My two cents on EVGA. This is my last EVGA product.

I've never trusted EVGA. I don't know how they have such a huge fanboy following considering all of the design flaws, subpar components, and exploding motherboards they have released. Some people do have luck with exchanging them and getting free upgrades, some don't. When I was shopping for a 970 my head started spinning looking at the 19 different versions they were offering so I walked away.
 
while i sympathize with your grievances and i fully support you sharing your experience with potential buyers..... but for me one user with an obscure issue around one product does not wipe away my 10-year, mostly positive relationship with evga.
 
sblantipodi said:
Now I noticed that my two cards cannot handle the factory overclock, system freezes.
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Just fyi, most of my oc cards "failed" (incl evga) over time over the years. I know you don't want to hear this, but just flash the stock speed to the card, then manually oc with MSI AB or similar. It's what I've done so far, though I stopped buying factory oc cards. *shrug* I'm just trying to save you time and headache.
 
Truth is that just about all video cards are made poorly hence all of the failures, both AMD and NVIDIA.
 
One factor involved all this is that most English online forum communities are US dominated in terms of members. Positive sentiment towards EVGA mostly stems from the US customer base in these online communities, however their experience may or may not be applicable to buyers in other regions.

Even without going into the more anecdotal and subjective areas we can look at the shipping issue you mention. Shipping costs for RMA service and taking advantage of the "step up" program (this is also region specific I believe) would of course be much lower for a US customer as EVGA is in the US (I believe everything is shipped to California?).

In this case you're partly running into a similar issue that US buyers may have in dealing with companies primarily focused/based in Asia or Europe.
 
I have mixed feelings about evga but with the 980 ti classifieds and evga 1300 w psu they have earned back my trust. Also the reason I recommend them to other members of the forum.

Btw if you post this on their forums you will get better support. Some very cool guys there.
 
Maybe you should've gotten a Classi or KPE? eVGA is not meant for cheap GPUs. If you want cheap, get an MSI or something.
 
IIRC there is an eVGA rep that checks out the [H] every now and then. Maybe he will see this?
 
I think many of the 'fanboys' come from the era when EVGA had almost unparalleled customer service. However, starting about 5 or so years ago their customer service really started to fall off. I used to deal directly with the CS manager for a number of my issues since I was doing EVGA builds and overclocks. That managed left when they started rolling out new policies for the CS department, that was the start of the slow downfall.

The truth in what happened is all too frequent and fairly sad. EVGA was a small market company making a niche product that they were doing their own engineering/design for. Their original quality standards were really high and they were trying to push the envelope with some of the stuff they were doing. They became extremely popular for that and for their customer service, then they started getting more orders than they could handle with their small shop. So they had to expand and when expanding you go through a number of growing pains, almost always the first of which is a drop in customer service and quality. That started to sully their name. Now with their large volume, many quality issues are about on par for their volume level. It also doesn't help that Nvidia from time to time, much like AMD will fudge something on the reference design causing issues.

In any case, that is my take on the issue. I still will get some products from EVGA from time to time (not my sig), but it certainly isn't the same company or quality I was used to in the past. They are no longer my main go to source.
 
Btw if you post this on their forums you will get better support.
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My problem with this is, why are things like this happening when the forums are not involved? I get that at some point they enter damage control but seriously, these some of these things shouldn't be happening.

rabidz7 said:
Maybe you should've gotten a Classi or KPE? eVGA is not meant for cheap GPUs. If you want cheap, get an MSI or something.
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ROFL, are you for real? If his card were a Titan X would you have said the same? Since when is a 980 SC a cheap card?


Said it for sometime now, EVGA is slipping (in designs, as well as in CS sometimes).
 
I've always used evga video cards and have never had problems with them.

To answer your question why evga is/was popular, it was because they were one of the few that
1) had a lifetime warranty on their cards
2) they give you a 90-day step-up for upgrading your card

The lifetime warranty is gone now, but the stepup option is still there.

Cards I've purchased for myself or for others from evga: 8800 GTS 512, 9800GTX, 9800GTX+, GTX 670, GTX 750, GTX 750ti, GTX Titan, GTX 780 ti, GTX 980 ti........ haven't had issues with any of them.
I've always avoided their mobos and PSUs. If you want a good mobo, go with Gigabyte/Asus/MSI.... PSU go with Seasonic or Corsair.

evga isn't what they used to be, but they're still certainly better than some of the other video card makers out there.
 
Out of curiosity, why did you edit your original post and remove what I presume was what was going on? I was curious to see what the deal was from the first post.
 
ir0nw0lf said:
Out of curiosity, why did you edit your original post and remove what I presume was what was going on? I was curious to see what the deal was from the first post.
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They wanted to downgrade and refund the diff (crashing 980 sc -> plain 980 iirc).
 
