To Anyone With a Gainward Ti4200...Read

[salz]

I'm sorry if most of you know about this, or if this is a repost, but I felt that since I never saw this posted that it should be because I was unfortunate enough to buy a Gainward Ti4200 and it's now being RMA'd. Here's the LINK . If you're having problems with your computer and you have a Gainward Ti4200, I hope this helps. Once again, I'm sorry if this is a repost, but months ago I thought I had a motherboard problem when in reality, it was my video card.

 

[MikeMike]

i have had no problems with my gainward at all

 

[salz]

Some people are just lucky I guess. At first I never would have thought it was my video card, until I got Battlefield 1942 and all the problems occurred. I then installed two 80mm intakes in my window which blow right onto my video card. Little did I know that this could actually make the problem with the Gainward Ti4200 WORSE and not better (and my checkerboard screens did get worse and became much more frequent). If you read the conversation with the guy from Gainward-USA you'll get more details on that. I don't know nourdmrnolNMT1, maybe you just have the right setup or lucked out with a good card. To all of you who haven't had any problems, you lucky bastards! .

 

[bcterps]

Check out this link on the issue. It's plain scary! I've never owned a Gainward product, but I've always thought they were a "high end" card manufacturer, their cards always seemed to perform better and OC better than any other brands. This definitely is disturbing if it is indeed true.

 

[Anubis]

EEEEEEEEEK

man thats bad

 

[BlueWeasel]

I bought my Gainward Ti4200 GF4 128MB from Newegg back in August. I got the white "checkerboard" problem in one game, but I didn't realize it was a hardware problem until the day before Christmas when I stumbled upon a thread like this. I called Gainward and they offered me a RMA within 5 minutes on the phone.

Well, after reading the issues when RMA'ing with Gainward directly, I thought I would call Newegg and see if I could get a RMA through them. I really didn't think they would since I had the card for 4 months before I realized the problem. They gave me a RMA with no questions asked and I sent back the defective card and got the new one today.

The good thing about it was that Newegg gave me the next higher Ti4200 model in return. The card I sent them only had a single analog monitor out. The one I got back was a brand new Ultra/650-8X TV (analog and DVI out). The newer card has a much larger fan on the GPU and heatsinks on the RAM.

Hope this helps anyone....

 

[Jeff7]

Wow; what is causing this? I saw the 2 pics comparing the good and bad boards, including the closeups, but they look the same to me, especially because it doesn't say specifically what to look for. I have a Gainward Geforce2 Ti, and it works fine. Wonder what happened there.

 

[BlueWeasel]

Jeff7:

I am pretty sure that its isolated to the Gainward GF4 line of cards (both the 64mb and 128mb versions).

I have a Gainward GF3 Ti200 that I have been running for nearly a year now without a single problem.

 

[bgeh]

link to thread at overclockers forums

 

[Celstar]

Hmm... I've been playing a lot of Counter Strike, BF 1942, and some UT2003 Demo with my 128 mb 4200. No problems yet, but maybe I'm not stressing my card enough. I'm going to run 3dmark for a few hours...

 

[salz]

To Jeff7, if you look closely at the pictures, you'll notice a difference in the capacitors. Now, I'm definitely not very educated in chip design, but the one thing I noticed was that the capacitors on the good card had green letters and the capacitors on the bad card had black lettering (like mine). Maybe I'm oversimplifying, but that's what I noticed. And yes, this is a GeForce4 Ti4200 problem. I haven't heard of problems with any of their other cards (as far as I know, but I could be wrong).

To Celstar, it's possible that you lucked out and got a good card (they do exist, although from the looks of it, not many). I hope you did. I don't know what your system specs are, but if you're running on a P4 board, I'm pretty sure these cards are more stable on P4 boards (judging by what was said in the thread from the link above). It may also be more stable because you have a higher case temp. It's strange, but it seems that the problem with these cards gets worse with cooler case temps., and that was definitely the case with my card as well.

What bothers me is not that they had a bad product, because that may happen every once in a while. But after reading about people having to RMA their cards multiple times and after all of these complaints Gainward has not made any sort of public statement (to my knowledge), that bothers me. I'm going back to college soon and I NEED my video card to work properly. I'm going to go crazy if they send me back another card with the same damn problem.

 

[bgeh]

Originally posted by: salz
To Jeff7, if you look closely at the pictures, you'll notice a difference in the capacitors. Now, I'm definitely not very educated in chip design, but the one thing I noticed was that the capacitors on the good card had green letters and the capacitors on the bad card had black lettering (like mine). Maybe I'm oversimplifying, but that's what I noticed. And yes, this is a GeForce4 Ti4200 problem. I haven't heard of problems with any of their other cards.

