EVGA RMA Experience: 1070TI for a $200 980TI

[TXE36]

I recently had an RMA experience that I thought was worth getting up on my soap box to share.

I don't post much around here, but have been an on-again off-again PC enthusiast/gamer for quite some time. I will usually troll the Hot Deals forum here over morning coffee. Times have been tight lately, but I couldn't resist a $200 980TI refurb when this showed up in the Hot Deals almost 2 months ago: https://hardforum.com/threads/evga-wedsday-special-1080sc-400.1969014/#post-1043864404
https://hardforum.com/threads/evga-wedsday-special-1080sc-400.1969014/#post-1043864404
Ordering from the site was a bit chaotic that morning, as orders were not being accepted (see the thread above) but by luck and lots of retries, I secured a 980TI which showed up about a week later. Using Heaven as a benchmark, the card was about 33% faster than the 980 it replaced, so a nice bump and still compatible with XP (important to me for reasons I won't go into here).

As is typical with a new card for me, I put it in a benching loop to make sure of stability and left this thing run for 2 days without issue. Tried it in a few games and started getting video driver crashes. Tried different drivers and no joy. Tried putting my old 980 back in and the crashes stopped - oh crap. Put the 980TI back in and ran the Heaven loop with VSYNC enabled, because that is the mode I was using in the crashed games. In 10-30 minutes, Heaven would crash the driver. Put the 980 back in and it ran for days without issue. The 980TI was failing when the driver downclocked under light load. Oh joy!, RMA time.

I called tech support at EVGA and got a human very quickly. Explained what I was seeing and he setup a cross ship RMA. I was just past the 30 day cutoff for free return shipping by my order date, but was within 30 days of my delivery date and my rep got the company to send a paid return shipping label. The rep not only was technically competent, but knew the company procedures and what would happen. This played out exactly as he said except for one thing...

The new card showed up and I was about to install it. Before breaking the seal, I checked the P/N and it was wrong. Another oh crap moment. Looked it up and found they had sent me a 1070TI - a 1070TI for $200. I'm really surprised they did this as b-stock 980TIs exactly like the one I bought were in stock at the time.

The 1070TI is not XP compatible, but it blew the 980TI out of the water in terms of performance. Nearly 11% faster than the 980TI and 46% faster than the 980 all while drawing about 100W less power than the 980TI. Upon doing a bit more research, found the 1070TI is a lot closer to a 1080 than 1070. I'll live w/o the XP compatibly.

I've been buying EVGA video cards going back to the 7800GT, this is the first one I've had fail and my first experience with their RMA. I know they have made some mistakes that I've seen commented here, but in this world of poor customer service and RMA runarounds being typical, I thought it was worth sharing.

That said, I did have an ATI 9800 Pro die just before the end of its 3 year warranty and ATI replaced it without hassle too. That was a long time ago, man I'm getting old.

-Mike

 

[lightsout]

I have had great experience with EVGA myself. Which is why I do my best to stick with them.

 

[Digital Viper-X-]

good feels

 

[Dayaks]

Yeah they wouldn’t pay shipping on my 3x 1080ti hybrids when all three died after a month from a known issue. They can go fly a kite.

 

[{NG}Fidel]

I recently had an RMA experience that I thought was worth getting up on my soap box to share.

I don't post much around here, but have been an on-again off-again PC enthusiast/gamer for quite some time. I will usually troll the Hot Deals forum here over morning coffee. Times have been tight lately, but I couldn't resist a $200 980TI refurb when this showed up in the Hot Deals almost 2 months ago: https://hardforum.com/threads/evga-wedsday-special-1080sc-400.1969014/#post-1043864404
Ordering from the site was a bit chaotic that morning, as orders were not being accepted (see the thread above) but by luck and lots of retries, I secured a 980TI which showed up about a week later. Using Heaven as a benchmark, the card was about 33% faster than the 980 it replaced, so a nice bump and still compatible with XP (important to me for reasons I won't go into here).