You got mad that they wanted to give you the same card back? lol The sc is no diff than a regular 980. They could of taken any 980 flashed it and sent it to you in the brown evga box.
 
KickAssCop said:
Btw if you post this on their forums you will get better support. Some very cool guys there.
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Their forums are filled with way to many fanboys. It will be just a bunch of post saying how they never had a problem with evga or that you should "upgrade" to a more expensive evga model lol.
 
Their rma process is awful. I initiated an rma with them last year and it spanned from November 2014 to late January 2015. Every single replacements they sent were defective and each occurrence I had to waste an hour round trip driving to the UPS office to drop it off. The alternative was to pay $15 each time they screw up and ship from my local post office and I wasn't going to do that.

I gave up and just accepted defeat. Never got a working replacement. So much for the lifetime warranty.
 
Evga has treated me well for the 2 products I've purchused from them, gave me a free advanced RMA to cross ship my 980ti with excessive coil whine and also upgraded my HTPC 650ti to a 750ti when the later's hdmi plug stopped working. Their product offerings aside they seem to generally care about their customers and want to keep you.

Now looking at their latest offerings you could say their original 980ti line up was pretty weak (before the classy and kingpin cards were out) compared to gigabyte and msi. All of their offerings were reference cards, which isn't a bad thing in my opinion but a lot of you here like the non-reference cards. It was perfect for me because I was planning on watercooling and I was able to get a ACX version which will hopefully give me better resale price then one with a reference blower cooler.
 
The Unworthy said:
Their forums are filled with way to many fanboys. It will be just a bunch of post saying how they never had a problem with evga or that you should "upgrade" to a more expensive evga model lol.
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This is very true, EVGA Forums are infested with rabid fanboys. Sometimes I wonder if some of them are actual EVGA employees just posing as fans. Anyway, my personal experience with EVGA has been pretty good. One of my Titan X's had a faulty SLI connector (bridge wouldn't light up) and EVGA sent me a free EVGA SLI bridge (their premium one) to test out and keep. Once that didn't work, they offered to replace one of the cards to test. Apparently that fixed it but then the other card had a separate issue so they ended up replacing both cards.

The only downside I experienced was one of the EVGA reps initially wrote off my concerns in a ticket and said the card and bridge were made by NVIDIA and have them fix it. But I had already done that and NVIDIA had already sent me a second SLI bridge for free and it still had issues. Once I brought this up with EVGA, the same rep again brushed it off and told me to wait 3 days and never responded back. It was at that point I got pretty pissed and wrote to their head marketing guy + twitter and that got things moving fast.

On a personal note, if I was in the market today for a 980 TI, my pick would be the Zotac 980 Ti Amp Extreme, that thing is just fantastic if you can fit it in your system. My second choice would be the Asus Strix and EVGA would be a distant third. But if you do want peace of mind with service, I still think EVGA is the best despite the issues I had with one of their reps.
 
colinstu said:
I've always used evga video cards and have never had problems with them.

To answer your question why evga is/was popular, it was because they were one of the few that
1) had a lifetime warranty on their cards
2) they give you a 90-day step-up for upgrading your card

The lifetime warranty is gone now, but the stepup option is still there.

Cards I've purchased for myself or for others from evga: 8800 GTS 512, 9800GTX, 9800GTX+, GTX 670, GTX 750, GTX 750ti, GTX Titan, GTX 780 ti, GTX 980 ti........ haven't had issues with any of them.
I've always avoided their mobos and PSUs. If you want a good mobo, go with Gigabyte/Asus/MSI.... PSU go with Seasonic or Corsair.

evga isn't what they used to be, but they're still certainly better than some of the other video card makers out there.
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Their step-up used to be pretty good, I used it on a motherboard and a GPU.
Now however you have to pay for the step-up and also more than standard warranty.

It's just not the same.

I stopped buying their stuff.
 
Agenesis said:
Their rma process is awful. I initiated an rma with them last year and it spanned from November 2014 to late January 2015. Every single replacements they sent were defective and each occurrence I had to waste an hour round trip driving to the UPS office to drop it off. The alternative was to pay $15 each time they screw up and ship from my local post office and I wasn't going to do that.

I gave up and just accepted defeat. Never got a working replacement. So much for the lifetime warranty.
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I dig the RMA process in and of itself and think it's probably the best in the business GPU wise hands down. I think the parts they send back are nothing more than Refurbished replacements though, i.e. someone elses broken shit that they supposedly fixed. I had my GTX 780 last 1 1/2 years before it fried. Got a replacement and 4 months later fried again. This second one just happened weeks ago.

