Terrible Problems With BFG From A UK Customer

Yeah get a reliable brand name power supply with plenty of amps on the 12v rail, memtest86 on the RAM and run some CPU test as well just to be safe. Try a newer BIOS if there is one because really, you never know. From my experience in building my own rigs, all rigs have some kind of weird quirk, most of the time it doesn't make any sense but it will cause you problems. Change some BIOS settings as well.

Best of luck to you.
 
Memtest is fine. CPU is fine from what I can see. All Bios and drivers are fully up to date. I will have the hiper PSU in the morning. They have a very good rep in the UK and have some excellent reviews.

Thanks for your help guys, I'll let you know how I get on with the 6800 Ultra.

At least I'm a bit calmer now than I was earlier.
 
jameswinder said:
Well I just had a call from BFG in the US.
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So let's review. The only time you got great service was when you got your ass on the phone with someone from BFG? Don't blame BFG or any manufacture that has a problem with customer service until you fully address the issue WITH A REAL PERSON!

The best way to assure piss poor service is by piss poor communication, especially email. When a cop wants to interview someone do they send an email or knock on thier door when thier home? When you want job do you interview over IM's or in person? Do you think D. Trump conducts buisness by mail or does he show up in person?

I don't work for BFG however, in the proffesional world if I want something done I a. get someone on the phone, or b. get with them face-to-face. Don't blame BFG for your lack of follow up.

I don't mean for this to sound harsh, but you as well as others need to understand the importance of following up with folks, and email ain't it.

TM
 
jameswinder said:
Memtest is fine. CPU is fine from what I can see. All Bios and drivers are fully up to date. I will have the hiper PSU in the morning. They have a very good rep in the UK and have some excellent reviews.

Thanks for your help guys, I'll let you know how I get on with the 6800 Ultra.

At least I'm a bit calmer now than I was earlier.
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Yeah update when you get the ultra, but if that turns out to cause problems again, then honestly, jameswinder, the problem is elsewhere. Again, best of luck to you, hopefully you'll get everything worked out.
 
sakurakana1003 said:
Yeah update when you get the ultra, but if that turns out to cause problems again, then honestly, jameswinder, the problem is elsewhere. Again, best of luck to you, hopefully you'll get everything worked out.
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Aye. As bad as it sounds, I hope that the PSU is the problem. I'm out of ideas, really.
 
jameswinder said:
I'm more sure it's the cards myself. We will see though.
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I don't doubt your words, but if you indeed receive 4, not 1 but 4 defective cards in total in the end, wouldn't it strike you as a bit odd? BFG might have problems within their European customer care department, but I doubt they can give you 4 defective cards in a row, it's just one of those bizarre things. But if it's indeed the cards' problem, then you owe it to yourself to go and play some lottery. :D :D :D
 
Supposedly the Hiper are suppost to be fairly reasonable PSUs (recommonded over on the DFI boards). Probabaly not Antec/OCZ/PCP&C quality, but its better than the one you have now, if they will let you swap it for free then go for it for sure.
 
Topkat said:
The link you gave doesn't work. Scroll down to the bottom of this link...

http://firingsquad.com/hardware/nvidia_geforce_6600_gt_agp_roundup/

Firingsquad said that the BFG 6600GT had one of the noisest fans out of all the 6600GT's.
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It doesn't look they said anything, but rather assigned it an arbitrary noise score. I'm not convinced it's noisy considering other reviews out there that say it's pretty quiet. :)
 
Well today the store installed my Hiper HPU-4B580-MK power supply. It's pretty awsome. It has removable cables so you only fit the ones you need. The tech guys said it was 110% better than my crappy Jeantech. It's less noisy too and it all seems to be running fine.

They then tested the BFG 6800 I was sent in no less than 5 high spec PC's with what they said were good PSU's in them. Every single one showed exactly the same result as me. They concluded that the card was definitely at fault as the problem was evident before the PC's even posted. They also did not think that my old PSU could have made the card become faulty (though I do not wish to challenge what anyone here has said).

They also fitted 2 seperate power cables to the new PSU so that when my Ultra arrives it will have 2 dedicated power cables waiting for it.

Just have to wait a couple more days now and hopefully all will be well again.
 
jameswinder said:
Well today the store installed my Hiper HPU-4B580-MK power supply. It's pretty awsome. It has removable cables so you only fit the ones you need. The tech guys said it was 110% better than my crappy Jeantech. It's less noisy too and it all seems to be running fine.

They then tested the BFG 6800 I was sent in no less than 5 high spec PC's with what they said were good PSU's in them. Every single one showed exactly the same result as me. They concluded that the card was definitely at fault as the problem was evident before the PC's even posted. They also did not think that my old PSU could have made the card become faulty (though I do not wish to challenge what anyone here has said).

