One of Two Titan RTX Cards Defective

[ds9voy]

............

 

[Motley]

Holy shit, when a $2400 video card fails, you know NVidia really screwed the pooch on all RTX releases.

Anyone buying anything RTX should return them.

 

[Dan_D]

So, it appears that now we can start talking about defective Titan RTX cards.

Gamers Nexus bought TWO Titan RTX retail cards. One of them is defective and stuck at a clock speed of 1350mhz.

Apparently, they have contacted Nvidia, who is sending an employee within 24 hours (not a courier, an actual Nvidia staff member), to "take it off their hands" and personally give them a good card.

I'm actually rather pissed Gamers Nexus is allowing this, because this is obviously intended to get evidence of card defects out a tech media sources hands ASAP.

I have to say, I have *never* heard of a video card company personally sending staff out to grab cards like this. Looks like this is the new damage control tactic regarding these defective cards....

Also, to just point out the obvious, Gamers Nexus bought two cards, one was defective to the point of not being a viable card due to the locked clock speed, thus a 50% failure rate. On the new Titan RTX cards. Months after this BS started with the 2080 cards.

.1% failure rate guys....

It's actually not that unusual for the PR contacts from hardware vendors to interact with review sites / media sites in this way. I've encountered this behavior from hardware manufacturers a few times over the years. It is a PR move designed to avoid negative reviews or mitigate fallout as much as possible. My point is that NVIDIA is far from the first or only company to behave this way. When you encounter issues with a piece of hardware as a reviewer, you don't go through the standard tech support to resolve problems. The fact is, we often have the hardware before its released and the serial numbers on our hardware are known as media samples. If we did call tech support, its likely we'd be routed to the PR guys anyway. So, if you have a problem, the PR guys are who you contact first. If the issue is beyond them, they act as a point of contact between you and the engineers who will ultimately be responsible for resolving your issues.

While the failure rate of RTX 2080Ti cards seems rather high, we can't call it a 50% failure rate based on the experience of Gamer's Nexus and Kyle's similar issues alone. Even if we take the people on this forum with issues into consideration, its unlikely we'd have a large enough sample size to conclude there is a 50% failure rate. The failure rate does seem high, so I won't argue with that but I doubt its 50%.

 

[Motley]

Yup Nvidia is really playing bullshit with the defective number. And selling millions of RTX cards? WTF there is no way they have sold that many. I would guess less than 100k ? Does anybody know their sales numbers for the RTX line? (including 3rd party).

 

[Dan_D]

I understand that it's normal for hardware companies to have special PR contacts for media sources to handle issues and damage control.

My concern with Nvidia, however, is that they have perverted and twisted that arrangement into a means of exerting control over the free press. For example, as has been stated here, HardOCP didn't sign the "Nvidia NDA", which apparently is causing most tech sites who have signed it to stay silent on these issues for fear of being sued out of existence by Nvidia.

Fair enough. I can't argue this point.

Furthermore, I am sure that most normal hardware manufacturers would be open and transparent with you as a media site. For instance, if you purchased a retail product of theirs and it was horribly defective, and they offered to take it off your hands to try to find the issue, you would expect them to later provide you with genuine, honest information to present to your readership regarding what the problem was, yes? And you would expect them to provide information as to how and what actions they are taking to prevent the issue from ever happening again, yes? And, based on that information, you would be able to let your readership know if the company was sincere in what the issue was, if they likely had fixed it for end-users who purchase it, etc, yes?

No, that's not what I would expect at all. Over the last 11 years, that's not even close to how things have worked.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but hardware companies are anything but transparent with us when there are problems. They will help out at first and offer to replace bad hardware, but the second it becomes apparent that there is a larger issue than a single defective product, then things change rapidly. You get excuses, they dodge questions, shift blame, or simply go silent. They don't typically deny problems but they don't confirm them either. A good example is with NVIDIA's 680i SLI reference motherboards. They were terrible. They were some of the world's worst motherboards. I owned 13 of them myself and saw many more die than that. I can tell you exactly where NVIDIA screwed up on that but its not because NVIDIA came clean on the subject and acknowledged anything. Its from my own testing, research and time that I learned the answers to the question of why those boards were so bad. I've had other jobs where I've been in similar situations as well. I've seen several cases where failure rates were indicative of design flaws or manufacturing defects and those problems were never acknowledged.

