GTX 295. Nothing but problems

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sanitarium16

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 5, 2007
Messages
328
I purchased an EVGA GTX 295 off newegg 2 weeks ago. The initial card i recieved was artifacting. Called up EVGA tech support and they sent me another one. The replacement would not install giving an error code 43. I reinstalled Windows and it still would not work. Called up EVGA again and they sent me another card. Now this card i recieved works but locks up in 3D intense games. It gets to 71C in an Antec 1200 with a side case fan blowing on the card. Tried different drivers, setting to single GPU mode and tried tweaking my game settings. Same result. So now im waiting on yet another replacement. EVGA tech suppot is great and being open 24/7 helps. Im just very disappointed. I don't know if this is a reflection of EVGA or Nvidia, but ultimatley its EVGA making the card. I have to say i don't know if ill buy EVGA again after this which is unfortunate because i really like the company. I just want a working card so hopefully 4th time is a charm.
 
Yes, it's always their fault, never your's.
After this many problems, I would say you have another issue beyond the video card.
 
71c is actually a good temp for a 295.

Anyways, my experiences with the GTX 295 have been incredibly positive, especially so with EVGA branded cards.
 
Definitely a problem with something else and not the card.
 
Agree with others here. Sounds like something else is wrong. Power supply, power components on motherboard, or something like that maybe? I realize your power supply should have no problem with this card, but maybe there's a problem with it or something. I've had zero problems with mine, and haven't heard of anyone else needing replacements yet. (not that there aren't people who do, but I haven't heard anything.)
 
sanitarium16 said:
I have to say i don't know if ill buy EVGA again after this which is unfortunate because i really like the company. I just want a working card so hopefully 4th time is a charm.
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So they've clearly helped you as best they can by sending multiple replacement cards, and you're deciding not to buy from them again?

Like others have said, it may be something else. But even if it isn't, shit happens with technology sometimes and your experience with eVGA should be a POSITIVE reason to keep buying from them IMO.
 
sanitarium16 said:
I don't know if this is a reflection of EVGA or Nvidia, but ultimatley its EVGA making the card. I have to say i don't know if ill buy EVGA again after this which is unfortunate because i really like the company. I just want a working card so hopefully 4th time is a charm.
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Does EVGA actually make the card? I thought Nvidia or someone else made the cards and they get shipped to EVGA, BFG, XFX, etc, for rebranding.

So the card you get from EVGA is pretty much identical to the one you get at BFG, or XFX, with the exception of occassional mods to the cooling and clock speeds.

Again, that is how I think it works... so I wasn't really upset with EVGA when my GTX280 ran up to 105C in games and artifacted, since all they seemed to do was put their sticker on the mistake someone else made.

*shrug*
 
Evga just slaps a sticker on the card and does the customer support and bins the card.

This is why it's allways a good idea to have a decent backup PSU. They can go bad too, causing the problems that you are describing. Are you sure that your 12v rails are balanced?
 
Tried different PSU, Memory and even reseated processor, same result. I also have been trying the cards on a seperate Dell PC and it gives me the same results. I never said i was unhappy with the service i recieved just disapointed that there isnt more quality control. I thought cards were tested before they shipped out.
 
My evga gtx 295 came from newegg.com as well and was completely DOA.

I got a replacement through EVGA and this one causes bluescreens whenever I play any game within the first 1-5 minutes.

I'm getting a third card next week. I've been using an EVGA gtx 280 in the meantime and its been working fine.
 
sanitarium16 said:
Tried different PSU, Memory and even reseated processor, same result. I also have been trying the cards on a seperate Dell PC and it gives me the same results. I never said i was unhappy with the service i recieved just disapointed that there isnt more quality control. I thought cards were tested before they shipped out.
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Thats pretty crazy. Have you tried a different video card in your pc just to rule it out completely, preferably one that draws alot? I agree with you all signs point to the video card. You could try to run the OCCT GPU test in full screen preferably while running OCCT or prime. I know it supports crossfire, but Im not sure about sli. It will give you a graph of your 12v line and temps. I know that works good if you have a single 12v rail, not so sure about a multi. Good luck man. That sucks.
 
I always hear people rmaing to evga numerous times and not resolving their issue. If I were you just stay away from evga next time they nots like you.
 
I got a PNY 295 at Microcenter 3 weeks ago when it was on sale for $439. I use the card hard and have it overclocked hits mid 80's temp durring long sessions of warhead. I have been very happy with the card Zero problems
 
I just wanted to update everyone on my post up above. After 3 RMAs, I finally got a working EVGA GTX 295....

EVGA... lets improve the quality please!
 
