6800 GT: woe is me...

[nitromullet]

Just wanted to share my "misfortune". I was happliy playing Doom3 with my 6800GT this evening, left my desk to grab a beverage, came back, and there were artifacts everywhere. Re-boot... Artifacts instead of POST screen... Power down completely, it boots into Win. Mess around with some drivers (driver cleaner, make sure I'm using WHQL), cross fingers, load up Doom3 - artifacts then lock up. Figure I'd check out AT forums to see if anyone else has this problem, artifacts and a lock up while web surfing. No explanation whatsoever... No OC'ing and I've had this card over a month now. This card is just toast... Already got my RMA with eVGA processing, but I'm using a GeForce 2 MX I had laying around in the meantime... I had made it pretty far in Doom3. Guess I'll have to wait to finish it



Edit: per PrayForDeath

 

[Quino]

Sorry to hear that Just finished Doom3 and I toought it was pretty good

 

[CrystalBay]

Bummer, I hope this is not a new trend . Do you know what your temps were about ?

 

[Mloot]

Just for kicks, you could see how D3 plays on the MX.


All joking aside, I feel your pain. That's a hell of a downgrade to live w/until you get an RMA replacement.

 

[Bateluer]

I feel your pain.

 

[SonicIce]

I wonder how it would look on my Voodoo3...

 

[Chronoshock]

Hah! That's what I'm using now. Oh the agony My BFG 6800 Ultra should be arriving in a day though

 

[filmore crashcart]

That is indeed a bummer. Also a scary bummer; been too many coincidental 6800 deaths with this game. I'm nearing the end of D3 and I hope I don't see this happen with my GT.

 

[Creig]

It does seem odd that so many video cards are giving up the ghost while playing D3. Either this is just the average number of card that die over a given timeframe and we're just attributing this normal death rate to D3 or it does indeed have something to do with the game stressing components.

Since artifacting is usually a sign of bad/overclocked memory, I wonder if possibly it's the memory chips that are overheating and failing. The 6800GT runs pretty warm to begin with and it's blowing that heat over the memory chips which increases THEIR overall temps. Possibly this is causing the premature failures.

Just a guess.

 

[lordtyranus]

Yah, my first PNY 6800 ended up artifacting in Game test 4 in 3dmark. I RMAd it and the new one runs 416/1120 perfectly fine.

It's odd that the new one doesn't artifact in Doom 3 until around 430 core, yet it starts artifacting in Farcry at 420 core. I don't know what this "Doom 3 kills overclocks" deal is about.

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: lordtyranus
Yah, my first PNY 6800 ended up artifacting in Game test 4 in 3dmark. I RMAd it and the new one runs 416/1120 perfectly fine.

It's odd that the new one doesn't artifact in Doom 3 until around 430 core, yet it starts artifacting in Farcry at 420 core. I don't know what this "Doom 3 kills overclocks" deal is about.

I'm sure you'll find out soon enough.

 

[nitromullet]

Just for kicks, you could see how D3 plays on the MX.


All joking aside, I feel your pain. That's a hell of a downgrade to live w/until you get an RMA replacement.

I was already thinking about it.... I imagine that it will really suck, consdiering that with 2D I can only run 1600x1200 @ 70Hz (I have a 21" CRT). I have a Radeon 7200 laying around somewhere that I think I might use, however, with all the driver nightmares I've read about on this forum, I'm not sure I want to "mix" nv and ATi drivers on the same rig. On the upside, I asked eVGA about their step-up program and if I could go ahead and do it during the RMA process, so I might end up with an Ultra instead of a GT a month or 2 from now.

Bummer, I hope this is not a new trend . Do you know what your temps were about ?

low-mid 60's idle and mid 70's under load. I got the load temps from running 3D apps in windowed mode and watching the temps on the nv control panel.

It does seem odd that so many video cards are giving up the ghost while playing D3. Either this is just the average number of card that die over a given timeframe and we're just attributing this normal death rate to D3 or it does indeed have something to do with the game stressing components.