Computer hardware companies have no incentive and no reason to tell reviewers anything. If they do, we will report it to our readers or viewers. That undermines confidence in the brand and that has real consequences. It weakens their branding. The company will lose sales. Not just on the product in question, but for the brand as a whole. People will demand compensation, push for recalls or even file lawsuits against the company. It can also result in people buying products from their competition. However, staying silent works far better. Anything I say has to be backed up with facts otherwise our credibility goes into the toilet. Their PR guys know this. They aren't going to tell me anything that will work against their best interests. I've run into similar issues with other brands and none of the other companies I've dealt with were anymore forthcoming or transparent than NVIDIA is being regarding this issue.

The only time a company will come clean and admit to hardware defects, design flaws or wrong doing of any kind is when the fallout of doing so will ultimately be better for their finances than any alternatives they can come up with. There is a tipping point where the failure rates are too high and public backlash is simply too significant for them to stay silent on the issue and something like issuing refunds to everyone or recalling and replacing the product ends up being better for the bottom line in the long run. As bad as this mess seems to be, I don't think NVIDIA's at that point yet.

 

[Dayaks]

Yup Nvidia is really playing bullshit with the defective number. And selling millions of RTX cards? WTF there is no way they have sold that many. I would guess less than 100k ? Does anybody know their sales numbers for the RTX line? (including 3rd party).

I would believe millions. They sold a million a month of 970 cards at $330 IIRC. They said the 1080 was the best selling card for them last gen and that was around the 2070 price, if not higher. Millions across all RTX cards is not out of the realm of possibility.

The only place we generally see data is in their quarterly reports. The next one that comes out should be an interesting read.

 

[TahoeDust]

Blah blah blah....Nvidia bad....blah blah blah

Nvidia is replacing the defective cards and buyers are eventually getting what they paid for. No one is "getting burned" and all the "$1000+ bricks" are getting replaced. If you don't like it and aren't willing to risk having to have your card replaced, don't buy it. There are worse things than having to RMA a card. My card runs great. If I had to RMA it, that would not be ideal, but in the end I am confident I would be made whole.

 

[kirbyrj]

Blah blah blah....Nvidia bad....blah blah blah

Nvidia is replacing the defective cards and buyers are eventually getting what they paid for. No one is "getting burned" and all the "$1000+ bricks" are getting replaced. If you don't like it and aren't willing to risk having to have your card replaced, don't buy it. There are worse things than having to RMA a card. My card runs great. If I had to RMA it, that would not be ideal, but in the end I am confident I would be made whole.

Yes, you will get a new card, but you're down for a few days best case scenario and a few weeks worst case scenario. Not to mention you have no idea if your new card is also going to have issues and then you'll have to repeat. This isn't unique to Nvidia. I had several dud AMD 7950s, and never did get a good one back from Sapphire's RMA after RMAing it 3 times.

At this point, it sure seems like Nvidia is going to have to do some sort of v2 with their PCB to address the issues as it certainly seems like there is more than just a handful of problems.

 

[Hagrid]

Blah blah blah....Nvidia bad....blah blah blah

Nvidia is replacing the defective cards and buyers are eventually getting what they paid for. No one is "getting burned" and all the "$1000+ bricks" are getting replaced. If you don't like it and aren't willing to risk having to have your card replaced, don't buy it. There are worse things than having to RMA a card. My card runs great. If I had to RMA it, that would not be ideal, but in the end I am confident I would be made whole.

