Warning PNY 6800's at CompUSA with missing capacitors

I posted this deal on a different forum, and the one member I know there who bought the card got one with a missing cap. He returned it and got one that was fine and had the gold bar on the side unlike his first card. He was having some glitches with the card but they were relatively minor, so he did not suspect a hardware problem at first.

I would venture to say that anyone who got in on the COMPUSA deal should check to see if their card has the capacitor circled in this picture:
http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1026918347&postcount=36

If you don't have it, exchange your card for a different one.
 
Just tossing my hat in the ring here to say my Black Friday 6800 from comp is running like a champ. Perfect 2D quality, double the performance of my old 9700pro, Running at 370/800 with the card unlocked. Musta got lucky with this one, but I couldn't be happier.
 
Got my first PNY around the time of the Geforce2 (it was a GTS). Was a decent overclocker with stock cooling, played Giants: Citizen Kabuto pretty well (really wish their would have been a sequal to that, Armed and Dangerous was pretty good, but short).

Next moved up to a Geforce3 TI500, that card was an excellent overclocker, never had a lick of a problem until I sold it to a friend without putting the card back to regular clocks. He had a lousy cooling setup, and the card crapped out. I actually managed somehow to get it back up and running, and it ran for about another year after that.

Skipped the PNY Geforce4 series, got an Albatron instead, was an OK card, nothing special really, overclocked OK.

Moved up to a PNY 5700 Ultra after that, that card overclocked insanely good, as it had a solid copper heatsink at stock, I was running it at clocks that were faster than the 5950 Ultra. The problem was with only 4 pipes it still ran like shit. Traded that in for a PNY 5900XT, which was a decent overclocker, but nothing great, but the fan failed on that particular card, which fried it pretty good.

Traded that in on a 9800 Pro, slapped an Arctic Cooler 3 setup on that, overclocked the hell out of that card, really liked it.

Now running a Evga 6800GT with a Arctic Cooler NV5 at faster than Ultra speeds, very happy with it.
 
I opened up my PNY 6800 after seeing this thread. I do not have a capacitor missing. I did notice that the clear plastic package has a bend right where the capacitor is breaking off (referencing the picture with the red circle on a previous post). I think the poor PNY packaging is actually the culprit. My card is working fine (2D & 3D). I did enable all vertex/pixel shaders (using RivaTuner) and have not noticed any artifacts as of yet. Are they very noticeable? I have not tried to overclock the card yet. I have to do some traveling and can not get back to the machine until Wednesday. BTW - a 350 watt p.s. seems enough. I will list the components in my case below. I was looking at either a 6800 or a 6600 GT (AGP version) and thought this was a good buy. A 6600 GT - AGP version is about $228 with shipping and the PNY 6800 card is less after rebate. I am happy for now.


P.S. msummers80 - use RivaTuner to unlock the disabled pipes. It can be downloaded from www.guru3d.com. After installing it, enable the NVStrap driver which will allow you to enable the disabled vertex/pixel shader pipelines.

My system specs are:
Abit IC7 motherboard
P4 2.8 C slightly overclocked to 3.04GHZ (using a big all copper Zalman CPU fan)
1 gig PC 3500 memory GiEL 2.3.3.6
Antec case with 350 watt Antec power supply (16 amps on the +12 rail)
4 - 80mm case fans
Audigy 2 sound card
PNY 6800 video card
16x dual layer DVD writer
16x DVDROM
160 gb SATA hard drive
3COM ethernet adapter
floppy
 
dgunnoe said:
I opened up my PNY 6800 after seeing this thread. I do not have a capacitor missing. I did notice that the clear plastic package has a bend right where the capacitor is breaking off (referencing the picture with the red circle on a previous post). I think the poor PNY packaging is actually the culprit. My card is working fine (2D & 3D). I did enable all vertex/pixel shaders (using RivaTuner) and have not noticed any artifacts as of yet. Are they very noticeable? I have not tried to overclock the card yet. I have to do some traveling and can not get back to the machine until Wednesday.


P.S. msummers80 - use RivaTuner to unlock the disabled pipes. It can be downloaded from www.guru3d.com. After installing it, enable the NVStrap driver which will allow you to enable the disabled vertex/pixel shader pipelines.
Click to expand...

