Problems with BFG 8800GT OC card

mplogic

Golden Member
Jan 19, 2002
1,103
0
76
Just bought one of these a couple weeks ago when Best Buy had them for $249 and so far been pretty disappointed. The box was factory sealed but when opening it up, I noticed the shielded bag had been opened and resealed which made me a bit skeptical. The card seemed to work ok in Windows but was never really stable in games, after installing it games would randomly BSOD and restart. Then I started getting random restarts when not in games. I put it in my testing rig and noticed that on startup when it spins up the fan, it had a slight ticking sound and when spinning it by hand there was a very slight resistance. Felt like the heatsink cover wasn't installed correctly or something. I lifted off one of the clips on the corner of the heatsink cover and the fan spins freely now, but the restarts are still happening in both systems.

Anyway, I did some research and although details are sketchy there are reports of others having problems with the first batch of BFG 8800GT's. I called BFG tech support and they said that the cards are not refurbs but there was a problem with the original BIOS they had and they were reopened and reflashed. They offered to RMA mine, but couldn't guarantee that I wouldn't get a refurb and it would take about 2 weeks. They wouldn't even let me buy a new one and then exchange/refund when I send this one back.

Checked with Best Buy and not much better. They were much nicer about it but there just isn't any stock in AZ (except for one reported in Tucson). I can try to hold it and hope they get more stock before my return time runs out, but who knows how long that will be.

Anyway, just wanted to vent a bit. :) And warn anyone else considering one of these away from BFG, at least until they get the bugs worked out.
 

JustaGeek

Platinum Member
Jan 27, 2007
2,827
0
71
Just RMA it to BFG...

Getting a refurb is not all that bad - they must fix all the problems, install the new BIOS, and keep your lifetime warranty...
 

shabby

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
5,782
45
91
My shielded bag was resealed too, i think bfg manually opens them, checks the overclock and adjusts the bios then reseals them. Someone correct me if im wrong.
 

imported_Nap

Member
Oct 30, 2007
33
0
0
Bought the same exact card from Best Buy in Tucson. I got that clicking noise too. One way to resolve it is so set RivaTuner to 50% fan speed, actually makes it quieter sadly. It still makes the noise before it enters Windows though. Would you mine explaining in more detail how you fixed the clicking noise? Seems like you have that sorted out, though I don't know what to say about the restarts. I had a bunch of problems with the video just cutting out randomly and nothing being displayed, but all I had to do was reseat the card and that fixed that.
 

CobraBubbles

Junior Member
Aug 28, 2002
19
0
0
I bought the exact same card. It died last week (no signal output from the card, other cards work fine on the mobo). Returned it today. No BB in all of Colorado has them in stock, so I get to track one down from another retailer. Boo.
 

lupi

Lifer
Apr 8, 2001
32,539
260
126
Same card here. Can't get a working digital signal out of it so it's going back to the store soon.
 

LOUISSSSS

Diamond Member
Dec 5, 2005
8,771
58
91
is it true that BFG doesn't allow OC'ing and doesn't give warranty to the cards that died under OC? if i simply say it died and sent it back how would they know?
 

mplogic

Golden Member
Jan 19, 2002
1,103
0
76
Wow, so other people really are having the same problems with these cards. I wonder why they had to reflash them in the first place. I'd be willing to bet they knew there was some bug in the card but to meet the release date they clocked them down a bit and released anyway. The BFG "OC" card is the only one I've seen that is set to 625 (am I right?), wonder if they originally were going to release at the more standard 650 (or higher) but then discovered the bug?

Anyway, a 2 week turn around on getting another one is pretty lame customer service if you ask me, especially for a customer that just plunked down ~$270 for a brand new product and received something that had to be "serviced" for any reason. Especially with no guaranty that I'm not going to get another one with the same problems. They should have just spent the extra 5 cents for a new bag and nobody would have known. :)

Yea the ticking noise was the outer black heatsink cover rubbing very slightly against the fan. On mine, very carefully lifting the lower right hand corner (where there is a little "tab" that the cover hangs on to) using a precision flat head screwdriver, seemed to give it the tiny bit of extra clearance it needed.

If anyone has one of these cards and it is making the ticking noise, the card will definitely NOT be cooling as well as it should. Make sure you have some sort of temp monitoring util installed.
 

Dacalo

Diamond Member
Mar 31, 2000
8,778
3
76
Got the same card from Bestbuy, had it for about 3 weeks. No problems so far.