When you have to RMA 2 cards in a row, something is wrong. I guess you enjoy the experience, but most? do not. Quite a few took refunds since what happens after the warranty. It's a gamble and some would rather just be able to play their games.

And the guy's that caught fire, he almost got burned!

 

[Dan_D]

Dan,

Thank you for sharing your insight as to how this behind the scenes stuff transpires.

I suppose all I can say is that for us average end-users who are not privy to what goes on behind the scenes between you guys and hardware companies, all of this is just looking suspicious as hell to us "from the outside looking in". All we really know is what you guys tell us and what we can see from our own personal first hand experience. When we are told .1% failure rate, yet we get multiple defective cards, this just doesn't jive with us. It's true that I don't know what is going on as far as the broader overall situation with these cards to the same extent you guys do. However, I did take probability and statistics in college, and I know that, given a .1% failure rate, the odds of myself getting four back to back defective cards, randomly selected at different time periods and from different batches, are about as likely as me getting struck by lightining twice and winning the lottery at the same time. Given the fact that many other end-users also have gotten more than one defective card, this speaks to drastically higher failure rates than we end-users are being led to believe. Why? Because of math. The failure rates simply have to be drastically higher for us to get multiple defective cards.

I don't disagree that the failure rates are higher than 1%, but I don't know that we have enough statistical data to say it's 50%. We would really need a more controlled and broader sample set of data to make that determination. Honestly, NVIDIA is probably the only one who could do that and the odds of that are slim. Anything they say, true or not will have an obvious PR spin for damage control purposes.

I think the other issue that is pissing us (end users) off, and maybe you guys don't feel this because you are connected to the industry, is that it feels to us like tech companies in the past few years have progressively become more arrogant, more closed, more secretive, and more "just deal with it" as far as attitude when they are screwing us over. For many people, a $1000+ product is not a small purchase. This could be a special purchase that someone has saved for months for, and, in that situation, the risk of being burned is very unsettling.

Let me be clear on this point. While Kyle received excellent support on his defective card, as is Gamer's Nexus, its important to note that Kyle bought his cards with his own money. I do sometimes get free hardware, but not that often. I've purchased my own video cards, processors, drives, cases and PSU's for years. I've even been known to buy my own motherboards on occasion. RAM, etc. is typically purchased out of pocket as well. I've gotten very little for free over the years with rare exceptions to that rule. When something goes defective that I've purchased out of my own pocket, I have typically gone through standard channels first. I do this for a few reasons. 1.) I don't have near the pool of contacts Kyle has. 2.) I do it largely out of curiosity, to see how I'm treated. I'll wager my name has been recognized here and there, so its not a perfect system. Case in point, I've used many ASUS motherboards and I hear all the time how ASUS support sucks. I've only needed that support on two occasions and it was fantastic, so I've tried to see if I can get a horror story of my own to confirm what others have. It would make for a great article, should that ever happen.

I've specifically avoided purchasing the RTX 2080Ti for a couple of reasons. The first of which is that I'd need two of them to really get a substantial upgrade over my current setup. There are some games where a single RTX 2080Ti will be an upgrade, but I'd really need two of them to feel like it would be the massive upgrade I'm looking for. This varies by game and I don't want to get into the weeds about it, but that's one issue and my take away from initial reviews on the matter. Secondly, its these horror stories about card deaths that have had me hold off for the time being. The machine I game on is the same one I write reviews and do the work involved in generating that content. Most of the articles content comes from me, although Kyle does handle certain elements of those articles. This machine is how I make my money so I don't fuck with it very often. I tend to take downtime and do massive upgrades in one shot. 10 years ago, I was screwing around with it on a weekly or bi-weekly basis in some cases and that can negatively impact my productivity. I've got enough things to deal with without having to fix my machine all the time or deal with problems. So I wanted the RTX 2080 Ti thing to settle down before I took the plunge. So far, that hasn't happened from what I've gathered.

