily recommend them.

I do still have the card. Evga seemed like it was doing a good deal, cross-shipping the replacement for free. But the replacement was a non-KO (factory overclock), the wrong card. So I sent the /replacement/ back. I still have the original card.

The only reason I skipped the egg was evga. I was using their message boards to isolate the problem, someone (ok, a LOT of someones) had the same problem, crashing in 3d apps after a couple minutes. All of us had success with underclocking the memory. One guy was told that was reason for rma and got a working card, so the rest of us just went ahead with rma through evga, mostly because they cross-shipped. That's when the word got about about refurbs being sent out.

Eeek. I was almost going to get an Evga mobo. Le Sigh.

I'd check out the manufacturer's forums before buying any new pc hardware after this episode. I know there are some issues with evga's 680i mobos from just reading the 8800 boards.

And yeah, next step is Actually Calling Them. I'm hoping newegg just misunderstands the situation, thinking I don't have the original card. I'd call evga if it weren't for the whole refurb thing, that bothers me. My first contact to evga was Feb 20th!

[Strazos]

Oh, seems I misunderstood you as well. If you have the original card, you should be fine.

[Morfiend]

I'd check out the manufacturer's forums before buying any new pc hardware after this episode. I know there are some issues with evga's 680i mobos from just reading the 8800 boards.

They where having a lot more than a few problems with their mobos. I would steer clear of the 680i boards until you know for a fact all the problems are ironed out. Anyway, the only real reason to get a 680i is if you plan to do SLi, and thats a whole 'nother thread.

[Sky]

I had planned on 680i for this pc, and came to the same conclusion. Since I don't plan on doing SLI I went with 975X.

[Engels]

Good man. My instinct with this sort of stuff is to steer clear of 3rd party hardware till all the nuts and bolts are ironed out. No NForce chipsets, no evga motherboards, no nothing, until the two new technologies, namely Core2Duo boards and the new 8000 series video cards, not to mention Vista, have their collective acts together. Once that's been ironed out in the market for a while, its cool to go out and buy the new Gigabyte WTF9000 ExTr33M3 board, but not till then.

[Sky]

Honestly, the only problem is that evga used memory for stock cards in their factory overclocked boards. Speculation says they saw the big gains in o/cing 8800s on enthusiast sites, tested a few batches and went at it. Not all the memory can stand up to it. The stock 8800gtx's are splendid, and the factory o/c boards with good memory are even better. I don't regret my purchase for a second, it's the customer service that has me seething.

[Venkman]

I'm stupid, so need to ask: does this affect any nVidia 8800 card? Or just certain ones? And how can I check the 8800 I currently have to see if it's got the same issue?

[hal]

3 to 4 weeks ago i received my system with an EGVA 8800 GTS 640 MB and I have no issues with it. It is the factory overclocked model as well. I am certainly not denying the problem discussed here just saying its not an all model problem.

[Engels]

I'm stupid, so need to ask: does this affect any nVidia 8800 card? Or just certain ones? And how can I check the 8800 I currently have to see if it's got the same issue?

No no, just the ones assembled by eVGA that are factory overclocked.

[Strazos]

3 to 4 weeks ago i received my system with an EGVA 8800 GTS 640 MB and I have no issues with it. It is the factory overclocked model as well. I am certainly not denying the problem discussed here just saying its not an all model problem.

Holy crap Hal...that might be your most cogent, clearly-written post...ever.  :-D

[Sky]

Only evga factory overclocked cards. The memory is robust, so most of them seem to be ok with the overclock, but QA missed a bunch. That's why I'm not really upset about that part of the problem, just to CS mishandling. Even at stock speeds it's a monster card.

Check the evga boards if you're curious.

DQ, you'd know you had the issue about two minutes into the first 3d app you ran :) Lockup and bsod.

[Venkman]

Oh, ouch. Ok, no issues, and I've been pushing things a bit. So far I've not played anything I couldn't max out, but that's only been TR, LoTRO, Call of Duty 2 and random others. Any recommendations for an envelope pusher?

[Trippy]

Oh, ouch. Ok, no issues, and I've been pushing things a bit. So far I've not played anything I couldn't max out, but that's only been TR, LoTRO, Call of Duty 2 and random others. Any recommendations for an envelope pusher?

FF XI Benchmark or 3DMark06.

[Strazos]

Doom 3?

HoMM5 can be surprisingly taxing.

[schild]

Really, you've got 3 options.

FEAR, Half Life 2 Episode 1, and Oblivion with some ridiculous texture pack.

Basically, the games you've tested with Darn are small fries.

[Trippy]

Doom 3?

I don't think the built in Doom 3 demo can loop, though I could be wrong. I like the leave one of the two above benchmarks running overnight in a new system and if it's still running in the morning (or afternoon as the case may be) I know there's no major hardware problem with the video card.

[Venkman]

Ah, yea, forgot about Oblivion. Not a big fan of the HL series.

What about one of the Age of Empires RTS things, like the newest one. Not so much?

I always figured MMOs were small fry for this sort of thing because they seem to need to lag behind the bleeding edge if they want more than a relative handful of subscribers.

[schild]

Uhhh. I didn't know you had to be a fan of something to crank up some graphics and shit.

I'm not a big fan of HL2 or Oblivion, but the landscapes are undeniably gorgeous and computer crippling.