I find it hard to believe that two of you had to rma three times to get a card that wasn't faulty. This may be why these cards are in such short supply?
 
bacon said:
I find it hard to believe that two of you had to rma three times to get a card that wasn't faulty. This may be why these cards are in such short supply?
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Possibly, but if the 295 really had failure rates like that, wouldn't we know about it already?
Regardless, I wouldn't blame EVGA. I think they all get their products from the same source, the only difference is the sticker on the box.
 
Maybe, but this second (or third)batch could have had issues? That is still strange for one person let alone two people to get three bad cards from EVGA.
 
I diagnosed all 3 cards bad with EVGA's advanced tech suppot. All were defective right out of the box. My first card purchased from newegg had artifacting, the second card EVGA sent me to replace that gave me error code 43 (hardware problem) and would not install. I thought it was a driver issue so i reformatted but had the same issue. My third card EVGA sent me to replace the second card worked fine in 2d but would freeze running 3d applications. It would not even manage to get past 3DMark Vantage without freezing. After troubleshooting with EVGA advanced support they determined it was the card and sent me out this fourth one. So far so good, no artifacting or freezing. You may find it hard to believe but it happened. On a side note my EVGA X58 did not work out of the box. I called EVGA techsupport and they advised me to move one memory stick all the way to the right. It booted. I was advised to perform a BIOS update which fixed the board, it had some issue with triple channel DDR3 memory which was fixed. I also just bought a EVGA 730a motherboard for a friend and built him a computer. Everything worked but when it shut down it would not shut off, we would have to turn off the power supply then power it back on. I replaced the power supply, memory, reseated the processor and removed all peripherals, still didnt work. A call to EVGA tech support determined there was something wrong with the motherboard. I recieved the replacement the other day and it is now fine. I am a big fan of EVGA, the service i recieved was top notch. It just seems like their products don't really get tested before they ship out.
 
MurderCityDevil said:
no they aint
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QFT.

Nvidia manufactures these cards, ships them to companies like EVGA, BFG, etc. They then slap on their own coolers and custom bios to set the clock speeds to whatever rate they sell the product at.

This is not EVGA's fault, but they are biting the bullet in a great attempt to resolve your issue.

I ordered a GeForce 280 GTX SSC back in November from mwave, it would blue screen and sometimes just lock the computer up completely while gaming. I then RMA'd it through EVGA and my replacement card has been kicking well ever since.

There is a good chance that my card was from the first batch of bad cards that Nvidia shipped out to companies, mwave probably doesn't move their higher end stock as much and thats why 5 months or so later after launch I had one of those defective cards.

Replacement works like a charm though, I never blamed EVGA it was clearly Nvidia who dropped the ball on the first batch of 280s...
 
Derfman said:
QFT.

Nvidia manufactures these cards, ships them to companies like EVGA, BFG, etc. They then slap on their own coolers and custom bios to set the clock speeds to whatever rate they sell the product at.

This is not EVGA's fault, but they are biting the bullet in a great attempt to resolve your issue.

I ordered a GeForce 280 GTX SSC back in November from mwave, it would blue screen and sometimes just lock the computer up completely while gaming. I then RMA'd it through EVGA and my replacement card has been kicking well ever since.

There is a good chance that my card was from the first batch of bad cards that Nvidia shipped out to companies, mwave probably doesn't move their higher end stock as much and thats why 5 months or so later after launch I had one of those defective cards.

Replacement works like a charm though, I never blamed EVGA it was clearly Nvidia who dropped the ball on the first batch of 280s...
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They do bin the cards and charge money to do so, I would imagine that they would need to test the cards in the process.
 
UtopiA said:
Possibly, but if the 295 really had failure rates like that, wouldn't we know about it already?
Regardless, I wouldn't blame EVGA. I think they all get their products from the same source, the only difference is the sticker on the box.
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No, I don't think that we would know, but it would explain why these things are so hard to find.
 
BababooeyHTJ said:
No, I don't think that we would know, but it would explain why these things are so hard to find.
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If this is wide spread, I wonder if it is a mfg error on the part of the board makers or if it's just a bad batch of gpu's, or just some defective board parts, (capacitors and the like). As you said, they are somewhat difficult to get a hold of, so not that many have them, and problems at some level of the mfg process may at least in part be why.
 
My first EVGA GTX 295+ PLUS was defective, i'll get my replacement monday (EVGA GTX 295 with With Backplate) since the 295+ got discontinued less than 30 days after release.
 
Cyant said:
My first EVGA GTX 295+ PLUS was defective, i'll get my replacement monday (EVGA GTX 295 with With Backplate) since the 295+ got discontinued less than 30 days after release.
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what was the 295+? I remember hearing about it but never found out.

edit: I guess it was a pre OC'd version. just googled.
 