Take, for example, the recent Apple iPad fiasco that is currently going on in which people are buying iPads that range in cost from $1000-$2000, only to have the iPad literally be BENT from the factory. What did Apple just tell these people? It's not defective - if you get a bent iPad, too bad, just live with it.

With increased complexity, there are issues like this which will pop up. Early generations of products will have all kinds of production, shipping and packing issues which can lead to this sort of stuff. Apple is a shitty company that treats people like retarded sheep, so I'm not surprised by your comment above.

To make matters worse, at the same time hardware prices are rising DRASTICALLY with basically no reasonable justifiable explanation, we are also seeing a proportional DROP in quality.

The complexity of the hardware is increasing. R&D costs have to be recouped, etc. There is basic greed attached to the price increases as well as companies need to demonstrate growth to share holders or stock prices suffer. This is a huge downside to publicly traded companies. As for drops in quality, I don't think that's the case across the board, but it certainly seems to be the case with specific products or products from specific companies. There are some products in the industry which I think are light years ahead of similar products from a few years ago. Cases, power supplies, keyboards, motherboards, and a few other items are just better than they were a few years ago. So while your statement about a drop in quality certainly applies to some products, or at least its easy to make that assumption, I don't think its true universally.

Dan, I am not attacking you or HardOCP, one of the few places that are actually even semi-talking about these issues, but I think a lot of us feel that the tech-media is firmly in bed with the tech companies and are actively and complicitly engaged in helping cover up and silence these concerns that are ever growing. When forums/reddit/YouTube etc are overflowing with end-users complaining about these issues, yet the tech media is damn near silent and/or publishing articles saying "everything is cool, nothing to see here folks", or "JUST BUY IT", at the same time we are dealing with $1000+ bricks, people get suspicious and pissed. I suppose my disappointment is more with the broader tech-media as a whole, as well as the hardware industry. It just seems to me that these problems are becoming ever more frequent and there is no sign what-so-ever that anyone in the industry cares to do anything about it, and it is us, the end-users, who are getting screwed in the end.

The truth is, there are many media sites who fear reprisal from the tech companies. First and foremost, many sites (most of them) are owned by media conglomerates. They won't generally do anything that would jeopardize their relationship with hardware vendors. Most hardware in this industry isn't paid for by tech sites. This keeps their operating costs low. However, HardOCP has been black listed by several companies in the past and Kyle's made the choice to procure hardware at HardOCP's cost to generate content. In all the cases I've seen so far, eventually companies forgive us down the line and those relationships mend over time. In the mean time, every board or processors from a given brand had to be purchased by HardOCP for years until those companies eventually take us off the black list. Kyle is one of the few people willing to bite that bullet and refuse to bend to the pressure these companies put on us to take down a review they don't like or want us to reword something, or include information they provide after the fact, etc. I've been asked to do it several times and I've watched Kyle tell them where to go each and every time.

Its a rare thing, but its one of the benefits to owning your own business and running it the way you want to.

However, remaining silent isn't always about not wanting to burn bridges. I can sit here and say "X" product has a given defect rate or whatever and without proof, its just my opinion. So its better for the hardware manufacturers to keep quiet rather than confirm what I'm saying. They may even choose to do the opposite and claim that we are exaggerating or whatever. Ultimately, you get into this he said, she said type of situation and nothing comes of it. Media sites that do this will end up black listed for saying something that they couldn't prove. That's the best case scenario. At worst, they end up in litigation. Infinium Labs vs. HardOCP is a good example of that. While HardOCP ultimately prevailed, the legal fees were no joke. I can tell you for sure that the NVIDIA 680i SLI chipset based reference motherboards were a bad design. I can go into great detail on that but NVIDIA never confirmed that. They never addressed the topic at all. For hardware vendors, its better to be quiet and there aren't too many reasons for them to break their silence in such matters.

Its been this way for the entire decade plus I've been in the industry.

