Who's panicked by all of the 7900 series problems lately? Is there a DESIGN FLAW?

NoxTek

NoxTek

The Geek Redneck
Joined
May 27, 2002
Messages
9,300
I have spent quite a bit of time lately scouring the eVGA forums concerning problems with the 7900 series cards failing after a short period of use. To me it seems like there is a torrential dowpour of people with dead or dying cards who are having to RMA only to run into the same problem again with their new card. It's rapidly growing to a point where one is forced to suppress the urge to scream "DESIGN FLAW!".

At first I thought that it might be related to the folks who have been doing hard volt modding to their cards but lately it sure seems that the problems have come from all different kinds of users.

It's apparently come to a point where certain manufacturers are releasing BIOS updates to most of their line of factory overclocked cards altering the core/vertex delta, loosening memory timings, and in some cases even lowering the core and memory clocks from the original rate. I don't know about the rest of the enthusiast user base but I paid extra for the SuperClocked version of the card and I'm not going to be very pleased if it comes down to an UNDERCLOCK to solve issues with the cards dying. :eek:

So what are your thoughts, [H]ardForumers? Do you think there is a design flaw that has cropped up? Is it a case of overzealous manufacturers putting factory overclocked cards to market with parts that can't handle the increased speed?

<EDIT>
For the record, I have a 1 week old eVGA 7900GT CO Superclocked whos stock speed is 550/1580. Sofar it seems to perform like a champ and I havent noticed any signs of artifacting though I havent really put it through the paces hardcore yet. I have a Zalman VF900 Cu here ready to install but if I can resist the temptation I may just wait awhile to see if it's going to crap out on me or not.
</EDIT>

<EDIT - 5/20/2006>
My eVGA 7900GT is now in it's death throes. Yesterday, it started artifacting mildly in the Deep Freeze test of 3DMark 06. It progressed with each 3D game/app I ran until today when it will no longer run most games without corruption or crashing/BSODing.

Dissapointing.
</EDIT>
 
Could have a lot to do with the factory overclocks, seems to be so common place now that the user doesn't even have room to overclock (most of the time).
 
I didn't touch my card, any timings and such were straight from evga (KO defaults). One is now dead completely, the other just artifacts like crazy. Waiting on RMA.

It is troubling, but then again I see lots of people with no problems, so if you are not having any, then I wouldn't lose sleep over it.

How do you like that PSU you have? I think that is the one I am going to order tomorrow.
 
Yeah. I really want to upgrade to a 7900gt but these testimonies are scaring the hell out of me.
 
even if 20 people post that they got broken 7900GTs here on this forum thread. For every 1 person that got a broken one there are probably 100 people that got one that's fine or more. It's just the same as the people who bought ipod nanos and cried when they scratched them. My ipod nano is fine and my 7900GT is fine as well.

edit: however i would go with the KO version if you can. The fan covers the memory at least.
 
Astaroth said:
I didn't touch my card, any timings and such were straight from evga (KO defaults). One is now dead completely, the other just artifacts like crazy. Waiting on RMA.

It is troubling, but then again I see lots of people with no problems, so if you are not having any, then I wouldn't lose sleep over it.

How do you like that PSU you have? I think that is the one I am going to order tomorrow.
Click to expand...

For how long did they work before dying?
 
Astaroth said:
How do you like that PSU you have? I think that is the one I am going to order tomorrow.
Click to expand...


It's awesome, solid as a rock like the FSP 530GNA I had before it. Pretty damn sexy too even if it isn't modular. :D
 
I think what you have is a small vocal minority skewing your perception. I frankly don't give a rip. I own a EVGA 7900 card. Works great and I HAVE exercised it through loops of 3Dmark06 and Oblivion cranked up for hours on end. IF it decides to blow up I'll just use their lifetime warranty. No biggie. There are just too many variables to cry wolf at this point.
 
So far no porblems here...hope it stays that way *knocks on desk*
 
tim-x said:
even if 20 people post that they got broken 7900GTs here on this forum thread. For every 1 person that got a broken one there are probably 100 people that got one that's fine or more. It's just the same as the people who bought ipod nanos and cried when they scratched them. My ipod nano is fine and my 7900GT is fine as well.
.
Click to expand...

exactly! you only read about the complaints, not the happy customers, or not nearly as many. People come to forums for help more then coming to post their card works fine.
 
