Faulty graphics card

[BEANFro Elite]

Hello, I bought an XFX 7800GT on the 10th of March from you guys and I'm happy to say your service has been top notch.

Although this is not the fault of Scan, I have only been able to enjoy the said card for about 13 days.

The graphics card worked well until the 23rd of march. You'll like to note that NO hardware or software changes were made other than the installation of the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion which I must say ran flawlessly for 8 hours flat. Then the next day, out of the blue it fails to run the above named game again for 5 minutes.

I can start playing such a game as FEAR and after between 30 seconds and 2 minutes of playing, textures start to flash and these quickly escalate to fullscale screen corruption which looks like artifacts due to overclocking, a few seconds later and the sound starts to loop and then the game crashes.

If left alone for long enough, either a BSOD pointing at the display driver (nv4_disp.dll) or a windows genral protection error comes up saying the display driver isn't working properly.

Now heres what I've tried to fix this issue...

1). reset to the BIOS default settings.
2). reseating the graphics card.
3). removed non-essential hardware components (like extra hard drives)
4). removed RAM, DIMM by DIMM (I have 2 DIMMs)
5). used various drivers from the ones on the supplied disc through to the very latest drivers (which at this current time are 84.21) I've also cleaned the old driver with driver cleaner
6). most recent motherboard drivers install (6.70)
7). reinstalled windows several (and different versions too)
8). reinstalled the games that crash

All the above "remedies" failed to solve anything.

Games that use some OpenGL extensions like Counter-Strike Source, Doom 3, Call Of Duty 2 etc. do not cause this crash.

Note that there are no overclocked components in my system, the graphics card has only run at factory setting speeds, I have not changed the cooler either.

I can confirm it is NOT a temperature issue as the games crash at inconsistent temperatures (anywhere between 47c and 54c), according to the nVidia drvers the core can withstand heat up to 115c. My cpu runs at about 45c - 52c when running games like oblivion. but counter-strike for example runs at between 44c and 48c with no crash.

I've put a stand alone desk fan so that it blows vast amounts of cold air into my pc and still the same thing at the same temperature.

I don't know what it is and so I've given up as I've wasted several days trying to solve this problem.

Its not a DirectX error or a driver error or even a temperature error and as such I conclude that the card is faulty.

I have also contacted XFX directly and they have also agreed that the graphics card is faulty and have advised me to seek a replacement through the supplier (meaning you guys ).

Hope to hear from you soon.

You may also want to note that its taken me so long to notify Scan as I wanted to make sure the graphics card was faulty and I was also waiting for a response from XFX.

[Kaine (AoD)]

Im not 100% sure personally but from my past experiences with graphics that artifact is due to memory corruption IIRC? (also heat issues but as you said that isnt the case here id put it down to the memory)

Im going to pass this on to the returns department and hopefully they can get something sorted as soon as possible for you mate

[BEANFro Elite]

Ok thanks theres that Scan service I was on about

And it's not RAM, I took them out, one by one and even used one dimm at a time of my old slow RAM

But many thanks again!

[Philipp]

Pm your invoice number over and ill raise you a returns number,

Regards

[Kaine (AoD)]

Ok thanks theres that Scan service I was on about

And it's not RAM, I took them out, one by one and even used one dimm at a time of my old slow RAM

But many thanks again!

sorry should have put it a bit better in my first post ^ ^ ment the memory on the card itself rather then your RAM hehe it happened to me with an old AGP 6800 Ultra card, after about a month is started to artifact really bad in CS:S =o turned out the graphics cards memory was corrupt but it was all sorted in no time

[pands@scan]

Ah bean , is this why i keep shooting you in the face on cs ?

**if phil doesnt sort, let me know and i will do it **

[DavidM]

Don't worry Beano... we'll teach Pants a lesson for that later

[BEANFro Elite]

Heh, I'm miles better at CS now than back then Pants, these days you should find it harder to hit THIS fro

[Kaine (AoD)]

dude Fro = bullseye ^ ^ everyone aims for it lol

[BEANFro Elite]

One more thing, do I need to send the outer "X" shaped box, because it won't fit inside a jiffy bag or will Initial City Link provide a package for me?

I have bubble wrap and what not, just nothing to put it in that fits

[Philipp]

Yeah please return all packaging best bet is to wrap the box in plenty of bubble wrap,

Citylink will put the item in a bag (citypack) however this offers no protection so please use plenty of bubbles

Regards

[BEANFro Elite]

Ok, I got loadsa bublewrap for some strange reason, and different colours too

[Philipp]

that will cheer the testing lads up

[hitman67]

You mean you have a Tension Sheet? (Red Dwarf fans will get it)