Since artifacting is usually a sign of bad/overclocked memory, I wonder if possibly it's the memory chips that are overheating and failing. The 6800GT runs pretty warm to begin with and it's blowing that heat over the memory chips which increases THEIR overall temps. Possibly this is causing the premature failures.

Just a guess.

I'm kinda wondering about this also. But, wouldn't the stock HSF be plenty for a GT runnning at stock speeds?

 

[Bumrush99]

Make sure you main power supply cables are firmly in place. Had the SAME EXACT THING HAPPEN TO ME, a ghost went in to my case and loosened my cable, giving me a very low 3.3v output.

 

[jiffylube1024]

Originally posted by: keysplayr2003

Originally posted by: lordtyranus
Yah, my first PNY 6800 ended up artifacting in Game test 4 in 3dmark. I RMAd it and the new one runs 416/1120 perfectly fine.

It's odd that the new one doesn't artifact in Doom 3 until around 430 core, yet it starts artifacting in Farcry at 420 core. I don't know what this "Doom 3 kills overclocks" deal is about.

I'm sure you'll find out soon enough.

Exactly.


Your 416/1120 card will soon be a 410/1100 card, and then 400/1785, etc...

These cards don't take to overclocking well, and they get extremely hot. There's a reason some headroom is present in stock cards. Unlike previous generations, which didn't run hot enough to cause permanent damage/electromigration at overclocked speeds, these cards drop in 'max overclock speed' like nuts due to the increased heat you put through the card.

It seems more cards of this generation are dying within the first couple of months than ever before, and the 9700 Pro was the previous leader in that by a lanslide (cards dying/artifacting within their life). It's just the nature of the game: more transistors, smaller manufacturing process, increased clockspeed and heat... A higher failure rate is an inevitability, even with better cooling .

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: Bumrush99
Make sure you main power supply cables are firmly in place. Had the SAME EXACT THING HAPPEN TO ME, a ghost went in to my case and loosened my cable, giving me a very low 3.3v output.

Are you talking about the cables from the PSU to the vid card? I still haven't heard back from eVGA about the RMA, so I still have the card in my possesstion. I'd rather it just work than have to deal with all the RMA BS. How long have you had your card? How long ago did you have this problem and how is it running now etc...?

 

[Bumrush99]

I'm talking about the main power supply cables that get hooked up directly to your motherboard. Sometimes they get loose, thus resulting in less power to the motherboard. If you 2d is also corrupted it may the culprit. Check your voltage settings in the bios, if you notice you 3.3 is really low or you 12v is low it may be a power supply issue. I ran under-volted for 2 days dealing with massive corruption in 2d and 3d. When I figured out what the problem was, everything was back to normal. No lingering problems.

 

[Kobra]

I've been saying for the last month that eVGA 6800 series cards SUCK... I went through *THREE* of them here ironically enough, and only 1 of the three was overclocked, and it was only overclocked fo 30 seconds. eVGA really seems to have a problem with their 6800's. Probably why they are only confident enough to offer a 1 year warranty.

Quite a letdown, I had a old eVGA Ti-4600 fry on me a year ago, and it was out of warranty and eVGA finally replaced it. But basically, eVGA has been bad luck for me and I lost confidence in their cards.

I went with a BFG this time, lifetime warranty. I'm taking no chances!

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: Bumrush99
I'm talking about the main power supply cables that get hooked up directly to your motherboard. Sometimes they get loose, thus resulting in less power to the motherboard. If you 2d is also corrupted it may the culprit. Check your voltage settings in the bios, if you notice you 3.3 is really low or you 12v is low it may be a power supply issue. I ran under-volted for 2 days dealing with massive corruption in 2d and 3d. When I figured out what the problem was, everything was back to normal. No lingering problems.

Thanks. I'll check that out tonight when I get home.

 

[Drayvn]

Do u think that some of the GTs are Ultras but couldnt clock that high and so were sold as GTs, and iin turn the problem with clocking them that high has degraded the stability and reliability of the GT?