Blah blah blah....Nvidia bad....blah blah blah

Nvidia is replacing the defective cards and buyers are eventually getting what they paid for. No one is "getting burned" and all the "$1000+ bricks" are getting replaced. If you don't like it and aren't willing to risk having to have your card replaced, don't buy it. There are worse things than having to RMA a card. My card runs great. If I had to RMA it, that would not be ideal, but in the end I am confident I would be made whole.

I can agree with this to some extent. However, the first round of people who purchased their cards had no idea what they were in for. You also don't expect to spend $1,200 on a graphics card that will end up in a perpetual RMA jail like some salvage titled VW ends up in the shop for electrical problems. I've purchased many NVIDIA cards over the years and have had very few fail on me. So if I bought a pair of RTX 2080 Ti's on launch day I'd have no reason to believe one or both would die on me. In hind sight we can say this but at the time, no one had any reason to think that.

Yes, you will get a new card, but you're down for a few days best case scenario and a few weeks worst case scenario. Not to mention you have no idea if your new card is also going to have issues and then you'll have to repeat. This isn't unique to Nvidia. I had several dud AMD 7950s, and never did get a good one back from Sapphire's RMA after RMAing it 3 times.

At this point, it sure seems like Nvidia is going to have to do some sort of v2 with their PCB to address the issues as it certainly seems like there is more than just a handful of problems.

Its certainly possible. Its possible that revisions will be minor or even major. Its also possible that the defect rate hasn't reached a point where NVIDIA needs to do that yet. Its all about the bottom line and we don't know what the tipping point on that really is.

When you have to RMA 2 cards in a row, something is wrong. I guess you enjoy the experience, but most? do not. Quite a few took refunds since what happens after the warranty. It's a gamble and some would rather just be able to play their games.

And the guy's that caught fire, he almost got burned!

Not necessarily. Sometimes, that's dumb luck. Its unlikely, but two defective products in a row certainly can and does happen.

 

[TahoeDust]

I can agree with this to some extent. However, the first round of people who purchased their cards had no idea what they were in for. You also don't expect to spend $1,200 on a graphics card that will end up in a perpetual RMA jail like some salvage titled VW ends up in the shop for electrical problems. I've purchased many NVIDIA cards over the years and have had very few fail on me. So if I bought a pair of RTX 2080 Ti's on launch day I'd have no reason to believe one or both would die on me. In hind sight we can say this but at the time, no one had any reason to think that.

That is a fair point.

Are you an adult? Serious question. I know a lot of teens/kids post here.

Yes. I am an adult.

If you were/are so angry and had so many problems with your card why did you not ask for a refund, or dispute the charge if you had to. No one made you buy the card or keep it. Just get rid of it an move on.

In my experience it is usually kids or teens that create threads grasping at the latest negative youtube videos and adding a sensationalized diatribe about it.

 

[DrBorg]

This seems a lot like the Win10 saga; the manufacturer is Beta testing hardware in this case.

The RTX fails we've seen with the 2080 card were the beta tests for the full-up Titan cards.

This is obviously a design issue at this point, as "Test Escapes" doesn't hold water here.

If they can't test these cards before release, they have no QC at all.

Nvidia is fucked; they will not get my money; not that they would have anyway.

I gave up on them after the GTX fail I had years ago.

Reap what you sew; or as I'd say it, "Eat Shit and Die, Nvidia!"

Preferably in a fire of your own Fail.

 

[Armpit]

This seems a lot like the Win10 saga; the manufacturer is Beta testing hardware in this case.

The RTX fails we've seen with the 2080 card were the beta tests for the full-up Titan cards.

This is obviously a design issue at this point, as "Test Escapes" doesn't hold water here.

If they can't test these cards before release, they have no QC at all.

Nvidia is fucked; they will not get my money; not that they would have anyway.

I gave up on them after the GTX fail I had years ago.

Reap what you sew; or as I'd say it, "Eat Shit and Die, Nvidia!"

Preferably in a fire of your own Fail.

