So I took my PC to QuakeCON this year..4870 died 2 hours in!

J

Jiggaman2576

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 27, 2004
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Has anyone else had this happen? I got to QuakeCON and setup my PC and turned it on. No problems yet, everything working fine. I checked a few pics I had taken (I'm a staff photographer) and all seemed well. I locked my PC and went out to take more pics, when I come back 2 hours later my screen was white. I didn't think anything of it and didn't even mess with it, I was talking to someone else and got side tracked and went off and took more pics. The next time I get back to my PC which is like 30 minutes later the screen was off so I think power management no big deal. Then I noticed the keyboard and mouse were not lit up either. I don't have my PC set to turn off and it was indeed still running. So I turn it off figuring a cold boot will fix it and notta. The board would stop when it posted 26 on the little post diagnostic deal. I removed everything except the card and 1 stick of ram, same thing. Reset the bios, same thing. The only way to get it to go through the post codes was to take the 4870 out completely! I went over to the ATI/AMD booth to see if their tech guy could assist me. He did basically the same thing I did and determined that my 4870 died. When I left my PC when it was working I made sure to check the temps due to traveling with it for 5 hours. It was at a nice 28C.

Here is the cool part of this story. ATI/AMD hooked me up with a 3850 1gb card to use for Quakecon so I could at least edit and review pictures. I told them I would take a bunch of pics of their booth and hook them up for helping me out. For that they are going to mail me 2 brand new 4870's plus they let me keep my broken one which I am going to RMA. Now here is the real kicker, what caused my card to just up and die? I am just wondering if this happens to anyone else. I have to give props to ATI/AMD though for hooking me up. You rock John!
 
Sometimes things just die. Usually if they make it a year its all good. I build pc's for work all the time and once you start building alot its more common to see components just fail.
 
I love reading these stories. Nice to hear that AMD takes care of their costumers at big events like this.:)
 
I have no idea what would cause your card to die, but that's pretty awesome with the ATI/AMD rep hooking you up with 2 new cards plus the dead one to rma. I would buy another one, so you can go quad crossfire XD. Do you have a website where you publish your pics? I would like to see them =)
 
Holy crap, great response from AMD/ATI. Can we put this up on DiG hehe.

So yeah, your card just died which happens sometimes with this equipment.
 
If you read that correctly, you'd see that I have a 4870 which has not been out for more then 2 months. It died exactly 2 days before the tiger direct return policy expired. Cards shouldn't "just die" 30 days after buying them. Especially since it was water cooled from day one and never saw temps over 50C.

As for the pics, most of them are probably on the quakecon official website galleries. I did get quite a few of the quakecon girls however. I also get some private time with 2 of them thanks to my friend Jim. We both shot 2 of them in Bikini's. Make sure if you check out the pics you also check out the Charisma +2 website I have linked at the top. Also, I only have like 9 pics edited so far of the bikini shots but I have about 70 more to put on there :)

Girls of QuakeCON (Including ATI's RUBY, the Wolfenstein girls, and the QuakeCON Girls)

Bikini Shots of Ashley and Alexandra from Charisma +2 modeling agency

These girls are gamers and may frequent the forums. If you can't say anything nice....
 
Nice reponse from AMD... I wish I could go to an event and have some hardware die now too..

And even nicer bikini shots
 
Did any of the sinks fall off? not that it should matter at idle though!
Perhaps the power you were plugged in to wasn't the best? Were you using a UPS? personally I have no idea of what the conditions are usually like there.

Lastly, were there a bunch of nvidia fan bois mad about spending a 600+ on the first GTX280s standing around? j/k
 
I use the stock heatsink for the ram/pwm's and the MCW60 to cool the core directly. The ram on this card doesn't really need cooling anyway so I doubt it was that. The power in the section I was in seemed good. I run a 1600 watt Ultra X3 so I'm pretty sure if the power was flaky my PSU would have taken it down :) I think it's just bad luck in my situation. To top it off the very last day someone through a can of Bawls and covered my PC, my keyboard/mouse and even got some directly on my new 24" Samsung LCD. If I wasn't in my room sleeping when it happened, somebody would have payed dearly. (You do not mess with senior staff member's PC's and get off with a warning) Luckily I seal my case with weather strips so nothing got inside and I just had to wipe it all down with a damp rag.

As far as the pics go, remember QuakeCON is DARK. The lights are dim or off. I did what I could! :)
 
Nice pics of the girls!


Jakalwarrior said:
Did any of the sinks fall off? not that it should matter at idle though!
Perhaps the power you were plugged in to wasn't the best? Were you using a UPS? personally I have no idea of what the conditions are usually like there.

Lastly, were there a bunch of nvidia fan bois mad about spending a 600+ on the first GTX280s standing around? j/k
Click to expand...

lol

fan4.gif
 
I am thinking manufacturing defect. Sometimes you get a bad component (cap, resistor, regulator, what have you) and when it quits out early - everything else gets screwed.
 
something similar happened with my 7900gt. Volt modded it and stuck a vf900 on it, ran at a comfortable 35C idle and 45C load. After about a year and half, it just died. Snow on my screen for a few minutes then died. You card could've just had a shock or something and died, but look at the bright side, you got 2 cards for free! haha
 
Dugg.

