3rd BFG 6800gt rma

D

dennpett

Gawd
Joined
Aug 20, 2002
Messages
666
Posted for a friend that cannot post yet.
Here's my story:

I purchased a BFG 6800GT OC and it worked fine for a period of a few months. After a while, I started noticing the following problems would occur (always after about 5 minutes of gaming):

Civ4 - Entire screen pixilates - system freezes - must reboot.
BF2 - Game crashes to desktop
UT2004 - Game crashes to desktop with UT-generated GPF (gotta love proper exception-handling in a game these days)

So, I call up BFG support. They have me tweak all kinds of bios settings (Asus A7N8X Ultra). They have me try all kinds of different versions of the Nvidia drivers. Nothing solves the problem. They tell me it's my mobo. Ok... new mobo+newCPU is cheaper than a new video card. I also wind up with a new Power Supply Thermaltake 500w.

I buy an ASROCK Dual - very nice board, btw - and, you got it, same problem. So this time they send me an RMA, which I am supposed to pay to ship back. (What ever happened to the remailer? Has the art of taking care of your customers gotten so bad?) I didn't ship the card back before I was supposed to so now I have two 6800GT OCs from BFG... they charged my CC for the second one. Hey, my fault.

Anyway, so the second one works fine for a few months, and last week...

Civ4 - Entire screen pixilates - system freezes - must reboot.
BF2 - Game crashes to desktop
UT2004 - Game crashes to desktop with UT-generated GPF (gotta love proper exception-handling in a game these days)

Anyone else experiencing these kind of problems with the BFG 6800GT OC? I find it quite annoying, I'm getting very frustrated. I basically have an entirely new PC hooked up to the same video card and I wind up with the same problem.
 
A friend of mine just received his BFG 6800 GT back from RMA. Came with the new copper cooler on it. Puts it in his rig and plays a few hours, he hears a loud pop and looks inside and sees that one of the capacitors has exploded on the video card. So back to BFG it goes.
 
I put BFG video cards in all gaming systems that I have built in the last couple years (at least 50) I mostly do office computers. I have never had a single problem with any of their cards. I think something else is causing the problems, I've had ram cause problems like that or a cheap psu. I'm not saying that it's impossible that the video is the culprit, but highly unlikely. You should pop the card into another completely different stable system and see if you can get it to repeat itself.
 
Look. ALL of the problems you just complained about, are driver related issues. The exact Civ IV prob u described happened to me with 6800GT until updated drivers, UT2k4 did that to me until i update drivers.

You may not believe me, but it is 99.9% likely it is NOT your video card and its something else.
 
Docmhz said:
A friend of mine just received his BFG 6800 GT back from RMA. Came with the new copper cooler on it. Puts it in his rig and plays a few hours, he hears a loud pop and looks inside and sees that one of the capacitors has exploded on the video card. So back to BFG it goes.
Click to expand...

Ouch...

As for dennpett, BF2 crashing to the desktop is a very highly common thing that happends to many ppl. And belive it or not, part of it is what server your playing on will casue some fault in the game to crash to desktop. Happends to me sometimes often, but when im on TS with many others, ends up being about 20 ppl getting booted back to desktop off the same server, at the same time.

As for the other game issues i cannot say much beside ::cough, nVidia, cogh::...I have an ATi card and i have only the bf2 problem.
 
Ok, my account was finally generated. I am the one who is having this issue. Thanks to dennpett for letting me know about this forum and for posting for me. A few quick responses:

As for dennpett, BF2 crashing to the desktop is a very highly common thing that happends to many ppl.
Click to expand...

This I am painfully aware of. There's a reason why EA doesn't have phone support...

Look. ALL of the problems you just complained about, are driver related issues.
Click to expand...

Bzzzz. Thanks for playing. :) I have EVERY gforce driver from the past two years, as well as a utility which cleans the drivers completely off the machine. It does not matter what driver version I use. The folks at BFG have gone over this with me. They even had me try the Omega drivers...
You should pop the card into another completely different stable system and see if you can get it to repeat itself.
Click to expand...

As you can tell from my post, I have completely rebuilt this system around the video card. I forgot to mention, I even got new ram (for a different reason). In addition, I had reimaged the machine 3 weeks ago and had not touched any drivers since that reimaging and it worked fine for a couple of weeks before the failure.

Remember, both the original and the RMA were stable for months before failing. So, to review, the only components from the system when I first had the problem and the system now are:

BFG 6800 GT OC
2 Hard Drives
1 DVD-R

Everything else is different. From all of my conversations with various and sundry BFG technicians, I have a hard time believing that this is anything short of a problem with the BFG 6800 GT OC. I was hoping to hear from people who use this card or from someone from BFG. I know there are a couple who check these boards...
 
cillic said:
I was hoping to hear from people who use this card or from someone from BFG. I know there are a couple who check these boards...
Click to expand...

See my sig. I have 2 running hardcore in my kids machines, my 7 year old and my 12 year old run the piss out of them. BF2 all the time. Never a single problem. Go buy a bfg 6800gt from around town or something(if you have the funds) and pop it in and see if you still have the problems. If so return it for the refund and fix whatever else is in your system causing the problem. It's highly unlikely that you have one bad card, even higher that you have found 2. The BFG brand of 6800gt's were probably the most sold by far, they are second to none in customer service and handling rmas.
 
See my sig.
Click to expand...

Sorry, missed your sig. I will be exchanging one of my BFGs for my buddy's PNY tomorrow and see if mine is ok/his fails. I'll keep you all posted.
 
KK...

Removed the BFG and placed in the PNY. Uninstalled the nVidia drivers, ran the driver cleaner, reinstalled nVidia drivers. Launched UT2004 and let it run all night - no crashes whatsoever.

So... nix the driver issue (as stated previously, this was a recent rebuild and the machine has only had one set of video drivers on it at this point).

I have not heard back from my friend yet as to his results with my two BFGs yet... hope to hear back by tomorrow.

Stay tuned.
 
why didn't you just keep the same drivers in? Try popping the bfg back in without reinstalling the drivers and see if the problem repeats.
 
why didn't you just keep the same drivers in?
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Because that's SOP. And again, this was a recently rebuilt machine which had only had the latest nVidia drivers on it.

My buddy tested both cards with his utils and they are both overheating. On both cards when he booted to bios he saw garbage on the screen (through DVI) even before running under load. The boot to windows normally, however.

After running the cards under load in a well ventilated case they both shoot straight to 100C (212F). The cpu was running at a cool 30C (85F). Ambient case temperature was 24C (75F).

The problem is definately with these BFG cards not dispersing heat properly. We're gonna test out my case for airflow issues to see if something strange is going which is exacerbating these cards inability to disperse heat properly. But I've got 4 case fans going besides the fan on the powersupply, which should be enough since I'm not overclocking anything.

More tests to come...
 
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