I can run AoE3 on my dogshit machine at almost 80% max, so, no. Same with C&C 3.

[Kitsune]

My current card is eVGA, a 7900GT, and it's been problem-free.  The only manufacturer on my shit list right now is PNY, because every single 4400 PNY card owned by not only myself but my two roommates died from the capacitors blowing.  Sending them off for replacements got back refurbished cards that also died from bad capacitors a couple months down the line.

From what I hear, BFG is the top of the pile when it comes to video card quality, but their cards are also more expensive than the competition.

[ajax34i]

SLI or CrossFire should be the ONLY reasons to choose any particular chipset, because otherwise there's apparently no performance loss from putting any type of video board into any type of motherboard chipset.

[Sir Fodder]

Thats a pretty harsh deal from EVGA and Newegg, surprising because it seemed to me like those two companies have some of the best customer service reputations in the biz. FWIW I got one of the EVGA 8800 GTS 640MB boards and it seems to handle some really extreme overclocking just fine, maybe they put the nice RAM on the less expensive boards by accident...

[Sky]

Oh, ouch. Ok, no issues, and I've been pushing things a bit. So far I've not played anything I couldn't max out, but that's only been TR, LoTRO, Call of Duty 2 and random others. Any recommendations for an envelope pusher?

I've run FEAR, Medeival 2 (HAET), Gothic 3, MUA, EQ2, LotRO and maybe a couple other stragglers I can't recall. (add Oblivion, but I haven't added textures or tweaked it yet, looks good stock maxed out)

The only two that choke the gtx are EQ2 and Gothic 3, but they look shweeeet. With Gothic 3, I've modded it a bit for better visuals (pushed beyond what you can do with just ingame settings via ini). With EQ2, I still have the lights turned down a bit and maybe 6 full-res models, with distant models only on medium (or maybe high), and it can choke in town, especially hub areas like banks or kelethin broker. I've got shadows almost all the way up, but player torches set to one. EQ2 is a MONSTER engine but it really delivers on visuals once you get max textures, lots of specular lights and shadows firing off. Crazy nice. Art style is always debatable, but LotRO looked wicked bland to me after a few weeks of EQ2 on the 8800gtx.

I'd say EQ2 takes the stress test crown, lots of room to tweak it upwards with lighting and shadows, as well as adding more large-texture models. Still room for more lower-textured models, I think I capped lower textureds (which is still medium or high, I forget) at 65 or so, which is why I get the town lag around banks...but it looks great. I also have a lot of max particles going on, too. Gothic 3 does have a lot of headroom left via the ini, so either can push your hardware as far as it will go and still leave a lot of room to max out settings. Good stuff!

HL2 never stressed out my 9800pro, but I run at 1280x720, maybe that's it? 256-bit memory controller ftw? I haven't loaded it on the new machine yet. FEAR doesn't touch it, I've got it maxed out and it's like glass (great visual effects, too). And as I said, I'm at a fixed res, so take that into consideration!

maybe they put the nice RAM on the less expensive boards by accident...

Luck of the draw, pretty much. Current opinion seems to be it's all from the same pool (that is, all the gtx from one pool, all the gts from another). The bad caps could be from that year when every damned thing made had bad caps. Had two motherboards go at work during that year.

[Strazos]

Ah, remember that guy out in the midwest who set up a business of swapping out those bad capacitors?

[Sky]

More hate: LotRO edition. Can't cancel my preorder. They said I could return the box to a store location. I imagine /that/ would be an enjoyable experience. I'll be hitting the bank and having them block eb/gamestop orders, methinks. Looks like I buy games from Amazon now. It's turning out to be one heck of a week.

Have to call newegg and maybe evga at some point this week, too. Haven't heard shit from either company. Right now newegg has my complaint letter (sent just before the first post of this thread) and hasn't responded beyond auto-reponse, and as far as evga is concerned, my RMA is completed and I'm satisfied! 

[Strazos]

If you just Reserved LotRO and got the pre-order disc from EBstop, you should be able to get a refund of the $5 or however much you put down.

[Sky]

Ordered online like a dumbass. Last time I do that. No pre-order disc, I had to download the beta.

The gpu saga rolls on....contacted newegg via their online chat. More like the newegg experience I've become used to over the years, quick professional friendly. Got an RMA # issued in five minutes.

Downsides are dualfold: it's not a cross-ship and it's out of stock.

One thing I was hopeful about evga, they cross-ship, which is huge imo. I'll be out of town this weekend, so it's not a huge deal, but I'm looking at a week or two without a gpu in my shiny new pc :( What's worse is that it's out of stock (which I find interesting given the fairly widespread memory issues...), so I'll probably end up with a refund and still have no gpu in my pc.

[Strazos]

They're fairly quick with their RMA process, and if you can arrange it so they give you a quick refund, you could certainly get a new card installed inside of 2 weeks.

[Sky]

I'm officially without a home computer right now. I'll probably hook up the old busted tonight. Should be a shock after a couple months of the new hotness.

[Sky]

And the end of the story draws near. Got a refund from newegg because they took these cards off the 'shelf'. It was out-of-stock, now it's removed from the website. My bets are the RAM simply couldn't handle the overclock in large enough quantities to make them reliably.

Going to shop for a vanilla 8800gtx. I'd like to go evga, but now I'm wary. Maybe asus?