I hear some people get lucky with the upgraded RMA's lottery and that's what really feeds the beast, but that's much rarer than people make it out to be. I get why they would want to push out refurbed products to save money and it's probably why their RMA process is so easy (5 minutes). If I didn't have $200 EVGA Bucks I'd probably consider giving Gigabyte/MSI a chance next time since they really seem to be stepping up lately.
 
Liger88 said:
I dig the RMA process in and of itself and think it's probably the best in the business GPU wise hands down. I think the parts they send back are nothing more than Refurbished replacements though, i.e. someone elses broken shit that they supposedly fixed. I had my GTX 780 last 1 1/2 years before it fried. Got a replacement and 4 months later fried again. This second one just happened weeks ago.

I hear some people get lucky with the upgraded RMA's lottery and that's what really feeds the beast, but that's much rarer than people make it out to be. I get why they would want to push out refurbed products to save money and it's probably why their RMA process is so easy (5 minutes). If I didn't have $200 EVGA Bucks I'd probably consider giving Gigabyte/MSI a chance next time since they really seem to be stepping up lately.
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You probably had more luck because your product isn't that old.

Nearly a year later I'm still irked because of how bad the experience was. During the 2nd or 3rd time rmaing even after they claimed to have tested the product before shipping (yet the refurb security seal was still on the box) the rep made a snide comment about how should upgrade anyways because the product I was rmaing is so old (x58). Well I took his advice after a few more rmas and replaced the system with x99. Now I got a dead board sitting around with two waterblock made specifically for that board doing nothing.

Maybe I'll try my luck again when my other evga product dies :rolleyes:
 
Agenesis said:
You probably had more luck because your product isn't that old.

Nearly a year later I'm still irked because of how bad the experience was. During the 2nd or 3rd time rmaing even after they claimed to have tested the product before shipping (yet the refurb security seal was still on the box) the rep made a snide comment about how should upgrade anyways because the product I was rmaing is so old (x58). Well I took his advice after a few more rmas and replaced the system with x99. Now I got a dead board sitting around with two waterblock made specifically for that board doing nothing.

Maybe I'll try my luck again when my other evga product dies :rolleyes:
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Ohh you're referring to the MOBO products. Yeah, I'm not sure how that goes which is why I mentioned GPU's. That's the exact reason why I only stick with certain manufacturers I can trust for each part of a PC.
 
My experience with EVGA motherboard RMA was pretty poor.

I RMA,d an X58 Classified, a very expensive board at the time, due to a memory slot issue.

I got back a warped refurb, they basically said.....well it works, right.

Last evga purchase for me.
 
The Unworthy said:
Their forums are filled with way to many fanboys. It will be just a bunch of post saying how they never had a problem with evga or that you should "upgrade" to a more expensive evga model lol.
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....Lol. Im sure if you go to any "NVIDIA" only gpu website, you will find fanboys for that product.
 
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Out of the 6 eVGA cards I have purchased, 5 of them had to be RMAed at some point. One of them, a GT240 was RMAed 3 times before I got a working one.They make good on their warranty but RMAing is such as hassle.
 
Dude EVGA support is decent.
Try AsRock sometime :/
You buy it.You're screwed.Is that better?
 
AlexisRO said:
ROFL, are you for real? If his card were a Titan X would you have said the same? Since when is a 980 SC a cheap card?
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eVGA is good for custom PCB cards. If it's reference, it's cheap! It's not their fault that OP got a bad reference card.
 
Every card or mobo, I've owned from evga has required a RMA. Outside of 4 diff kingpins. I didn't run them long enough I guess. Anyway, my most recent rma was a 980ti sc it couldn't even do stock clocks unless I pumped volts. Turn around time was good with cross ship rma, refund time was decent. The card I got back though albiet the lottery was the crappiest 980ti I've ever had (outta like 12). Horrible ocer and lowest asic I've ever seen LOL.
 
rabidz7 said:
eVGA is good for custom PCB cards. If it's reference, it's cheap! It's not their fault that OP got a bad reference card.
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Just from recent memory how are their 970s up until the SSC and FTW+, wanna talk about the 980 FTW before the fix? All costum PCBs from Evga with love :) .

It's Evga's fault they gave him the run around until they managed to fix it in the end. If they were so great the problem would have been fixed via the first RMA.
It's Evga that approved the reference, excuse my french, I mean cheap card to be sold as an SC there for more expensive than the cheapest 980. If they are only capable of getting good Kingpin cards maybe they should just stick to only those.
 
