Warning PNY 6800's at CompUSA with missing capacitors

Scott5000

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Nov 27, 2004
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:eek: Just picked up my PNY 6800 from CompUSA for the $199 deal, opened it and noticed a capacitor sitting in the bottom of the plastic. You can also see where it fell off on the back of the card. I figured it was a fluke and decided to try the card anyway since the closest CompUSA is 40 mins. away :mad: . The card seems to work, but will not overclock even 1 mhz when using the detect optimum settings. However, with powerstrip it will get up to 380/810. When I checked the forums, I noticed at least 4 other people from different states just got the same card with a capacitor that fell off the card. WTF? I guess I will have to force them to let me open the box to verify all the capacitors are on the card when I exchange it. PNY must have had a bad run of cards, maybe thats why CompUSA is getting rid of them so cheap.
 
PNY and decent reputation should never go in the same sentence together.

Ever.
 
I got my PNY from the black friday sale, like a few others did.

The 2D image quality is so bad, I had to put my old ti4200 back. The text quality on the 6800 was just total garbage. black on white would bleed together, and the text wasn't sharp or clear *AT ALL*.

After a reformat, several different versions of forceware drivers, i've decided it's just a huge piece of shit, and i'm going to return it.

I had just returned a 6600GT to get the deal on the PNY card, turns out that was a huge mistake. PNY tech support refuses to answer, instead they just hang up on you, or let it ring.

It works, but not like how I thought it would.
 
its really funny that they put this big orange paper in there that says "DO NOT RETURN THIS PRODUCT TO THE STORE"
 
setth84 said:
its really funny that they put this big orange paper in there that says "DO NOT RETURN THIS PRODUCT TO THE STORE"

I think that may have something to say with the quality of it, quite honestly.

Also due to the fact that their tech support lines were non-responsive on friday. I'm hoping a bunch of people called, they realize the card is terrible, and offer a decent replacement.
 
my old pny ti 400 died on me. I think the ram went bad. I personally think pny is one of the suckiest co. that are making vid. cards. I just bought my bfg 6800 and am really happy with it.
 
I had to ship one PNY card back, the ti4200. Now it looks like two.

Although PNY sent me a replacement for the GF4, and everything was great. I'm still using the card to this day.
 
I had one PNY card a while back it was a geforce 3. Worked great. I also had a visiontek geforce 3 ti500 at the same time both cards ran hard and good for about 3 years. I guess PNY got it's bad rep after the geforce 3?
 
I'm not sure, but I've never liked PNY's videocards...the first bad taste in MY mouth was the PNY Verto series, that offered a trade-in for your Voodoo's after nVidia swallowed, err, bought out (;)) 3DFX...and the trade in was so laughable it pissed me off. Then I used a PNY card I got for free and THAT turned out to be a total piece of shit...

I couldn't ever bring myself to buy a PNY card....ever. My friend has a PNY 6800 GT and it works fine for him, so that's good I guess...but I'm much happier running my eVGA card :p
 
my buddy got one on black friday also.. unlocked the extra 4 pipes without any issues and had no problems. I did his install and didnt notice any caps laying in the plastic container. I did notice his card didnt overclock very well at all... 355/765 in cool bits is all I could do.. if i took either of them any higher I would get lock ups or artifacts. My evga hit 380/800 with all 16 pipes no problems.
 
Glad I didn't succumb to my temptations...hope you guys get your issues resolved.
 
Copyright said:
my buddy got one on black friday also.. unlocked the extra 4 pipes without any issues and had no problems. I did his install and didnt notice any caps laying in the plastic container. I did notice his card didnt overclock very well at all... 355/765 in cool bits is all I could do.. if i took either of them any higher I would get lock ups or artifacts. My evga hit 380/800 with all 16 pipes no problems.

Wow that is bad especially since the [BFG Tech] ones come clocked at 350 core standard. :)
 
I have not opened the box yet. I waiting on a new mb cpu and memory to arrive..
The comp usa in bloomfield mi. had plenty of them in stock on this saturday morning
Cheers
J
 
maybe you should open it.. shit.. try running it.. apparently there must be something wrong with it if im getting bad 3dmark scores on this comp :\.. i dont want to have to return it but maybe i will..
 
Well, my PNY 5200 hasn't crapped out on me yet, but it sure does suck :mad:

I did like it at first a year ago, moving up from an mx440 to an FX 5200 let me run Planetside at high most stuff @ 1024x768, but I actually played KOTOR @ the same res, but low quality, and with FRAPS it showed usually around 12fps :eek: Still finished the whole game, but damn this card will suck once I get something new in the $200-$400 range (undecided as of yet).

My PNY card hasn't blown up - yet ;)
 
hmm must be the newer ones, ive heard of alot of probs with the new ones, but really my PNY GT and a couple others that i know with PNY GTs dont have any problems.
 
Are you sure the capacitor fell off? Maybe they just put an extra capacitor in there in case you lose one, you know, like when you buy a shirt and they give you extra buttons in case one falls off. :p j/k

All I can say is my PNY card has been great. No problems whatsoever and it's a pretty decent overclocker. PNY wasn't my first choice, but that's all comp had when my 9800XT died and I had to trade it in.
 
Glad I read this thread and the other one. I was contemplating picking one up today (the ones by my area are sold out, but there's one ~40 miles away that has it in stock and I have to head that way today anways). Guess I'll be waiting for the next gen stuff.

edit: and I used to have a PNY GeForce4 Ti 4400 that I had for like ~18 months and never had a problem with. Sucks to hear these blow.
 
I had nothing but bad luck with PNY cards, had a few of the Gf4 Ti4x00 series, and both died. After they RMA'd them I sold them, then upgraded to a 9800pro and havent looked back! :D
 
Don't forget PNY sub contracted their vga card product to generic nvidia manucfacturer. So, actually they didn't make the card or pcb.
 