I also went to Quakecon. Who did you talk to? I chatted to one of the Diamond guys for a little while, he was really cool. In fact, I'll probably get a Diamond card next.
 
Had I known it was this past weekend, I would have gone! Might have scored some free stuff :p
 
The guy I talked to's name was John. I actually talked to 2 different people. The first guy came over and examined my PC and confirmed that I did indeed have a dead card. He then got me talking to John who asked me if I could get some nice pics of their setup they had there. He did not even tell me at that point that he'd hook me up with 2 new cards for crossfire. I tried to get the best pics I could but it was so dark in there and their setup was really really big. There was no way to cover it all in 1 shot. I let them hold on to my dead card but when it was over he said take this one back and RMA it, and we exchanged info. Hopefully he holds true to his word, but he was super nice so I expect he will be. I will keep you guys posted! Now all I have to do is sell my current mobo and get me an X48 DFI board so I can run X-fire on 2 16X slots :)
 
when i take mine somewhere before i turn it on i do a very thorough internal inspection which includes but is not limited to making sure everything that fits in a slot is well seated and not halfway out from the vibration of the move

i had this happen to me once when i went to a lanparty, sound card fried, had been working perfectly fine forever and within 5 minutes of booting up my rig at the lanparty it went BSOD and the sound card smoked......thats what taught me to inspect things fully, just glad it did not take my mobo with it
 
I guess I forgot to mention that I did inspect everything before turning it on. I removed the side panels, pushed in all the cards (sound card WAS lose) and also tweaked all the sata connectors because they tend to fall out. I had 2 that had fallen out in transport. Not too bad having 14 hard drives hooked up, going 80mph most of the way for 5 hours straight. I guess the Honda Fit has some good suspension :) I guess if I didn't fry it, I wouldn't have talked to the ATI guys about it and wouldn't have gotten hooked up with 2 new cards. As fate would have it, this is one instance I'm glad it fried! Besides that, I am still using the 3850 1GB card as I type this so I am not without a computer while I wait for the RMA and for the 2 new cards to arrive. A win/win which never happens to me.
 
Let us know if he keeps his word, if he does i will be getting a 4870 X2 jus because he hooked you up. :)
 
He called me today on my cell phone to get my address :) Here is the deal though, I misunderstood him. He was saying when I RMA my card I'll have 2 for crossfire not him sending me 2. I should have asked him for a discount on an X2 instead. At any rate, he has a brand new Diamond 4870 that he is sending me and when I get my card back from Visiontek I will be running crossfire. I have to point out that I use my computer for critical photo editing and if he did not give me the 3750 I am running right now I'd be dead in the water. Just for doing that I owe them a great big thank you.
 
Congrats Jigga. I was right there when it was all going down. At first I thought nothing of his computer being off, I did however wonder why he had it powered off but wasn't sure if it was a hardware related issue.

That was extremely awesome of AMD.

Story also Dugg btw.
 
Cards shouldn't "just die" 30 days after buying them.
Click to expand...

It does happen, though. When I bought a Geforce256 many years ago it was actually DOA. Had to send it back and wait 1.5 months for Creative to replace it before even having a chance to try it.

If you start hearing reports of this happening all over the net then it's time to get worried. So far, other than the VRM overheating on the 4870's, I haven't heard or read about any mass deaths of 4800 cards.
 
Congrats. I was also at QuakeCon; sometimes, I have bad luck when going to lans, when the compy is in the back seat or the trunk, all that vibration I think kills weak computers. It's only happened to me once though, so keep knocking on wood.
 
Sorry to read of the card iccident, TC.

Luckily AMD/ATI were able to be helpful in assisting you.

And as for them pictures, very nice shots of the cute/hot ladies. :cool:
 
I'm so going to Quakecon with a Radeon 4870 with no thermalpaste next year lol
 
Charisma+2?!

someone should update that name for Fourth Edition D&D rules. ROFL

It is when looking at this kind of stuff that i thank god for living in Brazil, here that kind of stuff gets a +1 modifier tops! ROFL
 
I fried my 4850 too. I think the drool from looking at that first bikini clad girl did it in. Case in point, saliva is not suitable for watercooling.
 
I officially have a brand new VisionTEK in my hands from the guys at AMD. I received the card this morning :) My other VisionTEK is in VisionTEK's RMA department's hands. I already sold my P35 motherboard and upgraded to the X48 DFI board. They looked the same and had the exact same number of ports as well as port locations for all my 14 hard drives so it was a super easy switch :). I've also ordered another DD Maze waterblock and some more barbs for my NB waterblock I had laying around. When I am finished I will have both the VisionTEK boards in X-fire, watercooled along with the NB and the CPU. Should be an impressive looking sight when it's all done. For all the people wanting to know if AMD came though, they did in spades! :)
 
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