Best way to check for corrupt pipes is to run 3DMark05. You'll get artifacts in the first "Return to Proxycon" benchmark if there are pipeline issues. They'll show up during the battle parts of the scenes, and are very noticeable.

My card showed the artifacts; I turned the extra pipelines off. I didn't expect better than what came in the box, so I'm not disappointed.
 
Mine is also OK. Pipes and vertex units all unlocked fine with no artifacts. There has been a lot written about how important power supplies are w/ these cards- not just total wattage, but amperage on the 12v rail. One forum had a reply from PNY tech support that said they really needed 20 amps on the 12v rail to be stable. My Enlight 420w PS is rated at 18amps and I have had no problems even overclocked. I have had 3 PNY cards (2 previous Ti 4200's) and all of them have been great. Maybe I am just fortunate, but I think that sometimes the devil is in the details- like high quailty PS, etc. Obviously caps falling off the boards is a detail that PNY needs to work on though;)
 
Wow speedfrk. PNY is suggenting 20 amps on the +12 volt rail? Is there even a 350 watt power supply with that available? If I remember right, on the side of the PNY box it suggests a 300 watt power supply. Hmmm.
 
Alright, I'm pretty happy about unlocking my 16 pipes with rivatuner. My scores weren't that bad when I turned off some of the quality settings I had set up in my drivers (don't want my pretty pictures ruining my benchmarks) and now it's performing somewhere between a 6800 stock and a 6800 gt. Pretty happy about that. No artifacts in an hour of Doom3 play (1280x1024 high quality) and things seem to be keeping cool enough. My 2D looks like it should, and now the only thing I could want more from this card is a higher overclock. But I guess everyone can't have all the goodies on these cards, or they'd never sell a GT, right?
So anyways, this was the second card after I returned the first one I got which was missing a cap to compusa. I'd advise anyone else to do the same. You may end up with a gem, and $215 after all is said and done is one sweet deal.
Maybe we should start a thread to see who is having good experiences with these things too, or to see the percentage of good to bad. Me alone it's 50/50.
 
Hi ameoba,

12volts * 26amps = 312 watts. That is not much left for 3.3, +5, -5, -12 volt rails. My 350 watt p.s. is limited to 16 amps on just the +12 volt rail, but it has a 330 watt rating for the combined voltages of +12, +5, and 3.3 (max). I guess for your power supply it could supply 26 amps on the + 12 rail if the other rails did not draw much power. A nice option though.
 
I was disappointed after getting my CUSA PNY 6800 card home and installed to find out the 2D text is quite blurry. Now I don't have the greatest 19" out there (Envision), but my 9600np had great 2D. Is it a poor DAC causing the blurry text? Bum card? I have the Sonata case with the 380w PSU (18 amps on the +12v line) which seems enough. This is at 1152x864, which looks like 1600x1200 on the ATI 9600. What would you all do?

1. Live with it, and hope I can get a DVI LCD later.
2. Try PNY's RMA process, not knowing how long it takes.
3. Exchange it for another one at CUSA, if they have any.
4. Get a refund and wait for another card.

Even when I type this I'm annoyed. It appears as though horizontal lines in a given letter are 'solid enough', vertical lines seem thinner than they should. Also light text against a dark background is worse than black text on white.

Thanks,

KrankKnot
 
KrankKnot said:
I was disappointed after getting my CUSA PNY 6800 card home and installed to find out the 2D text is quite blurry. Now I don't have the greatest 19" out there (Envision), but my 9600np had great 2D. Is it a poor DAC causing the blurry text? Bum card? I have the Sonata case with the 380w PSU (18 amps on the +12v line) which seems enough. This is at 1152x864, which looks like 1600x1200 on the ATI 9600. What would you all do?

1. Live with it, and hope I can get a DVI LCD later.
2. Try PNY's RMA process, not knowing how long it takes.
3. Exchange it for another one at CUSA, if they have any.
4. Get a refund and wait for another card.

Even when I type this I'm annoyed. It appears as though horizontal lines in a given letter are 'solid enough', vertical lines seem thinner than they should. Also light text against a dark background is worse than black text on white.

Thanks,

KrankKnot
Click to expand...

return the card to compusa, they will refund/exchange it no questions asked.

don't just accept the blurry text, it's a defect.
 
