FX5900XT Buyers Beware

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seehaw

Weaksauce
Joined
Apr 21, 2002
Messages
80
I recently did something I knew better than to do and bought a GFFX 5900XT from XFX (Pine Group) a company that I've never had a good experience with. They were one of the first to release an XT so i bought it within the first couple weeks the card was available. I had a great first impression getting an incredible O/C out of it which i thought I would since it had the most impressive cooling solution out of the 3 I could find to choose from. Low and behold that did not last, not to my surprise at all. My intial o/c was 495 core and 913 ram, I could run 950 ram no artifacts stable at 450 core. As time passed the card got much less stable I didn't run it overclocked at all mind you unless I was benchmarking. My first bug was when I would enable the second monitor output the card would blank screen or drop hardware video acceleration leaving me with a 4 bit 640x480 display. I smelled a burning smell coming from it one day and realized it came from the ram. I o/c'd the ram to see what it could do figuring that i just lost about 100mhz on it and i was right it would not be stable past 850 at this point a still solid o/c. I realized then that the RAM had not fried rather they had attached the RAM sinks with something that wasn't meant for the job. I pulled off a RAM sink and it was super glued on the super glue had turned brown and even black in some spots and my ram had a thick burnt layer of glue on it, completely unacceptable. I knew at this point if I pulled the second RAM sink off i was gonna have a RAM chip stuck to the bottom of it. Against my better judgement I attempted to remove the second RAM sink to sand it off and apply and adequate thermal solution and a RAM chip came off just like I thought would happen ripping a trace completely off the RAM all the way to the die of the GPU. Overall I don't dislike this card still because it's almost done correctly but I have to warn everyone about the fact that the RAM sinks are SUPER GLUED down and that the thermal transfer of the super glue is less than desirable. Also I should note that on this card the thermal sensor for the GPU would never show up on the driver tab a hardware feature built onto the FX seriers from my understanding as my roommates FX shows the temperature tab. I think the card killed itself due to heat and perhaps that's why the temp tab never showed up as my core o/c degraded over time as well but the card didn't survive long enough for me to truly make that statement confidently. The GPU cooler had a sub par layer of thermal grease on it most of the GPU didn't even have any thermal grease on it it was such a small amount and the stock GPU cooler was very poorly made having many pits and deep lines in the metal where the die was not making contact. I lapped the GPU HS and realized it's just crappy metal they used and although it can be improved it cannot be made into an acceptable GPU cooler from an o/c'rs standpoint.

On a side note my Prometia gets here in three days w00t!



Moral of the story is:
A.) don't buy hardware from a manufacturer that you know doesn't cater to the o/c enthusiast
B.) don't mess with RAM sinks that are factory preinstalled as chances are they stuck them on with super glue (bad idea)
 
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Originally posted by onetwo
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LOL! Great pic.

OK, I tried to work my way through that post.

Seehaw, so your beef is that you got a card with crappy OC capabilities, and you OC'ed it, and it died? Tough luck, but that is what it is--luck.

As for quality, if you are going to ever OC something, check all thermal interface areas. You're voiding your warranty with the OC, so why not replace crappy TIMs and such?
 
guess i was still too pissed when i wrote that whatever

no the card oc/d great but the sinks on the whole card are attached extremely poorly and are hazardous at default speeds to the life of the card unti lthe card died it still oc'd better than 90% of the cards out there
 
I think what the problem is you got your self a cheap brand or something. If you get a name brand one like I did they have better quality control as well as use better things most times.

And the 5900XT does not have temperature monitoring on some models. They do not add it to help keep the cost down.

Most people that have the 5900XT are very happy with them as they are great cards for the money. You even said yourself that you never had any luck from that company on things. Myself if I have 1 bad thing from a company I look for a different brand next time. For some reason you went back to them and now want to complain about the whole 5900XT line. Well that is not how it works as each company just gets the GPU itself from NVIDIA and builds the cards themselves. Can not blame NVIDIA or the 5900XT because you got a card that was not built to well.

That is like going to Burger king and getting mad because the Burger does not taste the same as the steak you had the day before. Sure they are both beef and come from a cow. But that is as far as it goes as far as them being alike.
 
if you read i said i was happy with the card the chipset is great i was telling ppl to be wary of xfx branded cards they suck
 
Originally posted by seehaw
if you read i said i was happy with the card the chipset is great i was telling ppl to be wary of xfx branded cards they suck
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Nothing is guaranteed on an overclock. If something dies, don't bitch about it.
 
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