The NVIDIA RTX 2080 Experience Signs RTX Off

cageymaru

cageymaru

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Reddit user bllyxix has posted a benchmarking screenshot of his 4 day old Founder's Edition NVIDIA RTX 2080 running Space Invaders... a benchmark. As you can clearly see through the 8 bit Tensor Core graphics; there is something awry with his card. It obviously looks like it is on life support or trapped in a snow globe. At any frame-rate the card was well on its way to Real-Time Ray Tracing heaven while riding 10 GigaRays, but NVIDIA RMA'd its soul back for replacement. Warning the larger image could cause snow blindness or sadness amongst tech enthusiasts. Ground control to Major Tom Petersen; is this the way it's meant to be played?

Nvidia's own Founders Edition. I went through steps with Nvidia. They wanted me to check connections, try different cables, reset to default settings, run in debug mode...nothing helped and they agreed it is faulty. I have an RMA set up.
 
Not surprising. I've kept my "adventures" of the 2080TI on the [H] Nvidia forums, and I went through the RMA process 3 times just to get cards which work out of the box. What happens 4 days from now, I don't know. But from the NVidia forums, this generation of cards has significant quality control issues.
 
Nytegard said:
Not surprising. I've kept my "adventures" of the 2080TI on the [H] Nvidia forums, and I went through the RMA process 3 times just to get cards which work out of the box. What happens 4 days from now, I don't know. But from the NVidia forums, this generation of cards has significant quality control issues.
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You have "bad" RTX card(s) from NVIDIA?
 
Um what about this is specifically tied to the model/generation? Pretty sure failures like this have been happening for decades...?
 
I don't see what the big deal is.

100% of all companies eventually let one slip through the cracks.

What's important is how they handle the situation when it happens.

Unless there is more to this story (like sudden massive quantities failing, or Nvidia failing to stand behind the product and replace it) this - while certainly annoying to the guy this happened to, is not a big deal.

It happens.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I don't see what the big deal is.

100% of all companies eventually let one slip through the cracks.

What's important is how they handle the situation when it happens.

Unless there is more to this story (like sudden massive quantities failing, or Nvidia failing to stand behind the product and replace it) this - while certainly annoying to the guy this happened to, is not a big deal.

It happens.
Click to expand...

Slow news day.
 
Nytegard said:
Yeah. I ordered two. One card wouldn't even get to the post screen. The other card worked, but the LED logo light wouldn't light. I RMA'd both. Yeah, the second card worked, but for $1200+, I want a fully working card, which I don't think is too much to ask for. The third card arrived, and I was getting artifacts.



You can see a picture of both cards. (I kept the working card with the broken LED until I had two working cards).

SLI when taking this video, but after testing only the first card, that worked, and the second card still had the artifacts. And I couldn't start any games, which would freeze within seconds. I'm now on cards 4 & 5, which are working, and hopefully will continue to work.
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This sounds more serious.

Maybe this is why, even well after launch, they are still on backorder.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I don't see what the big deal is.

100% of all companies eventually let one slip through the cracks.

What's important is how they handle the situation when it happens.

Unless there is more to this story (like sudden massive quantities failing, or Nvidia failing to stand behind the product and replace it) this - while certainly annoying to the guy this happened to, is not a big deal.

It happens.
Click to expand...

If more fun to completely lose your shit rather than use logic. That’s the trend now a days. I had 3/3 of my 1080ti hybrids die after a month...

Nytegard’s experience is interesting since his cards were spaced apart and likely different batches.
 
Dayaks said:
If more fun to completely lose your shit rather than use logic. That’s the trend now a days. I had 3/3 of my 1080ti hybrids die after a month...

Nytegard’s experience is interesting since his cards were spaced apart and likely different batches.
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Wow, I would have seriously started questioning things after 3 in a row.

Only Nvidia branded card I ever bought was my current Pascal Titan X.

At first I thought there might be something wrong with it, as it would have driver errors during windows boot, but they never occurred in Linux, so I assume they were just bugs in the drivers.

Eventually after several diver updates the problem disappeared.