As is typical with a new card for me, I put it in a benching loop to make sure of stability and left this thing run for 2 days without issue. Tried it in a few games and started getting video driver crashes. Tried different drivers and no joy. Tried putting my old 980 back in and the crashes stopped - oh crap. Put the 980TI back in and ran the Heaven loop with VSYNC enabled, because that is the mode I was using in the crashed games. In 10-30 minutes, Heaven would crash the driver. Put the 980 back in and it ran for days without issue. The 980TI was failing when the driver downclocked under light load. Oh joy!, RMA time.

I called tech support at EVGA and got a human very quickly. Explained what I was seeing and he setup a cross ship RMA. I was just past the 30 day cutoff for free return shipping by my order date, but was within 30 days of my delivery date and my rep got the company to send a paid return shipping label. The rep not only was technically competent, but knew the company procedures and what would happen. This played out exactly as he said except for one thing...

The new card showed up and I was about to install it. Before breaking the seal, I checked the P/N and it was wrong. Another oh crap moment. Looked it up and found they had sent me a 1070TI - a 1070TI for $200. I'm really surprised they did this as b-stock 980TIs exactly like the one I bought were in stock at the time.

The 1070TI is not XP compatible, but it blew the 980TI out of the water in terms of performance. Nearly 11% faster than the 980TI and 46% faster than the 980 all while drawing about 100W less power than the 980TI. Upon doing a bit more research, found the 1070TI is a lot closer to a 1080 than 1070. I'll live w/o the XP compatibly.

I've been buying EVGA video cards going back to the 7800GT, this is the first one I've had fail and my first experience with their RMA. I know they have made some mistakes that I've seen commented here, but in this world of poor customer service and RMA runarounds being typical, I thought it was worth sharing.

That said, I did have an ATI 9800 Pro die just before the end of its 3 year warranty and ATI replaced it without hassle too. That was a long time ago, man I'm getting old.

-Mike

That's a very solid experience

 

[2wiced]

I had 1 980ti die, but I ran them in SLI. Receives a 1070ti. They had me RMA my second perfectly fine 980ti and sent me a 1070ti so I can continue to run 2 cards.

Everything was smooth. I try to buy EVGA for cards and for powesupplies

 

[Maddness]

I had 1 980ti die, but I ran them in SLI. Receives a 1070ti. They had me RMA my second perfectly fine 980ti and sent me a 1070ti so I can continue to run 2 cards.

Everything was smooth. I try to buy EVGA for cards and for powesupplies

That is really going above and beyond. Well done to them. That's the way to keep a customer coming back.

 

[horrorshow]

I had 1 980ti die, but I ran them in SLI. Receives a 1070ti. They had me RMA my second perfectly fine 980ti and sent me a 1070ti so I can continue to run 2 cards.

Everything was smooth. I try to buy EVGA for cards and for powesupplies

Nioce.

(warranty on my 980 Ti FTW lasts through April '19.... awesome to know what to expect if it dies)

I will definitely continue to buy EVGA cards and PSUs in the future!

- I called tech support once with a fan sensor question and it was literally like talking to a homie on [H]. They knew exactly what was up and he even went and got the "fan guy" in like 3 mins to answer my pulse signal question. I was hella impressed to say the least.

 

[Domingo]

I sold an older EVGA card on Craigslist and the new buyer had some issues after a couple months. I logged in, changed the ownership info to his, and he had no issues RMA'ing the card. The whole thing only took a few days.
If all things are equal, I go with EVGA when possible. While slower, Corsair has also been easy to deal with.

 

[lightsout]

I had 1 980ti die, but I ran them in SLI. Receives a 1070ti. They had me RMA my second perfectly fine 980ti and sent me a 1070ti so I can continue to run 2 cards.

Everything was smooth. I try to buy EVGA for cards and for powesupplies

Whoa, that is awesome.