This is too good. I just got a GTX280 from an EAR which was artifacting like crazy at stock clocks much worse than the 280 that I wanted to replace, but if I can't get a halfway decent one I might as well keep the old one since the artifacting is very mild. So much a 50mhz core or shader overclock would cause immidiate artifacting in Ati tool. So I called Evga who told me that anything under 11.96v will cause artifacting on their cards (since Evga makes them). LOL I then told him that apparently Nvidia dosen't follow ATX spec. I love these customer service guys.
 
maybe they were sending you each the other guy's card!!! Sounds like this will be a short lived production card. Same fate as the previous dual gpu nvidia cards.
 
EVGA doesn't make the graphics cards, nVidia does.
If you get a defective one, oh well, it's nVidia's fault not EVGA's.
No company has yet to be proven perfect
 
tonyluu said:
EVGA doesn't make the graphics cards, nVidia does.
If you get a defective one, oh well, it's nVidia's fault not EVGA's.
No company has yet to be proven perfect
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So, in the act of binning the cards they don't test them?
 
I'd guess Nvidia pretests all the cards beforehand anyways and afterwards they label which cards have overclock potential and which dont. It would seem rather redundant and money wasting for nvidia partners to check all the cards again.
 
I was planning on upgrading to one of these when the price fell a bit, but after reading problem after problem I don't think I will. Shame its an awesome card when it works. :(
 
My new card work very well. Nice OC with it too.
675 Core / 1566 Shader / 1269 Memory OC - Stock is 575/1242/999
1.088 Volt In EVGA Voltage Tuner
74 Celcius GPU1 and 76 Celcius GPU2 after 18 minutes of ATI Tool artifact testing. (66/64 idle stock speed)
 
tonyluu said:
EVGA doesn't make the graphics cards, nVidia does.
If you get a defective one, oh well, it's nVidia's fault not EVGA's.
No company has yet to be proven perfect
Click to expand...


All you people stating this don't have any facts right what so ever. TSMC and Nvidia's other manufacture make the cards. The cards are then sent to the AIB makers like eVGA, XFX,Asus, and BFG straight from the manufacture. It is the sole responsibliltiy of eVGA and the other companys to test and distribute these after doing Quality Control testing. That includes your pretty stickers on the card and the overclocking speed versions. It IS the company's fault for letting broken cards into market, especially the OC'd versions these cards.

Nvidia designs. They then have Test Silicon Revisions to work through before making a final call on the final setttings and specs. The boards are not made in house at nVidia.

So Blaming Nvidia makes you so pretty damn stupid when the company's are the ones to be held accountable for letting garbage out the door without proper testing. If it was a design flaw, yes its Nvidia's fault and would be known by now and hurt Nvidia's bottom line in a bad way. People wouldn't be buying from a company that DESIGNS bad cards in the first place. Perfect example was the S3 Savage 2000 chip where Hardware T&L was broken, they tried a software work around, but word was out that the card was bad silicon in the first place. Where is S3?
 
One day people will learn not to buy sandwich cards from nvidia. All 3 of my 285s are running rock solid.
 
SnowBeast said:
All you people stating this don't have any facts right what so ever. TSMC and Nvidia's other manufacture make the cards. The cards are then sent to the AIB makers like eVGA, XFX,Asus, and BFG straight from the manufacture. It is the sole responsibliltiy of eVGA and the other companys to test and distribute these after doing Quality Control testing. That includes your pretty stickers on the card and the overclocking speed versions. It IS the company's fault for letting broken cards into market, especially the OC'd versions these cards.

Nvidia designs. They then have Test Silicon Revisions to work through before making a final call on the final setttings and specs. The boards are not made in house at nVidia.

So Blaming Nvidia makes you so pretty damn stupid when the company's are the ones to be held accountable for letting garbage out the door without proper testing. If it was a design flaw, yes its Nvidia's fault and would be known by now and hurt Nvidia's bottom line in a bad way. People wouldn't be buying from a company that DESIGNS bad cards in the first place. Perfect example was the S3 Savage 2000 chip where Hardware T&L was broken, they tried a software work around, but word was out that the card was bad silicon in the first place. Where is S3?
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Evga just tried to send me a GTX280 "superclocked" for my rma that couldn't get 50mhz over stock on the core or shader without artifacting almost immideatly in ATI tool nevermind the artifacting at stock clocks in Crysis. Needless to say that is on it's way back. Their quality control is slipping.
 
veedubfreak said:
One day people will learn not to buy sandwich cards from nvidia. All 3 of my 285s are running rock solid.
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FTW. i sure am glad I stayed clear of the whole dual card mess when upgrading. then again, I did come from a 9800gx2. needless to say, I've learned my lesson.

PCB SANDWICH...NOM NOM NOM....
 
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