They also fitted 2 seperate power cables to the new PSU so that when my Ultra arrives it will have 2 dedicated power cables waiting for it.

Just have to wait a couple more days now and hopefully all will be well again.
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One PC, something else could be the problem.
Two PCs, it's less likely, but something else could STILL be the problem.
Five PCs? Yeah. I'd wager a guess that it's the card's fault.

Good luck!
 
The guy from BFG was even kind enough to send me the measurements for the new card so I could make sure it would fit, and it will. They also gave me the UPS tracking number. Currently it says my card is at "PHILADELPHIA, PA, US" I'm assuming this is the airport.

I just hope some luggage handler isn't kicking it around right now :p
 
According to UPS my card just landed in Derby UK which is only about an hour or so from my house :) :)
 
hey jameswinder,

sorry to hear about all your trouble from BFG, please let us know how it turns out, i'm looking at a 6800gt pci-e and was debating over bfg and evga. hearing your story and reading that evga now has lifetime warranty, is making me think that evga may be the better choice, but i can still be swayed.

Thanks,
Mpegripper
 
Hope everything works out with you, keep us updated :), I'm mainly an ATi Guy, but from the computer I've built for friends, I've never had any problems with BFG's nVidia Cards.

//Elimi'Xed
 
WOOOOHOOOOOOO!!!

The card just arrviced and it works!!!!

I just benchmarked 3D mark 03 and go 1299 marks! I assume this is good for this card. I'm using the latest Nvidia driver, if anyone knows a better one for this card please let me know. It's a noisy little beast and its currently running at 56 degrees, but it works!!!

My one gripe is that I had a conversation with somone at BFG last week and he promised me 100% that he would personally pack the card with all the accesories I sent off with my old one. However he did not. I had to go out and buy a DVI to VGA converter as once again all I got was the card. They did send me a rather funky T shirt too which is cool.

I'm not complaining though. Im very heppy now. Off to go try all my games out.
 
Sorry you had to go through all that crap, and even though it took some time... you have to admit that it rocks that they kept working to make things right with you.
 
I can't deny BFG does more than any other company I have ever known to put things right. They really do seem to care about each individual customer. I work in IT retails sales so I have experienced and heard accounts from people on just about every company that sells computer parts in the UK. I have to admit I will be buying BFG in the future. It took them a while and clearly they have had problems. But their people really do what it takes to make things right.
 
Heh, I'm glad to hear that, that's a happy change in opinion. I guess my next card may just be a BFG as well...
 
This 6800 Ultra is out of this world. I've just been benchmarking. On 3D mark 03 I get nearly 1300. On 3D mark 05 I'm getting around 6000.

Half Life 2 and Doom 3 play like a dream.
 
Well I'm happy for You.

Well You are emotional :) .....I'll never gett another BFG.......I'll I love it .... ;)

I hope that You have mistyped result in 3dmark 2003 though. 12999 sounds closer what it should be then 1299. Even in 3dmark 2005 it will do 4~5 x more then that.

Also doo not wory about temps those are good temps. Also noise is a isue but or bare the noise or get AC NV Silencer 5 rev 2,0 but then warranty is off :(

Use Forceware 77.76 or 77.77. Forceware drivers are tweaked drivers (no wararanty from nVidia that they will work correctly but preform much better then original drivers)
Download them at www.guru3d.com . Forcware compearing to 60 series WHQL drivers brign another 400 to 600 points in 3dmark 2005.

Good luck,



Enjoy it







MD
 
It's good to know that your BFG 6800 Ultra is purring along nicely. After reading through this whole thread, it gives me a lot more confidence in BFG. Something that can't be said of some other company...
 
1c3d0g said:
It's good to know that your BFG 6800 Ultra is purring along nicely. After reading through this whole thread, it gives me a lot more confidence in BFG. Something that can't be said of some other company...
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Would you be referring to some other Joe? :D

After reading this and a couple other posts about BFG's rma service, I feel completely confident that BFG is commited to the customer and is one top-notch international company.
 
That's a neat mod. You'll have to keep up posted on what your idle/load temps are on the video card.
 
GPU Core Idle = 54 degrees
Ambient Idle = 36 degrees

GPU Core Load = 58 degrees
Ambient Load = 40 degrees

Much better than before, it was pushing 70 at one point!

I will update once I have spent a good few hours gaming. ;)
 
jameswinder said:
GPU Core Idle = 54 degrees
Ambient Idle = 36 degrees

GPU Core Load = 58 degrees
Ambient Load = 40 degrees

Much better than before, it was pushing 70 at one point!

I will update once I have spent a good few hours gaming.
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WOW! Nice drop in load temp!

That's awesome compared to my 6600GT (43 idle, 58-60 load - non oc'd, stock hsf).
 
Nice.