Ya I hope it doesn't hit me, I'm getting dual 7900GTXs STOCK CLOCKED and if those crap out on me......*shakes fist*
 
MrGuvernment said:
exactly! you only read about the complaints, not the happy customers, or not nearly as many. People come to forums for help more then coming to post their card works fine.
Click to expand...


Possibly, although frankly I find this line used WAY too much lately many times in situations where it doesn't even apply. But in that case I'd say that there sure are a helluva lot more people 'coming to forums for help' than with the 7800GT or other previous generation products. I highly doubt that the video card sales numbers jumped accordingly...

:)
 
Yeah...but I was trying to point out that thread, for those who hadn't seen it yet.

Sorry.
 
And now they have a limited edition model ..super duper clocked or some shit like that @ 600 stock. :(
 
I wouldnt say I am panicked but I am reading threads about the problems just to stay informed. My 7900GT has worked flawlessly since the 7900GT's were launched.
 
it seems the memory / memory controller and/or votage regulators are the problemed components of the 7900GTs... perhaps because of the smaller pcb, cutting back on physical components, trying to make fewer voltage regs to more.. etc.. unsinked memory and vregs getting hot.. or some combination there-in. Card makers are aware of the issues and are working on fixes for them.. I think. So far so good with my XFX EE cards.. running bone stock freqs, with zalman 700cu's on the cores only (no sinks on the memory). I want to see if these cards survive two weeks before sinking the memory and vregs.. I just could not handle the stock fan noise tho.. wow. I am hoping I got a good pair. They have been working well so far.. and it's like 90f today in my study.. been gaming all day with no issues. finger's X'd :D
 
If it counts for anything, im a happy BFG 7900GT user. No overclocks except the factory ones.
 
BFG 7900GTX 512 OC overclocked past factory overclocked to near XFX 7900GTX XXX Edition speeds (700/1.8). See sig. Had for the past month, running BF2 and WoW as well as Guild Wars without any issues.
 
I've had my 2 7900GTX's since I got them on the release week and both are still working fine, since I am running SLI setup I have no reason to overclock them since all my games run just fine at stock speeds 650/1600, so I have no reason to panic at all.
:p :D
 
just my 2 cents but I think that the issues are a combo of 2 things, 1) the factory oc's and 2) that the core is running at 1.2 volts..

I was reading over on the evga forums that there is a beta bios from one of their engineers, his name is mario...and the difference between the beta and official is relaxed memory timings and a volt inc to 1.35 (how it gets past the OVP....beats me (if there is OVP on the evga cards))

as with any oc YMMV, either it be from yourself or by company (tho company should be standing by the oc's which from what ive been seeing they are)

as for me, i got a evga ko and co in sli runnin at about 550/830 and its as solid as a rock...and evga was right there IS a 6 degree difference between the 2...hehehe
 
And that may explain why people who volt mod their cards, are better off, since they are increasing the voltage above what the BIOS is programmed to do. Unless I am wrong and that only affects voltage to the GPU and not the memory.
 
Astaroth said:
And that may explain why people who volt mod their cards, are better off, since they are increasing the voltage above what the BIOS is programmed to do. Unless I am wrong and that only affects voltage to the GPU and not the memory.
Click to expand...

Yes, volt mods to the memory and GPU itself are two separate things.
 
I'm not concearned at all. I have an EVGA 7900 GT CO Superclocked that I got through their Step Up program on March 28th and it has been perfect. I even run it @ 575 Core and 1720 Memory 24/7. The only"mod" I've done to it is to install an NV5 Silencer cooler on it.
 
Well, I'm not quite so fortunate. I received a 7900 GTX through the step-up program from evga a couple of weeks ago, and about the only game I can play without issues is Quake 3.

When I play FEAR (assuming I don't get a blue screen), upon exit my screen flashes from black to the desktop, over and over again and again. I'd estimate the rate to be every other second or so. Can't fix it except with a hard reboot.

When I play serious sam 2, I get odd pixelization and artifacts everywhere. More and more the longer the game goes on (sounds like heat, but it dosen't appear to be from the monitoring program).