Obviously this is a shit on EVGA thread, but I've had nothing but positive experiences with EVGA and will only buy GPU's from them, period. There will be people who have had bad experiences with every manufacturer, so I don't expect everyone's experience to be the same as mine.

In the last 3 years I have owned 5x 670 FTWs, 2x 680 Classifieds, 2x Titans, 2x 780 Classifieds, 2x 780 Tis, and will be receiving 2x 980 Tis in a few days. Out of all of those cards, I had one 780 Ti that was DOA fresh out of the box brand new. They initiated an advanced RMA and had me a brand new working card in two days. Advanced RMA is a service they offer that I did not pay for but they upgraded me to it anyways. I appreciated that a great deal as it sped the process up quite a lot.

There are other benefits to EVGA as well. They have a very active community over on their forums that is quite helpful and even includes many of the techs for the company. They also have an extremely user friendly warranty (the main reason I buy their cards). They allow cooler removal, have very lax policies on flashing the bios, and have a completely transferable warranty which is great for resale. I'm not sure what more you could ask for.

Yes there was one custom card from them which was flawed, the 980 FTW. I don't feel like the negates the years and years of great custom cards from them. They screwed up, and they've fixed it. As far as reference cards go, they are reference cards. The only thing EVGA about it is the box and the warranty/support.

Now, this is all in reference to their GPU's. I don't have much to say about any of their other products as I haven't owned them. I buy Asus mobo's and have traditionally bought Seasonic (or Seasonic OEM in my current case) power supplies. However, with the reviews and unparalleled warranty of their new power supplies I'm looking to pick up their 1000W or 1200W Titanium PSU's that will be released soon. I can't wait to try one out.
 
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AlexisRO said:
Just from recent memory how are their 970s up until the SSC and FTW+, wanna talk about the 980 FTW before the fix? All costum PCBs from Evga with love :) .

It's Evga's fault they gave him the run around until they managed to fix it in the end. If they were so great the problem would have been fixed via the first RMA.
It's Evga that approved the reference, excuse my french, I mean cheap card to be sold as an SC there for more expensive than the cheapest 980. If they are only capable of getting good Kingpin cards maybe they should just stick to only those.
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don't be a duh.. please, the GTX 970 do not have Reference Model and/or PCB. EVGA and most AIBs to be able to have a fast launch of the GTX 970 (because, you have to remember it was a paper launch) used the Reference GTX 670 PCB (not even the more robust and better 680 reference PCB) and most troubles came by that reason..
 
Araxie said:
don't be a duh.. please, the GTX 970 do not have Reference Model and/or PCB. EVGA and most AIBs to be able to have a fast launch of the GTX 970 (because, you have to remember it was a paper launch) used the Reference GTX 670 PCB (not even the more robust and better 680 reference PCB) and most troubles came by that reason..
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Everyone got the 970 launch right, except for EVGA. Sub par PCB designs compared to the competition (later gave problems with SLI because of how the traces were designed, not compatible with each other), sub par cooler designs and false advertisement (advertisement of ACX 2.0 when the initial cards where shipped with the ACX 1.0, took some time before the ACX 2.0 actually launched) . Lots of SKU's all priced to the moon (The FTW was at a time priced 50 bucks higher then the G1 gaming ffs :confused:). If they weren't ready they shouldn't have launched.

So don't be a duh... please, and stop covering for them when it's not the case. I love Evga as much as the next guy but when they are bad they need to be called out. And Evga, lately, has made a habit of making novice mistakes .
 
rennyf77 said:
while i sympathize with your grievances and i fully support you sharing your experience with potential buyers..... but for me one user with an obscure issue around one product does not wipe away my 10-year, mostly positive relationship with evga.
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Indeed, All of the Nvidia cards I bought were EVGA, From a 7800 GTX, GTX 260, GTX 480 and last was a GTX 670 FTW model, The one EVGA card I had fail on me was the GTX 480 which was 4 years old when it failed, They had no problem honoring the lifetime warranty and sent out a replacement card via advanced RMA.
 
HeavensCloud said:
I've never trusted EVGA. I don't know how they have such a huge fanboy following considering all of the design flaws, subpar components, and exploding motherboards they have released. Some people do have luck with exchanging them and getting free upgrades, some don't. When I was shopping for a 970 my head started spinning looking at the 19 different versions they were offering so I walked away.
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Oh, if I'm buying reference I'm buying evga. Unlike asus their warranty is top notch.

I do agree that their custom designs are hit or miss. I've never owned an aib evga video card but have heard enough horror stories about their motherboards to steer clear of those. It'll take a long time of solid performance before I change my mind about their motherboards. I don't see that happening.
 
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