Now please trust me :) Take a jigsaw or Dremel and make single round hole in size good for Your fan. Use finger guard over it. Just a normal one or even order one of those funky biohazard once. When You doo that fan's will last longer, make less noise and move more air. Cheers.




MD
 
Great everything worked out :D, if I ever buy nVidia (ATi Fan here) I will 100% go with BFG. Keyword being If I go nVidia, or if BFG do ATi cards as well :p

//Elimi'Xed
 
Well, I sent my card to BFG and they finally shipped the card back and I got it Wednesday(Aug. 17/2005). I cleared old stuff out and put the card in and installed Nvidia 77.72 drivers and DirectX9. Well, the problems are still there. Geometry and texture corruption, game freezing, PC freezing, etc. I've checked the temps and even at max. load the card is only approaching 75F. I have zero issues if I plunk in an old GF4 Ti4600.

I don't know what, if anything, BFG did to fix my card. I've sent off another email. I paid for the card, I paid to ship it to them for RMA. I expected to have a fully working card. I'm quite disappointed. Hopefully they will help me. I'll keep this thread updated.
 
Well, as it was advised with the previous person, make sure your power supply can actually deliver power to that puppy.

If I'm not mistaken isn't it the 12v rail that powers the card? Or is that when the card requires a connection from the psu directly? If so wasn't it recommended something like ~30+ amps on the 12v rail(s) to power up the card? I think that's what I remember reading but I could be wrong. I don't know. It's been 26 hours since i've been to bed. (yay insomnia and drinking energy drinks on top of that!)
 
I've gone through all of this with BFG. They do know what questions to ask. I have a suitable power supply. If the card is not getting enough voltage, the nvidia driver will pop up a window informing you and then will underclock the card.
 
I hope I am not catching this post too late. I found it while searching on google for "problems with BFG".

I am not here to dog on BFG. Throughout the experience I am about to share, the customer service staff has always been extremely polite and helpful.

It is quite late after a 12 hour day at work so I apologize for gramatical/spelling errors. I don't do it out of disrespect.

First, I am a PC tech. I manage a white box PC shop for a fairly small company. We have 5 stores. I build and repair PCs all day every day. I feel I am extremely knowledgable and know PC hardware inside and out.

I bought my BFG 6800 OC 128mb AGP in November. It is not a card my company carries so I purchased it elsewhere. I knew this meant I was on my own for warranty but with BFGs lifetime warranty I wasn't too concerned. I had read a great deal of good things about the cards and I wanted to try one out. I had used EVGA previously for my TI500, TI4200 and FX5600 Ultra. You can see the coolness of cards declined as I got married then had a son. I never had a problem with any of those cards. In fact, I've never really ever had any hardware problem across 11 PCs. I've been pretty lucky.

The BFG card ran perfect. I loved it and it never gave me any problems until June 17th 2005. I was playing the beta demo for FEAR and it scared my card to death. My PC shut off and then wouldn't post. I pulled out the card and it was pretty hot. I looked closer at the card and noticed both fans were cracked down the middle and didn't spin. I was pretty disappointed but knew I could send this in and get it replaced.

I contacted BFG by email then, as directed, by phone. I paid a small fee to have a replacement sent out by 2-3 day shipping instead of waiting the standard 2 weeks. It was like $10 or $12 so I didn't mind too much. They issued me a RMA number and I waited. My card arrived 3 days later and I put it right in when I got home. I knew right away something was wrong.

I ran 3d mark 2005 and the very first scene wouldn't run. The models were all distorted and the textures where all out of whack. I uninstalled all my drivers for my mainboard and my vid card with no change in results. I took the card into work the next day, put it on a different skt 754 mb and did a clean install of windows. same problem. goofy textures, funky models...lots of corruption. No matter what bench or which game. I tried every trick I knew with no luck. I contacted BFG and they agreed that it sounded like a bad card and issued me a new RMA and asked me to send the replacement card back and they would send out another replacement card. So I sent it back. I still had my original, cracked fan, video card.

So...4 weeks later. I figured it took a few weeks to process this. I was gone on vacation and busy so I tried to wait as patiently as I could. I called BFG to see why I hadn't gotten a new card yet. It had been 6 weeks since this had started and I didn't have a new card yet. The Rep wasn't sure so he set up a "Call back" from the warehouse. They would call me and tell my why they hadn't sent out a new card. It would be either before 3 p.m. on a certain day or before 3:00 pm the day after that. Kinda like waiting for the cable guy but I was ok with that. Too bad they never called. So I called back again and asked for some help on figuring out what to do. They eventually put me on with a supervisor. They found that there was a mix up in the RMA number I was given and the number I was told to write on the box when I returned the replacment card. It was actually the number they wanted me to put on the box for my original. So they hadn't sent out a new card b/c they had not received the replacment card yet, which they had but didn't know it. Confused? Me too. The supervisor told me I now had to send my original card in as well before they could send out another b/c their policy had changed. He promised a new one would go out the same day or the very next business day once my card had arrived. He stated a UPS label would come to me in my email the following monday and to use that to ship the card. He issued me my 3rd RMA # and I sent my card out when I got the ups label