Got one that had a capacitor rolling around. Its the same one circled in that other picture. Strangly tho, it overclocks, and softmods. But only in that order. after softmodding, overclocking cannot be down, it doesnt even let it underclock! Oh well, its working fine, and I guess I'll keep it till something goes wrong.
 
I just returned a PNY 800 Ultra to Fry's Electronics, I thought $499 for an Ultra card is a good deal. Well it was my first PNY card ever and my last. Even at stock speeds it would crash in Doom 3, Half Life 2, and in 3DMark05 as well, I would see artifacts right away then crash and had to do a hard reboot, what a piece of garbage that was.

:mad: :mad:
 
Add me to the list of folks with a bad CrapUSA 6800 purchase. Got to take mine back tomorrow. Maybe I'll just go get the BFG/HL2 deal at Best Buy instead.

Thanks to the original poster for bringing this up - I hadn't checked mine yet (power supply to run it doesn't come in until Friday), but checked it as soon as I read about it. Glad I didn't try to use it. Now I can just return it and say "I never even hooked it up" and be honest about it.

RagManX
 
Tanis143
Limp Gawd


Without the card, I can not prove this next statement, but I do believe the retail had faster memory than the OEM because my performance was not what it used to be after that as well.

So, never again shall I purchase a PNY, which should be renamed to POS.
__________________

Yes, OEM boards mostly have lower clock rates. The OEM folks prefer exceptional stability vs. breakneck performance, so they will not have tech calls all the time.

Steve
 
My friend and I both got a PNY 6800 NU at CompUSSR on Black Friday. Mine was fine, but my friend's 6800 was missing a capacitor (C531). I think by now that everyone knows the cap was knocked off by the stepping on the plastic packaging.

I just want to know why. This PNY card uses the recommended cooling solution from nVidia. It even has an aluminum bar on the top to prevent the PCB from flexing. Everything is quality-made. The AVI to VGA adaptor is properly shielded.

But why? Why does PNY has to use such cheap packaging? When I opened the box, I saw cracks on plastic holder. The corners of the PCB and the metal tabs were protruding from the plastics! There is no padding whatsoever to protect the bottom of the card. I was surprised that my card was still in one piece.

Had PNY spent an extra 1/2 cent to put a thin piece of styrofoam at the bottom ( with a little cut-away window over the barcode), and thin pieces of cardboard to protect the corner, the company would not have to spend tens of thousands of dollars on RMA today.

Why? Why cheap out on the packaging when the card is well-made? Is there a rule in business that says, "You must find a way to cut-corner, not matter how little it will save you."?

My friend is planning to exchange the item once CompUSA has new 6800NU in stock. He probably won't have any luck until end of this month.

I have very angry with PNY, just like the rest of you. I look forward to a class action lawsuit if PNY does not speed up the RMA process right away.
 
i just got my RMA number emailed to me today...so i'm sending it in tomorrow...hopefully a new one comes back soon....
 
Very strange and stupid indeed!
Where is the protection against static electricity for example?
Is there a salt bag against humidity in this closed plastic box?

Here (Europe), my retail PNY 6800Ultra was wrapped in a anti static bag, then in a bubble bag and this all in a box filled with foam. :eek:

I believe someone will be fired over there. :rolleyes:

As for the bad 2D quality, i don't have this problem and it is not a PNY only problem eather.
People with eVGA, BFG and more have reported similar 2D problems.
Best is to try new bios versions.

I hope u people get helped out soon so u can enjoy what u payed for. ;)
 
i wont be able to send my RMA in til friday and i was wondering how long it will take to get my new card back...anyone get theirs ??

i'm wondering because i'll be going home for xmas break two weeks from tomorrow.....
 
Hi Shade,

I have a PNY 6800 also (CompUSA deal). I did unlock all Pixel/Vertex shaders without any display problems. 3DMark results are below (core/memory):

325/700(all vertex/pixel shaders enabled - all following results the pipes are unlocked also)
3dMark05 3588
3dMark03 9877

400/700
3dMark05 4017
3dMark03 10856

400/760
3dMark05 4120
3dMark03 11175

400/770
3dMark05 4151
3dMark03 11206

I did not get any video glitches with any of these settings!