The list go on, and, no, I don't OC anything and, yes,I have the latest drivers... blah blah blah...

This is the second bad card I've gotten from evga, the first was a 7800 gt co that I had to RMA. It was the second card in an SLI setup. The first card ran fine and the third one ran fine so I know it isn't just "me".

Last time I buy an evga, that's for damn sure.
 
I returned two 7900 gtx's before I got the one in my box now.

The first was on my initial build. On post you could see the board going through a startup, but no video output at all. I tried everything, resetting cmos, ez plug on the board, etc. It was an EVGA card with stock clock settings.

I rma'd that for a BFG 7900gtx oc which worked, but had the following issues:

~ Crashing during 3d mark 2001 se every single time on the pixel sprite test. It would lock everything up and require a restart.
~ The card clock settings were not set at the 670/820 settings, but stock 650/800 and it still had problems.
~ Artifacting like crazy in BF2.
~ Occasional lockups (restart) when resolutions changed like going into or coming out of a game.

My new card so far (I rma'd directly to BFG this time and not newegg) works perfectly so far and if things stay this way I will definitely be satisfied for a long time.
 
I do not think they would have all the problems if they would have at least clocked the 7900GT to 1.3v ,the bios that says 1.35v some say it is still 1.2v and I flashed my 7900GT KO with the 7900GT CO SS bios except that I downclock it to 550 on the core before I flashed ,after I flashed the Bios Nibitor show it to be 1.45v in 3D and 1.2v in 2D but when I went to overclock it would do no better then with the 1.2v KO BIOS at 565 it started artifacting,but with a 1.4v voltage mod it would do 656 ,so I know it does not raise the voltages at least in my case.
 
I rma'ed my 2 7900 gtx's from evga back to newegg the other day. I've been noticing some weird green blotches appearing randomly in mpegs. Could be the videos because only some have it, and I've been having problems with cs:s lately. It would intermittenly crash back to desktop, which frustrates me when I'm the last alive in an intense match :mad:
Anyways, I rma'ed hoping to get a new one from BFG. They haven't let me down yet with the previous generations.
 
Well guess what?

Yesterday my eVGA 7900GT CO SuperClock (550/1580) started acting up. Wild polygons and crazy colors in the Deep Freeze test of 3DMark 06. Then weirdness in HL2: Lost Coast, and finally artifacting in HL2/Source period. Today it won't run most 3D games at all without instability and artifacting.


I guess I should provide some (relevant) details on my system:

eVGA nForce 4 SLI Motherboard
Athlon 64 3200+ Winchester
2GB PC4000 DDR
eVGA 7900GT CO SuperClocked (550/1580) (3 weeks old)
Fortron Source (FSP) Epsilon 700w PSU (3 weeks old, also tried my old 530w PSU with the same results)

My case is an Antec P160 with 2 120mm fans and it has LOTS of airflow, nice and chilly inside. :)

Here are some screenshots and FRAPS videos depicting some of the artifacting and glitching, more to come tomorrow.

This is what happens about halfway through the Arctic Ftreeze test in 3DMark 06:


This shot shows artifacting on the skybox in Half-Life 2: Lost Coast:


Crazy polygons in HL2: Lost Coast:


VIDEO of HL2 artifacting (4.6MB, Windows Media)

Crazy polygons and artifacting in Counter-Strike: Source video stress test:



Here is a little video of my current experience with my eVGA 7900GT CO SC and 3DMark 06's Deep Freeze test:

CLICK ME to watch (~9.5MB, Windows Media)


Oh yeah and here is one more video featuring 3DMark 03, 06, and Half-Life 2.

Click here to download (9.5MB, Windows Media)



Since I first started this thread it seems like the problems everyone is experiencing with the 7900 series are getting exponentially worse. Take a look at the eVGA forums, the XFX forums, heck even the general tech forums like this site's video card forum. It's downright SCARY.

eVGA has been releasing some beta BIOS versions for these cards that are supposedly meant to fix this problem but it doesn't seem to be working for most people that have tried it. It's been found that these BIOSes have looser memory timings and have eliminated the core/vertex clock delta... what are they doing? Is it an attempt to mask the real problem or what? Yes, that's a bit of an instigatory question but think about it, really: If it were a problem that a new BIOS would fix these cards would artifact right out of the box - NOT start artifacting and deteriorating some days or weeks later. If they are suddenly starting to artifact one would come to the conclusion that SOME component on these cards is failing prematurely, the GPU is failing prematurely, or something. A new BIOS isn't going to fix this no matter how much you loosen memory timings and lower clock speeds. Furthermore I paid quite a bit extra for a SuperClocked card and I want those extra Mhz.