B2BigAl said:
Are you sure the capacitor fell off? Maybe they just put an extra capacitor in there in case you lose one, you know, like when you buy a shirt and they give you extra buttons in case one falls off. :p j/k

That might be useful if they where good caps......could replace some leaky ones on some crappy mobo's I have seen ;)
 
Scott5000 said:
:eek: Just picked up my PNY 6800 from CompUSA for the $199 deal, opened it and noticed a capacitor sitting in the bottom of the plastic. You can also see where it fell off on the back of the card. I figured it was a fluke and decided to try the card anyway since the closest CompUSA is 40 mins. away :mad: . The card seems to work, but will not overclock even 1 mhz when using the detect optimum settings. However, with powerstrip it will get up to 380/810. When I checked the forums, I noticed at least 4 other people from different states just got the same card with a capacitor that fell off the card. WTF? I guess I will have to force them to let me open the box to verify all the capacitors are on the card when I exchange it. PNY must have had a bad run of cards, maybe thats why CompUSA is getting rid of them so cheap.

Honestly - what kind of idiot are you?

"Hrmm... this piece of hardware is defective, I'm going to plug it into my system and expect it to work well".

You realize that doing things like this is a good way to fry hardware - not just your video card, but possibly the whole motherboard. As far as selling a run of defective products for cheap, uhh... that makes -no- sense whatsoever. If you sell a defective product, you're going to have to take it back on returns which, in the long run, is going to cost you more money.

I've got mine - all the caps are attached and it runs fine. Now I just have to wait for my A64 to come in, 'cuz this XP1500+ isn't really doing justice to the card
 
Hey, I'm glad yours is not defective. Your right, I did take a chance by plugging it in to see if it would work, but I guess the computer gods were on my side because nothing fried or blew up. However out of my 10 years of buying computer parts and components, I have never seen a capacitor just lay in the plastic of the box it came in, maybe I have been lucky in the past. What makes this case different is that there are reports of others with the same problem from different states so obviously this is not an isolated incident. There is a possibility that these are actually a bad batch of cards that CompUSA got. Obviously they would not purposely sell a defective product, at least I hope not, I just threw that out there as smidgeon of a joke. I think most people got it.
 
How large a cap was it? Can someone post a pick of WHICH cap is falling off? I didn't notice one loose or missing but would like to verify which one it was.
 
i bought one and after readin the stories. i opened and checked my card. everything is in order but im kinda uneasy becuz i think they were tryin to get rid of rmaed cards maybe... cuz no way there is so many ppl with bad cards all in the same day? can someone plz put a good quality pic of ur pny card. i want to make sure mine is all in order and nothing is wrong with it. even tho i found nothing fell off. i want to be sure. cusa won't allow u to return these cards?
 
tailhook said:
I have not opened the box yet. I waiting on a new mb cpu and memory to arrive..
The comp usa in bloomfield mi. had plenty of them in stock on this saturday morning
Cheers
J
OT: I've been to that CompUSA store when I visited some relatives who lived in Bloomfield. I'm from So. Cal. so that just made me feel a bit special. ;)

A friend of mine has gotten one of these cards, so I'll give him heads-up on the issue.
 
Scott5000 said:
:eek: Just picked up my PNY 6800 from CompUSA for the $199 deal, opened it and noticed a capacitor sitting in the bottom of the plastic. You can also see where it fell off on the back of the card. I figured it was a fluke and decided to try the card anyway since the closest CompUSA is 40 mins. away :mad: . The card seems to work, but will not overclock even 1 mhz when using the detect optimum settings. However, with powerstrip it will get up to 380/810. When I checked the forums, I noticed at least 4 other people from different states just got the same card with a capacitor that fell off the card. WTF? I guess I will have to force them to let me open the box to verify all the capacitors are on the card when I exchange it. PNY must have had a bad run of cards, maybe thats why CompUSA is getting rid of them so cheap.

Which one fell off? Post a picture?
 
Since I cant figure out how to post my doctored picture with a circle on the capacitor, if you look at the left side of the board, you will see two small capacitors (brown in the middle and white stripes at the edges) directly next to each other horizontally. The one that fell off is the one on the right of those two. Clear as mud?

Showimage.asp
 
I think that capacitor that regulate voltage from psu to card. It can still work, if it ran with out driver installed. Who knows for how long. Typical problems with 6800, long card and fragile capacitors. I have a problem with 6800U b/fore and tried to resolder it with no avail. It have to be machine soldering process from manucfacturer.
 
Last PNY card i woned was a Geforce3 Ti500. It was a great card for its time, but PNY just seemes to stop trying to cater to the entheuist crowd and are now more concerned about the bottem dollar more than quality. Thats why i buy Gainward.
 
Did ya mean the one I've circle in red? I'll modify the picture if its wrong.

14-133-114-03.JPG
 
i bought pny card thinking i got a great deal... lets hope i did. or i will be a very angry customer. i haven't used the card yet since my psu is only 250, waitin for my new psu and then imma see wuts up with this.
 
Hrmmm, my PNY 6800 GT has run flawlessly since day one. Doom 3 1600 x 1200 all the goodies around 50-60 fps.

Sorry bout the missing caps, I'd return the product to CUSA.
 
Tzunami said:
Hrmmm, my PNY 6800 GT has run flawlessly since day one. Doom 3 1600 x 1200 all the goodies around 50-60 fps.

Sorry bout the missing caps, I'd return the product to CUSA.

Yeah, you never know if something missing like a cap may cause degredation in the product down the line. Return it now and save yourself trouble later.
 
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