Not bad for under $220.00. I may can go higher, but this is good! ;)
 
I picked a PNY 6800 up at CompUSA during the black Friday sale and I have the same capacitor missing. It is quite evident to me that this is a packaging issue and not a problem with manufacturing. If I press down on the back of the packaging, the hard edge of a step in the plastic comes right down to the edge of where the capacitor was soldered. I would not question the quality of PNY products because of a problem like this. Sure their packaging sucks, but that does not mean their cards are defective.

I notice the capacitor missing as soon as I opened the box as I heard it rattling around. I took the card back to CompUSA and they said they would replace it as soon as they get more in stock. I also e-mailed PNY tech support that Friday and I got a reply the following Tuesday. It said,

“We are truly sorry to hear of problems that occurred with your purchase.
However At this time due to such high demands for our entire 6800 Series
and the product moving in great volume we do not have any immediate
replacements available. In the effort to conserve downtime I would
advise you to obtain a refund at your point of purchase and seek another
retailer that may have our card in stock. I can initiate the RMA
process for you however this is at minimum a 10 day process.”

I though about waiting until CompUSA gets more in stock, but that could take some time. I called PNY tech support yesterday, Friday the 3rd, and I left a message because it was after business hours. I got a call back from them this morning and the very friendly tech gave me an RMA number. It may take a little while but if it all works out with the RMA, I will be happy with my $199 video card.
 
I forgot to mention my CompUSA BF 6800 card. I got it a couple of days ago (10 minute ordering window from compusa.com at 10pm PST on Thanksgiving). No rattling in the box and the card was unlockable. No capacitors seemed to be missing from it, but I didn't check under the stickers. :p

I already bought a BFG 6800 OC on Sunday from Best Buy, so I took the PNY back yesterday. I didn't get to do much testing on it, but it was fully functional when I received it.
 
I just installed the compusa pny g6800 today no problems nothing missing from the card or box and it overclocks and all the pipes and shaders are unlocked.I'm .Very happy
'Cheers
J
 
I got my PNY 6800GT from CompUSA a couple of months ago when finding a 6800GT was scarce. So far it's been good to me and my shuttle SN41G2.

I had a lot of doubts buying a card from PNY. Primarily because of the horror stories and Experiences I've heard and seen first hand with there RAM as well as their video cards, but this card suprised the heck out of me. I firgured it would give me trouble but it's been rock solid so far.

2D Image Quality wise the PNY has been good for me so far. There is a setting in the driver's color correction section to increase the sharpness which sometimes helps with 2D, but I haven't had to use it and it has the same 2D quality as my Ti4200 did. Also make sure that you reset your LCD if you have one (they usually call it auto mode on most LCD displays) since signals differ from card to card. If you tried all of the above and it's still blurry then RMA it.

Skipping and frame rate spikes that I've noticed in games so far I have tracked down to CPU limitations rather than the 6800GT. Especially in HL2 (not just the bug) UT2K4 and Doom3. my AXP 333 bus 3000+ just gets hammered on these games. Especially when AI is involved. Frankly I Can't get the frame rate any higher no matter what I set for resolution and Image quality in most of these games.

EVGA really went down in my opinion after this buy. At first I got their 6800GT from newegg. When it came in, the board had corrupted ram out of the box. After reading their piece of paper telling me not to return it to the store I called their tech support hotline, which told me first thing when I told them what I was seeing on the screen "Can you take it back to the store you bought it from?" When I told them I bought it from a website they gave me instructions on how to activate the card warrantee online and RMA it. When I did all that, It then proceeded to tell me that 1) they would not cross ship and I had to buy the card again and they would refund the money once they got the defective one in (kinda hard to do when you spent all your money on the card already) and 2) they couldn't RMA it because apparantly they cant send an RMA to my House in PA for some unknown reason.