 

[vjhawk]

EVGA RMA service is pretty great. When my EVGA motherboard died, they had a replacement shipped out pretty quick and it was a slight upgrade too. Always makes me feel like any premium I pay for a higher end EVGA product is worth it because they really honor those warranties.

 

[kora04]

I've RMA'd stuff with them before. Took a while, but it was fine.

 

[Slade]

EVGA upgraded my 1k PSU to a 1200W one. Same class level, just more wattage. I try to get mostly EVGA gear due to very good customer service.

 

[isp]

Good to hear it. I like their products and thankfully have not needed to test the RMA service

I did however RMA some GSkill ram this month. They took care of it no problem

 

[Comixbooks]

Evga is the only company that seems to really care. It shows in their design and website design and customer coustry.

 

[Phantom9309]

Evga is the only company that seems to really care. It shows in their design and website design and customer coustry.

I had an EVGA motherboard a long time ago and eventually went through the RMA process. I remember great service and help from all the people I spoke with. The computer I built after that was based on best price/value for the component and I regretted not going with EVGA for the added peace of mind. I won't be making that mistake next time around!

 

[ZeqOBpf6]

My EVGA 980ti died in August or September and they just fixed it. Fine by me, but mine was just a busted cap I think. Yours was probably an unfixable issue.

Wish I got that lucky!

 

[Tytalus]

I sold my 980Ti to a guy right after receiving my 1080 (and well before I knew that I'd be stepping up to a 2080 Ti, thanks EVGA!) Two months after the guy bought it off of me on Craigslist he messaged me and asked if I still had a warranty on the card. I told him I still did and as long as he didn't involve me beyond filling out the paperwork I would submit it. That was at the beginning of October, last week Gigabyte mailed me saying they couldn't repair it so they are going to replace it with a 1080. The guy is pissed he's been without a gaming video card for almost 2 months, but happy he's getting a 1080!

EDIT: Posting this reminded me that I told the guy I'd call them to bitch about the slow service, and it says the card shipped this morning!

 

[TahoeDust]

I had a 980ti die and they replaced (w/ cross shipping) it with a 1080 FTW RGB. That was before the 1070 ti was out. EVGA gets my GPU, PSU, and most recently Mobo money.

 

[horrorshow]

.... maybe it's finally time I try replacing the thermal paste on my GPU....



J/K.

 

[Hagrid]

Yeah they wouldn’t pay shipping on my 3x 1080ti hybrids when all three died after a month from a known issue. They can go fly a kite.

How did they die and what problem? I never looked for any problems but also never heard any.
I have a few of these.

 

[TaintedSquirrel]

I sent in my 980 Ti in May and they sent me back... another 980 Ti. Kinda surprising it also appeared to be brand new when I took it apart, and with a 2018 serial number.
They did give me a free upgrade from GeForce 4 to GeForce 5 back in like 2003 when I RMA'd. lol

 

[Dayaks]

How did they die and what problem? I never looked for any problems but also never heard any.
I have a few of these.

One day after about a month they spiked to max temp from the usual 59C. It was the AIOs that kicked the bucket.

I didn’t RMA them out of spite. I opened up the AIOs and there was a thick black substance that was blocking the flow. I cleaned that out and they were fine. I hooked them up to my custom loop after that. The cards themselves are still chugging along great.

I was just annoyed I spent over two grand on cards and they wanted me to spend $60-80 on shipping across the country. Nevermind shipping is way cheaper for companies than it would have been for me.

It seemed to just be a bad batch the AIO mfg messed up. There were a lot of other reports of the same issue. If you have had your cards for a long time they are probably fine. Bathtub curve and all that.

 

[tangoseal]

I have a 1070ti ftw2 evga. Fast fuggin card. Not nearly as fast as my 1080ti though but I'm impressed.

 

[TXE36]

It was posts from others like mine that kept me buying these cards. Interestingly, the EVGA guy did ask if I was SLI'ing the 980TI.