Thing is, this makes it souch more annoying to watercool. If you take the cooler off and replace it with a block, you have to out it back on for RMA, and hope they don't say anything...
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I don't see what the big deal is.

100% of all companies eventually let one slip through the cracks.

What's important is how they handle the situation when it happens.

Unless there is more to this story (like sudden massive quantities failing, or Nvidia failing to stand behind the product and replace it) this - while certainly annoying to the guy this happened to, is not a big deal.

It happens.
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And I think that was exactly what the news post was about. Bad card, RMA....

I think this is worth getting attention on, because now as you have seen, we have some others chiming in with multiple issues. This is how you find out of things are wrong or right. Certainly we are hoping for "right."
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Yeah, I stand corrected.

When this single guy on Reddit was all I saw, it didn't seem like much of an issue.

As essentially an applied statistician, it drives me up a wall when I see people make grand statements about overall quality based off of an n=1 experience :p

Seeing all these other posters chime in, not with the one off type failures, but repeated ones makes me start questioning Nvidias Quality control with Foxconn or whomever it is they use for those GPU's.

My guess is you were already aware of other failures in addition to this one by the Reddit guy. (Or your Spidey sense just tingled :p )
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That's why statistics and the real world are fun! Just because a bird shits on you every day of your life doesn't mean it happens to everyone else as well... x% of people get shit on by birds on a daily basis, so if you take a shit then that's one less shit someone else statistically is going to take... But then again, if you are getting shit on everyday, there is probably something you are doing wrong, or you live in an aviary.

Now to fly in the way of that, from my own personal experience, I tend to shy away from reference cards in general. The coolers tend to be underwhelming and the cards run hotter. Even though it was designed that way, engineers are not mechanics and they have to work with a tight budget, so they regularly screw things up because a design on paper may not be mechanically sound in practice. So I wait until the third parties make their own versions, and ill get the ones with better coolers and caps.

I think its the f-body camaros... some of the engines had a newer type of optic crank timing sensor that was located either on or underneath the water pump. So when your water pump seals start to fail, the water would leak into the sensor fudging the optic wheel causing the car to not start or misfire like mad. Unless you knew the pump was leaking, most people would just replace the sensor and be done with it, only to come back and replace it again a few months later.
 
Wiffle said:
Now to fly in the way of that, from my own personal experience, I tend to shy away from reference cards in general. The coolers tend to be underwhelming and the cards run hotter. Even though it was designed that way, engineers are not mechanics and they have to work with a tight budget, so they regularly screw things up because a design on paper may not be mechanically sound in practice. So I wait until the third parties make their own versions, and ill get the ones with better coolers and caps.
Click to expand...

This is how it used to be.

Starting with the 10xx series, Nvidia invented their "Founders Edition" cards. They do have less capable coolers than some of the board partners cards, but Nvidia has typically also binned the best chips for themselves, so if you are the type who might want to put a water block on yours and overclock it, you probably want an FE card.

Unless this is a massive quality issue with their boards, that is.
 
It was my understanding the manufacturers actually plug these into boards and boot them up with a quick 3D test before they ship them. Or at least this is the process that is implied when watching a video from a few years back on video card production.

That leaves me to the conclusion of
1) The factory test rigs are for show only
2) Someone has extremely bad luck as the card was damaged in transit
3) User error/bad systems/compatibility issues

Occams Razor says?
 
DigitalGriffin said:
It was my understanding the manufacturers actually plug these into boards and boot them up with a quick 3D test before they ship them. Or at least this is the process that is implied when watching a video from a few years back on video card production.

That leaves me to the conclusion of
1) The factory test rigs are for show only
2) Someone has extremely bad luck as the card was damaged in transit
3) User error/bad systems/compatibility issues

Occams Razor says?
Click to expand...


That would be interesting, but a serious waste of time. Last two video cards I have ordered did not have any scratch marks on the pcie fingers. The most likely scenario is that they pull a few out of each "batch" and test for quality. This is pretty much what every single manufacturing plant I have ever been in to does. The one exception is a place that makes steel and aluminum wheels- after each part is welded (steel wheels) or deflashed and milled (aluminum wheels) they are put on a machine that checks for balance. Then, every so many of those are pulled and tested at some ungodly RPM (something like 4k rpm iirc)
 
I'd assume they only test a sample of any given lot (if you're lucky to get something even that extensive).