I called a week later to get a tracking number on my new card and to make sure they got my RMA. The Rep put me on hold so he could figure out what was going on. He told me he didn't know why my card hadn't gone out yet but he promised one would go out the next day on UPS by 2 day shipping. He game me my 4th RMA number

I got my new card on Monday of this week. I was happy, did a little dance, that sort of thing. I figured my over 2 months of agony would come to an end. I could pull out the 6600gt and put my 6800 back in. Too bad I was wrong.

Before I stuck the new card in, I noticed the top of the card had smears of thermal paste. "Great, a repaired card" I thought. I put my new card in, did the usual driver shuffle. ran 3d mark...same thing. distorted models, bad textures, locking up and crashes. I reinstalled nTune so I could see what I was facing. I found out that I had received a 6800GT 256mb card. A nice 4 pipe upgrade. Problem was the card was way overclocked by default. The core clock is running at 397mhz instead of the OC standard 370mhz. The memory clock is running at 1070mhz instead of 1000mhz. I clocked the card down and then my games would sorta run. I still have misplaced textures and models without textures but games seem to run. It eventually caused my PC to crash and it wouldn't post. I took the card to work, put it on a new setup and had the same results, same default overclocking, etc.

I am pretty frustrated. I have spoke to 5 BFG reps and 1 BFG Super. I have 4 RMA #s and I am on my 3d card.

My system specs have changed a bit since I first got my 6800. While I was waiting for replacment I upgraded to skt 939. I know its the card, I know its not my setup. I hear people tell me this all day long when they bring me their stuff and they are usually wrong. But im not...lol I have tried these cards on multiple boards, cpus, mem configs with same results. I even upgraded my mb and chip in the mean time with the same results. It doesn't make sense why the card would run perfect on my rig then the "replacements" don't.

My Rig.

500 Watt Enermax PS
MSI K8N Neo Plat. (originally had MSI 754 Plat.)
AMD FX 57 (originally had a AMD 64 3400)
2 x 512mb Crucial PC3200
Audigy
EVGA 6600gt 128 AGP (to tide me over)
Audigy
200gb Maxtor SATA
200gb WD IDE

My rig ran great before the card went out and runs great with the 6600gt. I have tried all new parts, bios settings, bios version, power supplies. Everything.

Again, I would like to thank the Phone tech guys from BFG. They have always been extremely nice and helpful and even though they play the same damn song for their hold music every time I call, I don't hold it against them.

I am hoping the BFG guy I see floating around here can give me some help or point me to someone to speak with. I have the rma #'s and the names of all the people I have spoken to, dates, times, etc. I don't want to yell nor do I want special treatment. I just want a replacment card that someone has tested and works and I can count on.

Thanks for your time. It feels good to vent a bit.
 
I just put it in my system and everything, including the POST screen, came out as lots of garbled squares and lines and you cant even see anything!!!!
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After a few minutes of normal operation, my Asus 6600GT AGP stopped sending any signal whatsoever to the monitor, and upon reboot, started showing garbled squares and lines even in the post screens.

I wonder if all of the AGP 6600/6800 cards have faults like this - maybe it's expecting too much out of an AGP card. Do the PCI express versions have the same problem?
 
JRPereira said:
After a few minutes of normal operation, my Asus 6600GT AGP stopped sending any signal whatsoever to the monitor, and upon reboot, started showing garbled squares and lines even in the post screens.

I wonder if all of the AGP 6600/6800 cards have faults like this - maybe it's expecting too much out of an AGP card. Do the PCI express versions have the same problem?
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the interface has nothing to do with the core of the card if its bad its bad
 
it sounds like bfg is a good company, but they send out a lot of bad replacement cards.

i know i'm only gonna hear about the bad, but its a lot of bad lately, maybe i'll go for the evga 7800gt, i believe its clocked higher anyway
 
I just wanted to follow up from my post the night before yesterday. Michael Grey from BFG PM'd me and was kind enough to assist me. I sent him my info and was hoping to hear something from him today.

I was suprised to see the UPS guy knocking on my stores door at 9:30 this morning with a 6800gt OC for me. I probably won't have time to test it until tonight but wanted to thank Mr. Grey and BFG for sending me out a replacement so quickly. I will let you know if this card works when I get home.

Thanks for making my weekend!
 
Just a final follow up. The new card that was sent out to me works great. I appreciate the extra effort that BFG made to make things right. New card is rock solid. Thanks!
 
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