PSA: Don't buy Gigabyte GPUs!

[chubbyfatazn]

The Windforce Gigabytes have been well documented to be voltage locked. I got my 7950 back in June (~1.5 years after initial release) and Google was all over the WF3s being volt locked.

Gigabyte, nor any other GPU manufacturer I know of, has never advertised their cards as being volt locked/unlocked. I fail to see how this is their fault.

Just resell it on fs/ft or something. Unless you grossly overpaid for yours, it's not like you'll be taking a massive hit, if any.

 

[cmdrdredd]

The Windforce Gigabytes have been well documented to be voltage locked. I got my 7950 back in June (~1.5 years after initial release) and Google was all over the WF3s being volt locked.

Gigabyte, nor any other GPU manufacturer I know of, has never advertised their cards as being volt locked/unlocked. I fail to see how this is their fault.

Just resell it on fs/ft or something. Unless you grossly overpaid for yours, it's not like you'll be taking a massive hit, if any.

MSI does on some products.

 

[chubbyfatazn]

MSI does on some products.

snip

I stand corrected, then.

Either way, unless Gigabyte actively marketed their cards as being volt unlocked and then locked them without making the appropriate marketing changes, then it's not their fault.

 

[cmdrdredd]

That's why I specifically asked about the high end cards. MSI's Gamer line doesn't have the triple overvoltage and unlocked bios stuff. The lightning cards do which are more expensive.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I, for one, see voltage locking as a GOOD thing. Keeps peeps like the OP from overvolting, frying their cards, RMAing, and raising the costs for the rest of us.

CPU overclocking, I can see the point, there's a lot of headroom on some CPUs. GPUs, not so much. Also, GPUs are much more sensitive to voltage, and run at higher temps. I've never seen GPU over-volting as worthwhile.

 

[jaqie]

Wow....

getting all pissed off because an unadvertised feature was not in the video card you bought.

sad.

 

[Rok125]

MSI promotes there line to overclockers. So it would make sense that their gpu's would be voltage unlocked. Also makes them awesome in my book.

Asus & aparently Gigabyte don't cater as much to these kind of enthusiast.
I remember reading a study did Asus where they found out that their customers preferred cool & quiet cards to high performing.

Don't know where Gigabyte fits in all of this, but if anyone knows of a similar customer study. Please post here.

 

[jacktesterson]

CPU overclocking, I can see the point, there's a lot of headroom on some CPUs. GPUs, not so much. Also, GPUs are much more sensitive to voltage, and run at higher temps. I've never seen GPU over-volting as worthwhile.

This is completely contradicting to your first point, as well as false.

My 7850 got a 30% boost with hardly any effort

Why do so many people buy 7950's on here?

 

[skipsneeky2]

The Zotac gtx650 i have now apparently can has unlocked voltage allowing up to a +37mv increase but luckily i can't be bothered to see what this thing can do,the only game tasking this card is BF3 and well a max oc on this card still won't do much good with i think a 4fps max increase at most.:awe:

The 7850 before it,oh yeah getting that core up to 1050 and the memory to 1400 made a good amount of difference and the 1.21v being the max voltage it supported made it a safe overclocker with the chances of frying it being nearly zero.

Why can't companies allow a voltage unlock but allow it to a safe point?why allow these insane voltage amounts that have a higher risk of making the card fail?

 

[AMD64Blondie]

Unlike the rest of this lot...I'm perfectly happy with my Gigabyte GTX770.

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

Best rma experience I ever had was a gigabyte motherboard. I'd buy one of their gpus in a heartbeat.

 

[jacktesterson]

I fall under the 'do your research before you buy' crowd.

Tons of cards are voltage locked.

It sucks to some degree .

 

[SickBeast]

Well, I got my 7970 for $250 used and I jumped on it because the price was good. So yes, part of it is my fault for not doing my research.

So long as my card will hit 1150mhz or so at stock voltage I will be happy.

There has got to be a reason why so many of these cards are voltage locked now. 1.3 to 1.4v must be too much for these cards and they must be dying at a high rate for almost all the manufacturers to do this.

 

[Mushkins]

I have a right mind to report you to the mods for your flamebait. Seriously get a life. This is not my fault at all and is a classic bait and switch as others have said.

Report away, disagreeing with you isn't breaking any forum rules. I don't see anyone saying this is a bait and switch anywhere in the thread, and if anything your OP was considerably more inflammatory than anything anyone else said. In fact, the very title of the thread is "PSA: Don't buy Gigabyte GPUs!" as if Gigabyte is using child slaves to make their products or something, not "im unhappy with my purchase because it doesnt have a feature I want."

The bottom line is that altering the voltage is not an advertised feature on the card you bought. The manufacturer is not responsible for the content of third party reviews in any way, shape, or form. Due diligence is on the buyer to make sure any features that aren't advertised that they may want are actually part of the product they're buying. On some cards, like the previously posted MSI Lightning line of cards, it very clearly is an advertised feature. I would suggest you return (or resell) the card you have and buy one of those if overvolting or undervolting is something that's important to you, pandering for sympathy on these forums isn't going to somehow let you overvolt that card.

Not having that feature doesn't make Gigabyte a bad manufacturer that no one should buy cards from.