And although the above paragraph might make it sound like I have some beef with eVGA I do NOT. In fact I love eVGA and my previous eVGA 7800GT was damn near the best videocard I've owned to date. To be honest I'm really concerned that this may be a problem with nVidia's reference design or worse yet with the G71 itself. :eek: *shudder*

I hope that nVidia, eVGA, or someone else clues us all in sometime because it's getting to a point where word is getting around about these issues.

The ATI boys must be laughing their asses off at us right now. :(




Those who are worried about their cards should definately pay close attention to the "Deep Freeze" test in 3DMark 06. This test seems to be where problems first start appearing and then it spreads from there.
 
Actually, I looked at the beta EVGA BIOS for the GTX, and the change they introduced was more core voltage and the 3D throttle was set the same as the 3D full power. The memory timings remained as is and the delta remained in place. This would fix hiccups(disable throttle) and vertex delta issues (more core votage), but it did not fix most issues people are experiencing They need to concentrate their efforts on the memory.
 
Did you just voltmod the core or did you do the memory voltmod too?

Do you have the full version of 3DMark 06? You ought to run the Deep Freeze test for a few hours in a loop and see how things fare.

vanilla_guerilla said:
2x evga 7900gt co sc. voltmodded core to 1.4v. stock cooling. 650/1860. got them 3/13. running great.

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=236296
Click to expand...
 
Blue Falcon said:
Did you just voltmod the core or did you do the memory voltmod too?

Do you have the full version of 3DMark 06? You ought to run the Deep Freeze test for a few hours in a loop and see how things fare.
Click to expand...


just the core, but for some reason, my mem was able to overclock almost 100mhz more after the vmod.

i dont have the full version, but why would i want to run the deep freeze test for a few hours?
 
vanilla_guerilla said:
just the core, but for some reason, my mem was able to overclock almost 100mhz more after the vmod.

i dont have the full version, but why would i want to run the deep freeze test for a few hours?
Click to expand...


To see if your card(s) are vulnerable to this 'plague' or not. That particular test seems to root the defect out.


:D I can just about hear you saying "Fuck THAT!"... lol.
 
Thanks for the videos, Blue.

There is one difference when I had the 7900 GT KO cards installed from what I have seen of your problem, and that is the artifacting going on with yours was 10x worse then mine...and that was even after several days of me trying to troubleshoot (so I was running gaming/Deep Freeze tests heavily).

And I mean that, the most I saw was one or two lines or polygons, where-as at times you get full screen distortion with whacky colors (mine were just black).

Not that it really makes any difference though for the end result.
 
How many loops of 3dmark06 "Deep Freeze" for it to equal 4 hours.

I ran the 50 and every scene looked great and passed. In Battlefield 2, I will experience some minor to major graphical corruption but when I alt-tab out of the game and go back its gone.
 
Take a look at the eVGA forums, the XFX forums, heck even the general tech forums like this site's video card forum. It's downright SCARY.
Click to expand...
Just tried to look at XFX's forums. They're gone.
Gee... I wonder why that could be..........


http://www.xfxforce.com/web/forumsMessage.jspa;jsessionid=aQv-1zTHskugce7YrT
The XFX Forum is no longer active. Any product, support or non-support questions should be directed to our brand-new Help Desk. The technical professionals at the XFX Help Desk have all of the latest XFX product information on hand, at the ready to provide you with quick and accurate answers that are tailored to your specific request, system or set-up. A comprehensive tracking feature enables you to track the details of any inquiry you make. And, you can even search through a saved "history" for previous inquiries.

The XFX Help Desk: Another XFX upgrade created to maximize your gaming experience.

play hard.
Click to expand...
Just another "upgrade" ... right
 
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