I have a 1070ti ftw2 evga. Fast fuggin card. Not nearly as fast as my 1080ti though but I'm impressed.

Since I wasn't really in the market, I didn't pay much attention to the 1070TI when it was released. Overclocked, it will trade blows with the 1080. The memory on my card will do 4500 and the GPU clock 2000+ without drama and without needing to increase the default fan curve - something I've *never* seen before on a graphics card. Running single in a HAF 912, it won't go over about 68C heavily loaded and I can't hear the fans. That said, I have no need to overclock to the board, so that will wait until it gets longer in the tooth.

There are claims out there that the latency of the memory on the 1070TI is lower than the 1080 so it will keep up even though 5000 is too much of a stretch for it. I suspect there is some truth here because one odd quirk with the 1070TI is Nvidia does not allow any factory overclocked 1070TIs which suggests they were fearful of it cannibalizing 1080 sales. The 1080 has 5.3% more cores than the 1070TI, while the 1070TI has 26.7% more cores than a 1070, hence the 1070TI being closer to a 1080 than 1070. Overclocked, the 1070TI can get its memory up to 9GHz, which is close to 10GHz. I don't have experience with the 1080 so my knowledge here is only what I read on the internet so lots and lots of salt - apparently the 1080 and 1070TI trade blows even when each is fully overclocked. It reminds me of the 670 vs 680 - the 670 wasn't that much slower than the 680 but it was far less costly.

IMHO, the 1070TI is a nice balance between performance, power consumption, and noise. In my case, cost was also sweet, but really an outlier and not typical. I'm also happy I can sit out the recent cost and reliability nonsense coming out of Nvidia lately with the 20x series.

The 1080TI is a lot faster, but a lot more expensive and power hungry. BTW, in that original Hot Deals thread where I saw the 980TI a b-stock 1080TI was listed for $600. Given what 1080TI prices have done, that may have been the real hot deal of that thread.

-Mike

 

[Hagrid]

One day after about a month they spiked to max temp from the usual 59C. It was the AIOs that kicked the bucket.

I didn’t RMA them out of spite. I opened up the AIOs and there was a thick black substance that was blocking the flow. I cleaned that out and they were fine. I hooked them up to my custom loop after that. The cards themselves are still chugging along great.

I was just annoyed I spent over two grand on cards and they wanted me to spend $60-80 on shipping across the country. Nevermind shipping is way cheaper for companies than it would have been for me.

It seemed to just be a bad batch the AIO mfg messed up. There were a lot of other reports of the same issue. If you have had your cards for a long time they are probably fine. Bathtub curve and all that.

Thanks for the info! Yes, I had one of the cards go bad and it was the AIO unit. Luckily the RMA process was good.

 

[Dayaks]

Thanks for the info! Yes, I had one of the cards go bad and it was the AIO unit. Luckily the RMA process was good.

They were nice enough, I was just salty over the extra cost on three top end cards for something that was severely poor craftmanship on their end. I’ve heard at least nVidia is paying for FE RMA shipping.

Paying for shipping on a RMA is like a slap in the balls to me lol.

 

[Hagrid]

They were nice enough, I was just salty over the extra cost on three top end cards for something that was severely poor craftmanship on their end. I’ve heard at least nVidia is paying for FE RMA shipping.

Paying for shipping on a RMA is like a slap in the balls to me lol.

You should of got a RMA printout which included shipping? Weird.

 

[Dayaks]

You should of got a RMA printout which included shipping? Weird.

Maybe all my bitching changed their policy? lol. Too late for me now, I cut off the radiators to use it like a custom block.

I got inspired to pipe the heat to my pool through a heat exchanger...

 

[tangoseal]

Yeah I've never swe such a good cooler as that evga ICX design. That is one hella good solution. Makes me yawn at the thought of a water block. My 1080ti is blocked though. That card needs to be wet.

I haven't found anyone that didnt like evga. I wished they made AMD motherboards. I'd buy it.