Hmm, did Nvidia kill your dog or something?

 

[DrBorg]

No, they lied about 64 bit capture drivers for my 7800GTX. Years ago.

Don't lie, don't misrepresent, and be honest.

That's all I ask for.

AMD did supply drivers for an all in wonder card, that I still use.

Fuck the fuckers.

Sorry, to be PC, it should be Hug the Huggers. (Translate that to "Eat the peanuts out of my shit")

The fact that they released shitty hardware is just validation for the way I've felt for over 10 years.

Be a Fanboy if you want, but this RTX gerbil is going to eat their ASS. From the inside.

Mr Lemmywinks was gentle... This is not.

Merry Christmas!

RTX is a gift that keeps giving, for some of us. Like Herpes, for guys that like street girls. (Or Boys, you Nvidia guys are special... don't want to offend anyone by leaving them out.)

 

[TahoeDust]

When someone else has a viable alternative at the top of the GPU hierarchy they will get my money. Until then, I will buy what it take to play games at the resolution and refr

No, they lied about 64 bit capture drivers for my 7800GTX. Years ago.

Don't lie, don't misrepresent, and be honest.

That's all I ask for.

AMD did supply drivers for an all in wonder card, that I still use.

Fuck the fuckers.

Sorry, to be PC, it should be Hug the Huggers. (Translate that to "Eat the peanuts out of my shit")

The fact that they released shitty hardware is just validation for the way I've felt for over 10 years.

Be a Fanboy if you want, but this RTX gerbil is going to eat their ASS. From the inside.

Mr Lemmywinks was gentle... This is not.

Merry Christmas!

RTX is a gift that keeps giving, for some of us. Like Herpes, for guys that like street girls. (Or Boys, you Nvidia guys are special... don't want to offend anyone by leaving them out.)

I'm glad you are getting this anger out. Enjoy that all in wonder. Let me know when AMD makes a card that can compete with the top of Nvidia's product stack.

 

[DrBorg]

I'm glad you are getting this anger out. Enjoy that all in wonder. Let me know when AMD makes a card that can compete with the top of Nvidia's product stack.

What, space invaders is now "Top of the stack?"

Rofl

That AIW card still runs in an old PC I use to digitize old videos, it's 4:3, and old. But it still works after 10+ years, unlike any NV card I owned.

 

[TahoeDust]

What, space invaders is now "Top of the stack?"

Rofl

Fair enough. How about you let me know when they make one that competes with a 1080ti....you know the Nvidias almost fastest last gen card from about 2 years ago.

 

[brentsg]

This seems a lot like the Win10 saga; the manufacturer is Beta testing hardware in this case.

The RTX fails we've seen with the 2080 card were the beta tests for the full-up Titan cards.

This is obviously a design issue at this point, as "Test Escapes" doesn't hold water here.

If they can't test these cards before release, they have no QC at all.

Nvidia is fucked; they will not get my money; not that they would have anyway.

I gave up on them after the GTX fail I had years ago.

Reap what you sew; or as I'd say it, "Eat Shit and Die, Nvidia!"

Preferably in a fire of your own Fail.

I can’t believe you called someone out for being a kid, then made some of these posts. Amazing. At least this one got to the bottom of it. You’ve had a beef with them for years and are calling others out for being fanboys.

 

[riffcho]

I have probably changed about a dozen video cards in my life and never had a problem with any of them. My last one was GB GTX 1080 Gaming which I used for about 2,5 years. Sold it when I got GB GeForce RTX™ 2080 Ti GAMING OC 11G. Bad move because the 2080 Ti went bad after 2 weeks of use. And because GB repairs their cards I got it back after 40 days (holidays included). One thing I noticed was that they put some thermal pads on top of the memory or something. It got bad just after 2 days this time and went back to the seller. So almost 2 month without a card after paying so much. Obviously I am not buying anything from GB again (last 2 MB and VC were from them) because of this repair service system.