I'd also assume that if a significant percentage of card were actually failing in the wild, that there'd be a lot of big box businesses very upset with nvidia as there is a lot of overhead in handling the returns from customers (most people dont buy directly from nvidia)

Barring the outcry from companies and that this is mostly happening on forums, I'd assume that this is a minority issue and forums tend to cater to a minority of users so we always see certain aspects of a forum community VASTLY exaggerated.

If you seem to be getting an inordinate number of failures, perhaps your mailman/delivery service pulls an Ace Ventura on your pkgs before they reach the door? Perhaps the place you're buying from gets stock that came from a bad subcontractor. etc etc. If the problem was truly widespread and an issue, we'd be hearing about it outside of forums as companies would be doing the complaining, not a handful of consumers.
 
They really rushed the release of this generation.......and I have no clue why.....not like they had any competition releasing yet.
 
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Zarathustra[H] said:
This sounds more serious.

Maybe this is why, even well after launch, they are still on backorder.
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Well I had a Strix back ordered. Granted that's AIB, but after this and some other performance related things I've recently seen I'm really glad I cancelled last week.
 
Montu said:
Bad cards out of the box are nothing new. It happens to all tech companies. Electronics are funky like that.
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I honestly count myself lucky anytime I take something out of the box, install, and everything turns on like it should. Mostly have had a good run but read way too many stories over the years.
 
Had a dead displayport on my EVGA 2080ti XC and it was really noisy. Got my new card yesterday, but still in the box so haven't tested it.. Hopefully I won't have to RMA a third time.
 
Montu said:
Bad cards out of the box are nothing new. It happens to all tech companies. Electronics are funky like that.
Click to expand...

My MSI 780 smoked up in my case in less than a year. The evga 970 was solid. My MSI 1060 died in less than a year. I'm unlucky as fuck or MSI sucks balls. If I had bought an RTX card I probably would have got the short end of the stick again.
 
Sometimes it's the motherboards. There's a reason I bought a Sabertooth.
 
The only video cards I've ever had go bad were my fault for not checking the fans; they were in a TV box, and it got fill of Cat hair, eventually.

You'd think I'd learn after the first one, but NNNNOooooo. :)

I bought a Sabertooth mobo as well; it can seriously supply some power.

I accidently booted my 3930k at 5.2GHz; I saw the leds on the power supply dim, and it was drawing 250W at idle, when it got into windows. :)

I just hit the mech switch on the back, and let it cool for an hour before I reset it, lol.

IDK how hot it got, but I could feel the radiator was warm, and it never gets warm...
 
filip said:
My MSI 780 smoked up in my case in less than a year. The evga 970 was solid. My MSI 1060 died in less than a year. I'm unlucky as fuck or MSI sucks balls. If I had bought an RTX card I probably would have got the short end of the stick again.
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Probably MSI cut corners with component? Had various GPU from different vendor my MSI 970 was the first ever i have to RMA.
 
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I picked up a bad Gigabyte GTX 1080 from Fry's with completely random visual artifacts (bad memory I think?) but have otherwise been fortunate with graphics cards. I'm glad I purchased that locally and the return process was simple. Thankfully nothing I've bought online new has ever been faulty--well at least not immediately on arrival. I had a WD IDE drive fail on me years ago after little use. Come to think of it I may have had a bad Asus board also years ago, but I forgot the details. I know I avoid Asus and Gigabyte and stick with EVGA, MSI, and ASRock when considering cards and motherboards--mostly just due to my own experiences though. Oh and I also still avoid WD like the plague, mainly because I've seen several of their drives fail. I'm not opposed to giving these brands another try at some point though. I just really like stuff that works :).
 
alxlwson said:
That would be interesting, but a serious waste of time. Last two video cards I have ordered did not have any scratch marks on the pcie fingers. The most likely scenario is that they pull a few out of each "batch" and test for quality. This is pretty much what every single manufacturing plant I have ever been in to does. The one exception is a place that makes steel and aluminum wheels- after each part is welded (steel wheels) or deflashed and milled (aluminum wheels) they are put on a machine that checks for balance. Then, every so many of those are pulled and tested at some ungodly RPM (something like 4k rpm iirc)
Click to expand...