To Celstar, it's possible that you lucked out and got a good card (they do exist, although from the looks of it, not many). I hope you did. I don't know what your system specs are, but if you're running on a P4 board, I'm pretty sure these cards are more stable on P4 boards (judging by what was said in the thread from the link above). It may also be more stable because you have a higher case temp. It's strange, but it seems that the problem with these cards gets worse with cooler case temps., and that was definitely the case with my card as well.

What bothers me is not that they had a bad product, because that may happen every once in a while. But after reading about people having to RMA their cards multiple times and after all of these complaints Gainward has not made any sort of public statement (to my knowledge), that bothers me. I'm going back to college soon and I NEED my video card to work properly. I'm going to go crazy if they send me back another card with the same damn problem.

i remember a few months ago, a defective batch of capacitors with bad electrolytes were shipped from taiwan
maybe gainward got these capacitors and there's where the problem started

 

[NOX]

I have a Gainward Ti4200, and play all my games perfectly. CS, UT2003, AA, WC3, MM2, B1942 etc... and I have no problems at all. I guess I'm lucky too.

Btw I've had my card for about 9 months (going on to 10 I believe), and will be updating it with an FX.

 

[Sunner]

Have a look at the numbers rather than the color of the numbers.

Or more specifically the numbers on the leftmost capacitors.

Good thing I never picked up that GW Ti4200 despite the great price I could get

 

[Imported]

I've heard most of the problem is on the 64MB versions..

I had two capicitors dome and ooze black goo on me on my 128MB version, but they weren't the capicitors that were problematic.. I just believe I pushed the card to hard. Nevertheless, Newegg sent me a replacement.

 

[gotsmack]

is the problem isolated to the 4200 series or is gainwards's 4400 and 4600 line troubled as well? At overclockers I read that there was a problem with BGA memory and the 4400 I was going to buy used BGA memory

 

[Vegito]

Man, I guess you guys haven't own computer too long eh..

Gainward was the cheap crap that they produced from diamond stealth/s3 products back in the early 90s ie cheap ass local-bus, etc. I touch their vlb for my 486 so long ago and I decided it was crap and bought from them again.

They change their name so half of you guys don't know their history. They're okay now but still, I wouldn't touch it.

 

[Ilmater]

I have recently built two systems with Gainward Ti4200 cards in them. They both run fine.

 

[Turkey22]

Still waiting for my card back from gainward. Shoulda been here by Monday and its now Friday. Luckily its not my only card. I don't understand how they can send bad cards out as replacements though... If they know that this is a problem they should be testing their products that may be defective.

 

[CurtCold]

Two of my friends have these cards, and both have RMA'd back to Gainward, because of lockups, and reboots with games. Only one had the artifacts that I've heard everyone else talking about.

 

[Dark1]

According to the artical that was linked at the top of this thread The card that had this problem was the 64mb version. Have there been problems with the 128mb version of the 4200 series cards?

 

[salz]

If you read more of the thread, you'll notice that it's for the 128MB cards too. My card was a 128MB card and it had the same problems.

forcesho- Could you tell me more about diamond stealth/s3? I've never heard of them (hell, in the early 90's I was in 2nd or 3rd grade).

 

[deerslayer]

Hmm...I have the Gainward Ti4200 128mb card. I've never really had any problems playing games, but I can't overclock past 166fsb, maybe that is the problem ? At 166fsb the PCI divider kicks in, so that's pry why it works fine right now. I'm definitely going to have to try a different video card and see if I can overclock better after that!

 

[beenlurkingforyears]

I had problems with my Gainward Ti4200 "Golden Sample" for months, but did not suspect a fault card. Foolish me, I thought "Golden" and "Sample" ment it had been tested to be a reliable, high performance card.

I messed with video and motherboard drivers etc. over and over again before looking on the web to see if others were having problems like mine. When I found out the video board may be the problem, I called Gainward and they issued an RMA with virtually no questions after finding out it was a Ti4200. I didn't try contacting the vendor (newegg) where I bought the card.

I sent it in just before new years and am waiting to receive the replacement. I hope the replacement is not one of the bad boards someone else sent back to them!

 

[Hankysmoo]

I have a Gainward 4200 Golden Sample as well. If I haven't seen any of these problems described should I keep my card? Thanks.