Anyone Else Get a Defective Retail 9700 From Newegg?(Card replaced..Doing Great!)

[Technonut]

After waiting for the goodness of the 9700, and ordering a retail ATI to insure quality, the damn card arrived defective. :disgust: I tried the card on 3 different mobos, and was greeted with a multicolored scrambled screen. I think there is a bad BGA RAM chip the way it looks.

I know that it happens... but still a pain to go through the RMA process. At least Newegg is going to reimburse my return shipping charges, and credit me the $5.00 difference in price since my order was placed.

I am just curious if anyone else has received a defective card from Newegg, or anywhere else for that matter?

EDIT: I did have the card plugged into the PSU, and tried a 400W Sparkle, 425W PC Power & Cooling TurboCool, and 550W Antec TruePower.

 

[Insane3D]

Damn that sucks Sonny.. The problems you mention do sound like some bad memory...one bad chip can do it..

 

[farmercal]

Not from NewEgg but from another company. The replacement motherboard was also bad. I finally quit dealing with this company and started dealing with Aopen instead. I will not do business with that company again EVER!

 

[Deeko]

Mine is supposed to be retail from newegg(although the card appears to be OEM), mines all good.

 

[MIGhunter]

My newegg order was fine. I bought the retail version. Although it didn't look good at first on my dads LCD. But once the refresh rate was changed it was fine.

 

[Technonut]

I managed to obtain another Retail 9700 from one of my business suppliers, and it is doing well. It does not take well to the high FSB I am used to running with the 8500....But the card rocks!

With the 9700 not overclocked, it is pulling a 3DMark2001 SE score of 13910. UT looks and runs beautiful with the goodies turned on @ 1280x1024x32. I will be testing other current games when I have the time..

 

[MIGhunter]

Nice score. How did you tweak it to get such a high score? I noticed that your driver # is higher than mine. You think your drivers are helping make you score any higher than the drivers that came with it?

Here is mine compared against yours. Now I am running at 2800 mhz with 1gb 1066 rdram. I see some people in the 16000-20000 3dmark range. This is the first computer that I have owned that had a real video card. My other one had integraded graphics and MB. So, I know nothing about tweaking it.

Thanks.

 

[Technonut]

Nice score. How did you tweak it to get such a high score? I noticed that your driver # is higher than mine. You think your drivers are helping make you score any higher than the drivers that came with it?

I really did not tweak the 9700 at all. I just installed the latest leaked drivers, and ran the benchmark. I do have my mobo FSB raised along with aggressive RAM timings.... That helps. If I could only get this 9700 to run at the 214 FSB that my 8500 can do, I would be very happy. Going by some posts that I saw at Rage3D, I don't think that it will happen.

 

[Brian48]

Just got my retail 9700 Pro from newegg today. Got the same, multi-colored, scrambled vertical lines as you. This is a real bummer. How long did it take for newegg to send you a replacement?

 

[Technonut]

[

Just got my retail 9700 Pro from newegg today. Got the same, multi-colored, scrambled vertical lines as you. This is a real bummer. How long did it take for newegg to send you a replacement?

Damn...Sorry to hear that. I did not get the replacement from Newegg. I worked a deal out with a supplier that I do business with. I would ask Newegg to cover your return shipping costs, plus refund any price drop on the card since you ordered. (If any) From past RMA experience with Newegg, they will ship your replacement within a couple of days after received by FedX Express Saver. It would not hurt to ask (Or demand) a return shipping upgrade to 2 Day FedX.

 

[coloumb]

Yep - 2nd time [and last time] this has happened ordering a video card from NewEgg. First time was with GeForce 3 card - DVI output didn't work. RMA'd, replaced with a fully functional video card.

Recently ordered and received a Sapphire 9700 PRO ATI card - first time install, heard 1 long beep, then 2 short beeps and said @#$@%. Checked everything [card seated, power cord connected, etc] and booted up the computer without any problem. A few days later, power up the computer and encounter the 1 long, 2 short beeps. Takes about 6 times of power cycling to finally get the computer to boot up correctly. Shutdown computer and install in another computer - corrupted BIOS display and/or won't boot at all [DFI Motherboard]. My system has a Sparkle 400Watt PS and other system a 300Watt PS [namebrand]. GeForce3 card reinstalled and RMA process started - hopefully replacement will work without any problems.

One thing I've noticed about Newegg over the years is their shipping methods [how they pack the goods] has gone from great to terrible. I recently ordered a hard drive from them and they shipped it in an ultra small FedEx box with the hard drive packed in bubble wrap [what the heck happened to a minimum amount of foam surrounding the hard drive??]. The Sapphire 9700 card was also packed in bubble wrap placed inside a FedEx box.

Next time I buy retail from a local store....

 

[Brian48]

Just wanted to update this thread. I got a replacement card (not from newegg) and I got the same problem again. Did some searching and I found this page over at PowerColor. It was the powersupply that was causing the problem.

For whatever reason, there is a weird compatibility problem that the 9700 Pro has with some makes/models of PSU. The card just didn't like my Antec 400w (pp403x) even though there was plenty of consistent voltage (+3.35v/+5.05v/+12.28v). I was able to correct the problem by swapping out the 400w with an Antec pp352x 350w from another machine I had. I can now bootup and complete the installation. So far, no major problems with the 9700 attributed to power. The funny part is that the pp352x has a lower combined output with even lower MB rails (+3.28v/+4.89v/+12.12v).

Anyway, if I found a HUGE thread over at the Rage3D.com discussion forum as well as one over at athlonmb.com covering this issue. If I had not stumbled upon PowerColor's page, I would have never known about this. I think ATI should at least post a warning on their support page with this info so it would spare a lot of people the trouble of having to do a RMA.