My SA .45 ACP came with its first spent casing in the carrying case, presumably to show it didn't destroy itself after one firing. Since the carrying case has a spot for the spent casing I presume every one of them is fired. Why couldn't this be the case for a graphics card (tested, that is; not fired)?
 
I once had to RMA a video card and this is my personal story.
 
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Algrim said:
My SA .45 ACP came with its first spent casing in the carrying case, presumably to show it didn't destroy itself after one firing. Since the carrying case has a spot for the spent casing I presume every one of them is fired. Why couldn't this be the case for a graphics card (tested, that is; not fired)?
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Well graphics cards don't usually explode in your face if you screw something up badly at manufacturing.

To be sure you'd have to boot up every GPU, get the drivers loaded up and start a game, that would take a lot of time even if it's automated and it's probably usually cheaper to just replace a couple of cards than to check every single one.
 
Algrim said:
My SA .45 ACP came with its first spent casing in the carrying case, presumably to show it didn't destroy itself after one firing. Since the carrying case has a spot for the spent casing I presume every one of them is fired. Why couldn't this be the case for a graphics card (tested, that is; not fired)?
Click to expand...


That spent round is sent to national ballistics lab.
 
Algrim said:
My SA .45 ACP came with its first spent casing in the carrying case, presumably to show it didn't destroy itself after one firing. Since the carrying case has a spot for the spent casing I presume every one of them is fired. Why couldn't this be the case for a graphics card (tested, that is; not fired)?
Click to expand...

You know guns have to be proof marked from a 3rd party proofer that prove that the gun\Barrel doesn't explode ?
 
I've also got a 2080 Ti FE that's faulty. It randomly TDRs in games, I'm in the process of arranging a refund now.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
This is how it used to be.

Starting with the 10xx series, Nvidia invented their "Founders Edition" cards. They do have less capable coolers than some of the board partners cards, but Nvidia has typically also binned the best chips for themselves, so if you are the type who might want to put a water block on yours and overclock it, you probably want an FE card.

Unless this is a massive quality issue with their boards, that is.
Click to expand...
The truth is more likely that they are not binned and that other manufacturers are binned. If a manufacturer sells a RGB OC EXTREME ++++ CLOCKS TOP EDITION XX then it means they very likely bin their entire chip order, which means those that don't buy the top card have a lower chance of getting a good clocker often, so I get reference where possible for this reason. Paid off with a 7970 big time, that sucker pulled a 40% OC out of the box!
Most serious OC attempts are made with reference cards because they are first, plus a standard design so all wire mods etc and water blocks work on those cards.
 
I have an 2080 FE, and I have about 5 friends who ordered the same, all of us have been gaming without issues. My only complaint is that the card's method of cooling makes my PC run a bit warmer than I'd like but that can be remedied with a couple more case fans.

We play Monster Hunter World and Overwatch almost every night, and everyone seems to love their new graphics card. Just adding to the "our shit works fine" group.
 
N4CR said:
The truth is more likely that they are not binned and that other manufacturers are binned. If a manufacturer sells a RGB OC EXTREME ++++ CLOCKS TOP EDITION XX then it means they very likely bin their entire chip order, which means those that don't buy the top card have a lower chance of getting a good clocker often, so I get reference where possible for this reason. Paid off with a 7970 big time, that sucker pulled a 40% OC out of the box!
Most serious OC attempts are made with reference cards because they are first, plus a standard design so all wire mods etc and water blocks work on those cards.
Click to expand...


Well, they may still be binned, but if Nvidia already had their first pick, then they are binned as the top X% of a lower bin. Many have reported that since the launch of Nvidia's Founders Edition boards, they tend to overclock higher than any board partner boards on average, IF you put the same aftermarket cooler on both.
 
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