 

[railven]

Did I just read this thread right? Buyer bought second hand, didn't even get the information of the product he was buying from the seller, and is complaining it's the manufacturer's fault he bought something he didn't know he was buying?

Some how this is not entirely his own fault?

 

[hjalti8]

CPU overclocking, I can see the point, there's a lot of headroom on some CPUs. GPUs, not so much.

800mhz HD7950 are known for ~50% oc potential and since new games are most often gpu bottlenecked you will get far more perf for oc-ing your gpu.

 

[KompuKare]

While yes someone buying should always do their research and yes Gigabyte do not advertise voltage control (btw, I'm far more interested in undervolting than overvolting), I think a lot of people are being a bit harsh on the OP or conversely a bit soft on Gigabyte.

AFAIK the original r.1 PCB didn't just allow voltage control but it also had better monitoring like VRM temps. So yes, changing features like that in a revision to save a few $ (maybe even cents) is hardly something which will endear them to consumers.

But this illustrate something: a lot (most) reviews never list details like PCB revisions but then neither to retailers which means the only way to be reasonably sure of what you will get is to hunt through tons of forums for each part.

The worst bit of bait&switch I have recently seen was HP with those Microservers (very popular in the UK since HP had crazy cashback deals going on them for ages - some were sold at ~£80 after cashback). The reviewed ones were praised for being very silent and frugal. Now while the fan noise could be subjective (it was mainly the little 40mm fan in the PSU), the fact that machines people received were drawing 40-50W at idle vs ~30W in the reviews has harder to explain without concluding that HP had shipped the units with a different PSU after a certain number. Since these Microservers were mostly used as 24/7 NAS and fileservers this left people a bit disappointed and not what you would expect from a server.

 

[SickBeast]

While yes someone buying should always do their research and yes Gigabyte do not advertise voltage control (btw, I'm far more interested in undervolting than overvolting), I think a lot of people are being a bit harsh on the OP or conversely a bit soft on Gigabyte.

AFAIK the original r.1 PCB didn't just allow voltage control but it also had better monitoring like VRM temps. So yes, changing features like that in a revision to save a few $ (maybe even cents) is hardly something which will endear them to consumers.

But this illustrate something: a lot (most) reviews never list details like PCB revisions but then neither to retailers which means the only way to be reasonably sure of what you will get is to hunt through tons of forums for each part.

The worst bit of bait&switch I have recently seen was HP with those Microservers (very popular in the UK since HP had crazy cashback deals going on them for ages - some were sold at ~£80 after cashback). The reviewed ones were praised for being very silent and frugal. Now while the fan noise could be subjective (it was mainly the little 40mm fan in the PSU), the fact that machines people received were drawing 40-50W at idle vs ~30W in the reviews has harder to explain without concluding that HP had shipped the units with a different PSU after a certain number. Since these Microservers were mostly used as 24/7 NAS and fileservers this left people a bit disappointed and not what you would expect from a server.

Thank you for that. I have learned not to take the bait on here and I certainly never take what certain people say on here personally.

 

[railven]

While yes someone buying should always do their research and yes Gigabyte do not advertise voltage control (btw, I'm far more interested in undervolting than overvolting), I think a lot of people are being a bit harsh on the OP or conversely a bit soft on Gigabyte.

Considering you've pretty much agreed with everyone what you accuse of also falls on you.

 

[TakeNoPrisoners]

Definitely do research before you buy a card. I would not have gotten my Gigabyte card or my HIS had they not been voltage unlocked. For me I really enjoy overclocking and any card that restricts that does not get my money.

 

[jaqie]

I'm the other way around. I got the factory OC version of the windforce hd6850 because I am sick of overclocking vidcards only to find out later that my OC is unstable... too much hassle for too little reward. This way I know it works and is reliable at this speed, I don't care if they used an IC that nobody knows how to interface with with software to change the voltage supplied to the GPU and RAM, it is already overclocked mildly from factory and fully tested.

I did my research, I knew my card was not voltage editable, I am extremely happy.

 

[KingFatty]

Good points, and I could see how one would be OK with not being able to overvolt, if their card is not a spectacular overclocker. But if you target a card that has a reputation for stellar overclocking, and then get denied, that can really get your goat and grind your gears. yeah it's on you to research, but just the idea of such untapped potential is galling, compared to having a video card that doesn't really have much overclock potential so you don't really lose much by not overvolting.

Personally I'm a huge MSI fan, they know what's up!

 

[Tattoedsailor]

I just wanted to create a thread out of my recent disgust for Gigabyte. I bought a 7970 card and it's completely voltage locked at the hardware level. Not even a BIOS flash can fix it. They were really sneaky about it as well. Revision 1.0 of the card was unlocked, then out of nowhere they locked the cards down with revision 2.0.

I will never buy a Gigabyte product again.

MSI is bar none the best GPU manufacturer at this point. There is no question.

HIS is just as good if not better

 

[poohbear]

well i love my windforce GTX 670s, not sure if they're voltage locked but i don't buy a card solely for its overclocking, i just want it to work @ stock with their awesome aftermarket cooler! If you're looking at a card for its overclocking features, then u gotta do ur homework. These companies sell u cards that are expected to run @ stock, simple as that.

 

[Mr Expert]

I run a Gigabyte GPU and it's a peach.