 

[FluxCap]

Originally posted by: Kobra
I've been saying for the last month that eVGA 6800 series cards SUCK... I went through *THREE* of them here ironically enough, and only 1 of the three was overclocked, and it was only overclocked fo 30 seconds. eVGA really seems to have a problem with their 6800's. Probably why they are only confident enough to offer a 1 year warranty.

Quite a letdown, I had a old eVGA Ti-4600 fry on me a year ago, and it was out of warranty and eVGA finally replaced it. But basically, eVGA has been bad luck for me and I lost confidence in their cards.

I went with a BFG this time, lifetime warranty. I'm taking no chances!

eVGA 6800 cards don't suck, don't spread FUD.

 

[eastvillager]

eh, my evga is ticking along nicely. I did remove the stock air-cooling before I even installed it, though.

If there is a higher than normal failure rate in the these cards, I would look at the memory before the gpu. The heatspreader doesn't even make contact with the ram on most of the cards, which is why they have those freakishly thick thermal pads.

 

[jrphoenix]

Originally posted by: Kobra
I've been saying for the last month that eVGA 6800 series cards SUCK... I went through *THREE* of them here ironically enough, and only 1 of the three was overclocked, and it was only overclocked fo 30 seconds. eVGA really seems to have a problem with their 6800's. Probably why they are only confident enough to offer a 1 year warranty.

Quite a letdown, I had a old eVGA Ti-4600 fry on me a year ago, and it was out of warranty and eVGA finally replaced it. But basically, eVGA has been bad luck for me and I lost confidence in their cards.

I went with a BFG this time, lifetime warranty. I'm taking no chances!

Not only EVGA. Anand had a post in his blog a while back about several 6800 faliures without explanation. Doom 3 seems to kill them the quickest which is scary as this is the engine for many future games! Anand also wrote in CPU article that the 6800 series probably wouldn't overclock well due to the complexity & transistor count... maybe overclocking is killing some of them. Most of the cards I have heard of dying were at normal speed?

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: Drayvn
Do u think that some of the GTs are Ultras but couldnt clock that high and so were sold as GTs, and iin turn the problem with clocking them that high has degraded the stability and reliability of the GT?

I had this thought as well. However, does anyone, except nVidia know what criteria differentiates a GT from an Ultra?

Originally posted by: eastvillager
eh, my evga is ticking along nicely. I did remove the stock air-cooling before I even installed it, though.

If there is a higher than normal failure rate in the these cards, I would look at the memory before the gpu. The heatspreader doesn't even make contact with the ram on most of the cards, which is why they have those freakishly thick thermal pads.

Interesting about the heatspreader not touching the RAM. I really never examined the card much. Just dropped it in and played games. Never had any issues until yesterday.

Along the same lines, has anyone seen any reviews/stats on the effectiveness of the NV Silencer 5? Is this thing all it's cracked up to be?

Edit: Found one myself, if anyone is interested....

http://www.insanetek.com/index.php?page=vgasilencer

 

[filmore crashcart]

Origianlly posted by Creig:

It does seem odd that so many video cards are giving up the ghost while playing D3. Either this is just the average number of card that die over a given timeframe and we're just attributing this normal death rate to D3 or it does indeed have something to do with the game stressing components.

It's that old Exorcist phenomenon..... remember the hype surrounding that movie about all the strange deaths and accidents on the set? I remember a friend told me about a friend of a friend of his that was going to see the movie and they had the Exorcist theme by Tubular Bells playing in the 8 track tape player in the car. Well, all of a sudden, the tape player ate the tape up and then forcefully spit the casset back out of the player and onto the floor board of the car.

I tell you, it's happening all over again... only this time with 6800 gt/Us and Doom3. Time for, "Doom4: The Exorcist Returns".

 

[user1234]

my pny 6800 gt is 100% stable at 400/1100, in fact I just finished far cry on it (@1280x1024 everything on max)