Is XFX that bad?

T

tim0chen

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I've been researching video cards lately here and on the Anandtech forums, and the 2 forums generally have very different opinion on XFX video cards. Most Anandtech posters advise to avoid XFX cards "like the plague," whereas posters here often recommend and have no problems with them. What's the deal?

I'm planning on buying a dual-DVI 6600GT. Newegg offers the XFX version for $169 and the BFG for $212. If I'm not concerned with performance, could the BFG possibly be worth another $43?
 
I've never heard of anyone haveing problems with xfx. As far as I know they use the refrence PCB so that shouldnt be a problem. I say go xfx ans save your money for something else.
 
It is probably just prefreance for people. Some people have bad expirances but that dosent mean that its a bad company.

XFX is just fine, as is BFG, as is Leadtek, etc
 
Wow, our to posts where so close to the same time that when I clicked submit yours was already underneath mine.
 
they are not that bad but i would go with evga or bfg just in case...
 
xfx is fine, or at least what I hear from people I know. BFG has the lifetime warranty that attracts people, a 6600GT is not worth $200+ if you ask me.
 
I think the problem some people had with XFX was that they used crappy heatsinks which resulted in overheating issues. I think they have changed their heatsink design though to eliminate such problems.

I personally no longer buy video cards without a beefy heatsink on both the core and memory. I like that extra safety factor :)
 
Yeah XFX redesigned the heatsink they used on their 6600gt's I think. But overall they're a good company...they're an extension of the semi-unknown company Pine, but they are considered a top-tier maker. I would take an XFX card in a heartbeat over a shitty PNY card. They seem to use reference cards for the most part, with just a different PCB color.

I tend to prefer leadtek myself...I like their redesigned heatsinks. They are usually nearly silent and yet cool better than reference.
 
i would strongly recommend getting a 6800 for $200 over any 6600GT.

edit: i have not had any problems at all with my XFX 6600GT. i can oc totally stable and artifact-less to 575/1175 (or maybe it was 560/1175 - not sure).
 
no problems at all with my 6600gt. Runs a bit warm (I oc'ed it a bunch), but the price was right and the performance was pretty good. Only cost me $150 bucks.....
 
I like XFX, I've had good experiences with their cards and have never had an issue with any of them I've ever used.
 
I have a XFX FX5200 and its been tunning none stop for all most a year now.
 
i had no problem with a xfx5900 but a friend of mine bought a 6600gt and it worked for a month stock clocks so he took it back and the 2nd one was DOA :rolleyes: so he finaly got a 3rd one that worked.
 
ALL4AMD said:
a friend of mine bought a 6600gt and it worked for a month stock clocks so he took it back
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Wait, I'm confused, it worked so he took it back? Or do you mean that after a month it died so he took it back?
 
XFX is very well made... They are just like BFGs and Leadteks... Yes, the 6600gt's had overheating issues and yes they have been fixed.
 
Had XFX 6800 GT..used for 9 months or so...it breaks....no crazy overclocking or anything...just moderate OC with stock cooler.

RMA however..was good..I got my new card within 2 weeks.
 
i personally like BFG the best--and their worth a few $$ more-IMHO

i have had gigabyte and asus ge-force 6600gt's and 6800gt's -- only probelm i had with the gigabytes--is i got two that didn't match and one of them refused to flash (bios) so they sucked for sli--

but otherwise the gigabytes worked fine-- i'm sure newer revisions woun't have such problems.

the asus-- i have had 6600gt's sli and 6800gt's sli-- no problems at all and 5 year warrenty .

but i don't think anybody beats BFG--and a lifetime warrenty--

only onlt nvidia card i eveh had that sucked--is this pny-6800gt/AGP sitting on my desk .

all of a sudden--it just started making a awful blue tint-- still works but sucks--and this PNY must have had a self-destruct timmer on it because it went out withen a week after the warrenty expired !! :eek:
 
I'd like to add a contrary experience here.

I fairly recently purchased an XFX 6800GT from newegg. It was the only one I could find that was both AGP and has dual DVIs. It also had an attractive coupon promotion that knocked the price to around $290 making it one of the cheapest 6800GTs.

The card arrived, I plugged it in, worked fine for about 5 minutes, then locked up on me while I was navigating around the GUI. I had the latest nvidia drivers preinstalled. When I booted the system back up I noticed random color flickering at the loading XP screen, and by the time it got to the windows welcome screen I had colored confetti spots all over the screen. Long story short, I swapped out my power supply for an Antec, bought a new motherboard, nothing fixed the problem... so back to Newegg it went for an exchange. I was out ~$10 shipping, but ok. For some odd reason they ended up refunding my money rather than exchanging the card (either they ran out or had a bad batch and lots of returns).

While I was doing research on the initial problem I discovered on other forums that others have had similar problems with 6600 and 6800 XFX cards. Apparently there was a whole batch of them released with bad RAM that caused similar symptoms to the ones I experienced.

Of course, I don't want to generalize from a single bad experience... just thought I'd throw it out.
 
A friend of mine got a xfx 6600GT AGP dual dvi about 6 months ago and its been working great- and im glad it does. Im his hardware guru and if anything bad was going on i would know about it.
 
I get some graphical glitches on my desktop icons from time to time with my xfx 6600GT.. but I think it's because of my overclocking.

The card hasn't crapped out on me yet, I've had it since December. I did report the problems I had and the tech support ignored me for about a month. I sent them another email and they told me to RMA but by then I think it was about out of warranty.. and I had no video card to use during the RMA.
 
quine said:
I'd like to add a contrary experience here.