After I sent it back to Newegg and they bailed them out by refunding my money, I Drove 50 miles to a Compusa that had the PNY card, took a chance and bought it. I haven't regretted the purchase yet. I picked a good day to too, since the doom3 promotion started that day. sold that to a friend for $30 (since I already bought it thinking I had a Good EVGA card when it was toast) to cover the S&H (From the EVGA Card Return) and Gas that I had to pay to get this card.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chickenmon
Glad it wasnt just me. My PNY 6800 ultra from compusa had the exact same problem as well as a prorblem with the fan guard grinding against the fan. After a fan modification to give it just enough clearance to not touch and resoldering the capacitor that was off things have been fine. Very disapointing though for a $500 card.
Why would you perform two "surgeries" on a brand new $500 card?! I would have taken it back and demanded a new one. Aren't you afraid they will deny a future RMA because you altered the card?


I had to modify it myself because I didnt want to wait a month or 2 for the rma and every single retail store was sold out of the 6800 ultras. This was back when they were just a month or 2 old. Its now a nice card after I fixed it but PNY is never getting a dime from me again.
 
I was the first one at CompUSA for BF at 1am and ran to the video card section! Unfortunately, the stupid guys who work there left it locked and no one was there to open it. So after a line behind me of 6 people, we finally got it unlocked after 10 min.

I got my 6800 and no missing parts or anything. All pipes + shaders are unlocked

A-OK!
 
I was too lazy early on black friday for the pny card but I did go early saturday morning and pick one up Luck I guess..The first compusa was out but they located a card at another store which was about 15 miles away so I drove over and it was waiting at the service desk Not bad it sure beat getting out of bed early on black friday..
Cheers
J
 
but u are wrong. if there packaging is bad and it causes something to fall off the card, then the card is defective and it is the manufacturers fault becuz they chose to package it this way. regardless if they r selling rma'd cards or if they packaged it bad. PNY obviously isn't a good quality company. btw where do i get 3dmark so i can see wut i get. i was one of the ppl who bought a pny card at CUSA(had to return one cuz it was defective, but sec one was alright...). i also have unlocked my pipes and shader but am not using hte GT bios but using my NU.
 
I ordered the PNY 6800GT on Thanksgiving day from CompUSA. After seeing this thread, I was a bit worried about the number of issues with PNY and their quality. I received my card the other day and the card was in good condition. I finally decided to try it out in my old Dell computer at home just to see if it worked alright. Everything looks good and the 2D is sharp. Now I just gotta wait till Monday for Fedex to deliver the rest of my computer that I ordered from Newegg.
 
I too got the PNY 6800 from CompUSSR. No missing capacitor, and the card did unlock to 16p6v just fine, but with major "snow" or "noise" (for lack of a better term).

The unacceptable part was the awful 2D quality. Trying to run it at 1152x864 @ 75hz gave me a headache in 10 minutes. Lower refresh rates made the quality a bit better but in the end I just didn't want to "settle" given that in reality most of my time on the PC is spent in 2D.

So I took the card back, got a refund, and managed to pick up that BFG 6800 OC + HL2 combo at BestBuy for ~$200AR after 10% off and $20 coupon.

The BFG card looks exactly like the PNY card (I bet they're both reference designs) except for the HSF. But the 2D on this card is perfect. Akin to my BFG Ti4200 that it replaced. Thank god I didn't settle for the PNY.

Does anyone know if PNY and BFG use different RAMDACs? Is this why the 2D quality would be different on two (visually) identical cards? Just curious.

Z
 
bznotins said:
I too got the PNY 6800 from CompUSSR. No missing capacitor, and the card did unlock to 16p6v just fine, but with major "snow" or "noise" (for lack of a better term).

The unacceptable part was the awful 2D quality. Trying to run it at 1152x864 @ 75hz gave me a headache in 10 minutes. Lower refresh rates made the quality a bit better but in the end I just didn't want to "settle" given that in reality most of my time on the PC is spent in 2D.

So I took the card back, got a refund, and managed to pick up that BFG 6800 OC + HL2 combo at BestBuy for ~$200AR after 10% off and $20 coupon.

The BFG card looks exactly like the PNY card (I bet they're both reference designs) except for the HSF. But the 2D on this card is perfect. Akin to my BFG Ti4200 that it replaced. Thank god I didn't settle for the PNY.

Does anyone know if PNY and BFG use different RAMDACs? Is this why the 2D quality would be different on two (visually) identical cards? Just curious.

Z
Click to expand...

See post above about re-calibrating the monitor. That, or the card was faulty. They won't sell much of those with this kind of design flaw.
 
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