- Mar 21, 2004
- 13,576
- 6
- 76
I went and bought an eVGA 8800GTS v3 512MB at frys... ~350$ + tax = 389$.
I put it in, that was a pain since the card was HUGE and I had to shove one of my 5 hard drives in the floppy bay to make it fit.
Well, I started playing, it was a little better then my 7900GS but not too impressively so. I noticed it is running HOT, very hot, but rivatuner couldnt change its fan speed settings (or any low level settings on it).
It crashed after about an hour of playing the witcher. After letting it cool down I Was able to post again, but I Was getting horrible artifacts (wavy white lines across the entire screen 1 inch apart) even in bios.
So I went to frys to return it. I told the guy it is defective and exactly what happened. He put down "unwanted" as reason of return and printed a price sticker and put it on it. I told him "you are just going to put it back on the shelf? it's broken!" He stuttered a bit, said they will test it, and made a sticky note that said "test" on the card.
He then stared at me and asked "say, what kind of power supply do you have"
"500 watts"
"Are you sure its enough?"
"It is more then enough, besides watts dont mean anything, my PSU is rated for 33 amps on the 12 volt rail and this card only needs 24"
"But the 8800 series require a lot of power"
"Yes but this is a G92 based part, it requires very little power in comparison".
"But, didn't you say you had to move a hard drive, how many do you have?"
"Five, but again, they use a different rail then the video card"
... he gave me another funny look, and then he went and changed the sticky note from "test" to say "test for post". (which I Said before, it posts, it just artifacts badly, and runs HOT).
I feel sorry for whatever poor sob ends up buying this as an open box, especially because he only reduced the price by 5$ (from 350$ to 345$).
Once again I am reminded why one should never, ever, buy open box hardware at frys.
I put it in, that was a pain since the card was HUGE and I had to shove one of my 5 hard drives in the floppy bay to make it fit.
Well, I started playing, it was a little better then my 7900GS but not too impressively so. I noticed it is running HOT, very hot, but rivatuner couldnt change its fan speed settings (or any low level settings on it).
It crashed after about an hour of playing the witcher. After letting it cool down I Was able to post again, but I Was getting horrible artifacts (wavy white lines across the entire screen 1 inch apart) even in bios.
So I went to frys to return it. I told the guy it is defective and exactly what happened. He put down "unwanted" as reason of return and printed a price sticker and put it on it. I told him "you are just going to put it back on the shelf? it's broken!" He stuttered a bit, said they will test it, and made a sticky note that said "test" on the card.
He then stared at me and asked "say, what kind of power supply do you have"
"500 watts"
"Are you sure its enough?"
"It is more then enough, besides watts dont mean anything, my PSU is rated for 33 amps on the 12 volt rail and this card only needs 24"
"But the 8800 series require a lot of power"
"Yes but this is a G92 based part, it requires very little power in comparison".
"But, didn't you say you had to move a hard drive, how many do you have?"
"Five, but again, they use a different rail then the video card"
... he gave me another funny look, and then he went and changed the sticky note from "test" to say "test for post". (which I Said before, it posts, it just artifacts badly, and runs HOT).
I feel sorry for whatever poor sob ends up buying this as an open box, especially because he only reduced the price by 5$ (from 350$ to 345$).
Once again I am reminded why one should never, ever, buy open box hardware at frys.
I know...overkill...but hey..it was free 
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