I fairly recently purchased an XFX 6800GT from newegg. It was the only one I could find that was both AGP and has dual DVIs. It also had an attractive coupon promotion that knocked the price to around $290 making it one of the cheapest 6800GTs.

The card arrived, I plugged it in, worked fine for about 5 minutes, then locked up on me while I was navigating around the GUI. I had the latest nvidia drivers preinstalled. When I booted the system back up I noticed random color flickering at the loading XP screen, and by the time it got to the windows welcome screen I had colored confetti spots all over the screen. Long story short, I swapped out my power supply for an Antec, bought a new motherboard, nothing fixed the problem... so back to Newegg it went for an exchange. I was out ~$10 shipping, but ok. For some odd reason they ended up refunding my money rather than exchanging the card (either they ran out or had a bad batch and lots of returns).

While I was doing research on the initial problem I discovered on other forums that others have had similar problems with 6600 and 6800 XFX cards. Apparently there was a whole batch of them released with bad RAM that caused similar symptoms to the ones I experienced.

Of course, I don't want to generalize from a single bad experience... just thought I'd throw it out.
Click to expand...

I had a similar problem with my XFX 6800 Ultra PCI-E, it is in the process of being RMA'ed right now. It would randomly lock up while playing games... so lets hope everything works out :)
 
The XFX 7800 is the highest clocked mrsp GTX. Only BFG comes with higher stock speeds, but they charge a premium. Plus XFX gives you an assload of stuff, like a game controller free ($40 normally).

I would say XFX is a pretty reputable company. Along with eVGA and BFG for sure.
 
I bought an XFX 6800GT pcie back when they first came out and have had no problems with the card. Not really sure if the cooler was inadequate as I swapped it for a waterblock and ram sinks before I put it in my system. Overclocks pretty good too. :)
 
XFX's 6600gt AGP's were the first ones out the door, and they sold alot of cards quick. Alot of early problems were just BIOS settings (Fastwrites, sideband addressing) or driver problems, and alot of people just RMA'd their cards instead of actually figuring out what was wrong with them. And of course, having sold more cards at first, all the cards that had problems were XFX's, because, well, most 6600gt AGP's out there XFX's.

All in all, great card. On stock cooling I can run it at about 570/1170. Pretty kickin eh?

-wil
 
darkhorse said:
no problems with my xfx 6600gt, looks nice and is well built.
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Agreed. Plus I saved a bunch of money (their prices are great) . :)
 
kmeson said:
Look at my sig. Enough said. :D
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While lurking thru the thread I found your post & noticed that you have the same setup that I am trying to build. Maybe you can help me.

Antec Sonata Case
Asus A8N SLI Premium
Corsair XMS Twin 1GB sticks

I am having a problem with my xfx 7800gtx. It is not being recognized during the boot up process. I get no video. The fan comes on but that's it. The board reports a vga test failure during boot up. If I insert a regular PCI vga card, the system boots fine even with the 7800gtx still connected. I have the 6 pin power connector installed & connected to 2 molex connectors from the power supply & have the bios set to factory defaults.

Did you encounter any problems during your setup similar to what I am describing? I have an e-mail in to XFX but they haven't responded yet. I can't believe that the board is DOA.

Any suggestions will be appreciated
 
I've been running an XFX 6800GT AGP @ over 6800 Ultra speeds for over 9 months now, so with my experiences they are solid.

I can't even OC my 2xBFG 6800Ultras in SLI on watercooling... everyone has different experiences.

Just go for the best deal.
 
My experience and those of several I'm close to has been catagorically negative.

5 6600Gts, all Doa, all undergoing RMA process
 
i like BFG the best... yes, some other people can match their lifetime warranty, but can they match BFG's 24 hour turn around time? i dont think so... but feel free to correct me :)

whenver ive had to RMA a card, from the time they recieved it to the time i got it back is under a week, including shipping. they also were happy to do an advanced RMA for me this time, which was great. i dunno if its worth $43 though.

they also upgraded a dead 5900 to a 6800GT :)

for the price of the bfg6600gt though, id get a 6800nu. in fact, i doubt id bother wtih the 6600 gt anymore..
 
Sh0t said:
My experience and those of several I'm close to has been catagorically negative.

5 6600Gts, all Doa, all undergoing RMA process
Click to expand...

If you went through five cards... I would put my money on something else being the problem.
 
my 6600gt pcie also worked great! still does!

have the 6 pin power connector installed & connected to 2 molex connectors from the power supply & have the bios set to factory defaults
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are you supposed to be connecting both the molex connectors at the same time?
 
Viper87227 said:
If you went through five cards... I would put my money on something else being the problem.
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I wouldn't. It's a widespread problem. This was 5 people who bought 5 cards, all different systems.
 
Double Jesus said:
are you supposed to be connecting both the molex connectors at the same time?
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yes. if you look at the PCIE connector, it has two three 12v leads and three grounds. two 12v leads is normally fine, and each molex has one 12v line. hense, two molex's to one pcie connector.
 
Almost an year with mine here .. runs like hell ... ocs like hell ... dunno why ppl say things about xfx :rolleyes:
temp 45 idle 65/ load (on stock air /560/1250/ no artifacts)
 
Anyone else notice that the person who revived this three month old thread also say's he's had 5 bad cards of the same type from this company? :rolleyes:

On that note......XFX is leet. Double life time warranty, good prices.
 
Sh0t said:
I wouldn't. It's a widespread problem. This was 5 people who bought 5 cards, all different systems.
Click to expand...


Ahhh. I though this was all in the same PC. In this case, seems possible.
 
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