defective/overheating GTX 280s thread

[Thor86]

Yikes, sorry for your bad luck. I think I will stick with my 8800 Ultra for awhile now.

 

[Mango1970]

Yup got 2 eVGA 8800 GTX cards sitting in my rig... don't ever want to upgrade them . I am just hoping my eVGA 680i mobo never craps out on me as I really don't want to play the RMA game to get a good one again.

 

[n7]

Originally posted by: gramboh
Sorry to hear your luck n7.

I got my GTX 280 installed earlier this week (EVGA). It idles at 69c @ 42% fan, peaks at 87c in Crysis after an hour or so. The weird thing for me is the fan never returns down to ~40% after gaming, it stays around 80% resulting in idle temp of 55c which is nice, but too loud. Reboot fixes it. I'm assuming this is a driver issue. 2D downclocking also doesn't work (maybe because of Vista Aero).

I'm running 648/1404/1161 (SSC speeds).

And that i would have been happy with. High temps don't bother me.
But these cards cannot seem to safely go over 95-100C, because as soon as they do, they start lagging/stuttering like mad.
I assume they are downclocking/throttling, but Rivatuner doesn't show it.
Doesn't really matter; they're defective in spades...

With both cards, I got the same bug where the fan doesn't spin down after being under load too.

That will become extremely annoying if they don't fix it quickly in the drivers.

 

[CP5670]

Sucks to hear that. I guess I lucked out with my card, as I'm reading about these issues fairly frequently on different forums.

I've read about the fan speed issue in several reviews but have never encountered it myself. After I close down a game, it spins down to its 40% level after 10 or 15 seconds at the most. These problems seem like they may be BIOS related and specific to certain card companies.

 

[n7]

Originally posted by: CP5670
Sucks to hear that. I guess I lucked out with my card, as I'm reading about these issues fairly frequently on different forums.

I've read about the fan speed issue in several reviews but have never encountered it myself. After I close down a game, it spins down to its 40% level after 10 or 15 seconds at the most. These problems seem like they may be BIOS related and specific to certain card companies.

What brand you have?

I haven't looked overly closely, but nVnews has lots of people with all the major brands with issues it seems.

 

[CP5670]

Originally posted by: n7

Originally posted by: CP5670
Sucks to hear that. I guess I lucked out with my card, as I'm reading about these issues fairly frequently on different forums.

I've read about the fan speed issue in several reviews but have never encountered it myself. After I close down a game, it spins down to its 40% level after 10 or 15 seconds at the most. These problems seem like they may be BIOS related and specific to certain card companies.

What brand you have?

I haven't looked overly closely, but nVnews has lots of people with all the major brands with issues it seems.

It's an XFX model without any factory overclock, so it probably just uses the reference Nvidia BIOS.

 

[ajaidevsingh]

Tell me when you guys start to see artifacts, i mean what temp on the GTX 280??

I had a artifact prob. due to memory speed and was just curious that what is the max temp for this card!!!

 

[bryanW1995]

that sucks n7. nvidia obviously rushed gt 200 out the door before it was ready. I've gone from being happy that amd is competitive again to being concerned about nvidia. we all know that competition is good, and dominance by either camp will end up hurting all of us.

 

[chizow]

That's unfortunate, but like I said you should've sent it back to the retailer the first time. Then at least you would've had options. Its not like these board partners have this huge stock of new, problem-free parts laying around waiting for RMA. Chances are you traded in one problem part for another.

I'm not fully convinced the problem exhibits itself on a problem card in every config; it could only pop up on certain boards or with certain PSUs, similar to that system sentinel problem that showed up last year. It sounds like these cards are getting over-volted for whatever reason, causing them to overheat. It also seems odd there's an exceptionally large number of users who have the problem recur with multiple cards.

 

[n7]

If i would have sent it back to the etailer i would have had a great chance of getting another defective one back...

I figured surely BFG would actually get me a good card, but i realize i figured very wrong.

Originally posted by: chizow
Its not like these board partners have this huge stock of new, problem-free parts laying around waiting for RMA. Chances are you traded in one problem part for another.

Uh...wtf?
If that's the case, then no one should be buying GTX 280s.

I actually wouldn't dare recommend a GTX 280 to anyone right now, but based on what you're saying, we should all expect defective ones... which i now do anyway :frown:

Originally posted by: chizow
I'm not fully convinced the problem exhibits itself on a problem card in every config; it could only pop up on certain boards or with certain PSUs, similar to that system sentinel problem that showed up last year. It sounds like these cards are getting over-volted for whatever reason, causing them to overheat. It also seems odd there's an exceptionally large number of users who have the problem recur with multiple cards.

While that could be possible, there are a lot of users with a lot of different system components all experiencing horrible issues, so i somewhat doubt that.

I've got pretty much the same motherboard as you do, & while my PSU isn't as high end, it shouldn't be having issues.

I ran my HD 3870 X2 just fine on this PSU, & it sucks up more power than the GTX 280 does.

 

[Sind]

I traded up to a GTX 280, first card ran fine for 15mins then it was artifact city, even at the bios, temps were good though. Second card the fan didn't even work, it just jittered trying to spin up. Third has been the charm for me and it's been running pretty much 24/7 for the past 3 weeks now folding when I'm not gaming.

There is definately a QC issue, who's fault it is I don't know, nor care. Consumers, should be receiving a working reliable product period, it should not take two or more times to do so, there is no excuse for it period, yet there are multiple instances of users with cards bought from different vendors whom have to RMA 2 times or more to find a working GTX 280.

 

[gramboh]

Oops already posted in this thread, duh. Was confused by title change.

 

[Rubycon]

Wow I have read about this and glad to say my EVGA GTX280 (factory OC to 648) is humming along in low 50's idle and mid 70's load. That furburger test gets it up to around 81 or so after two hours but that is it.

I use it for a lot of things other than gaming too and it frankly blows away all the other cards I've used bar none. The 4870X2 may be nice but after dealing with the idiosyncrasies of the 3870X2 I think I will stick to a single GPU card from now on.

 

[n7]

Well, after a long wait & a few phone calls to clueless & mis-informing BFG reps, i finally received my prepaid DHL shipping label via snail-mail.

So i sent out my second bad GTX 280 Thursday...now the wait will continue.

And the real question...will the third card be the charm, or be yet another defective POS?

One thing is for sure, BFG will never see any money from me ever again.

It's amazing how terrible this experience has been.

It's now been 37 days & counting since i paid for my GTX 280.

 

[BFG10K]

Originally posted by: n7

It's now been 37 days & counting since i paid for my GTX 280.

The most unfortunate thing about this is that by the time you get your third card the 55 nm GTX280+ will have probably arrived.

 

[n7]

I was going to add that to my above post, but i decided not to even start thinking about that possibility, since i'm angry enough already.

 

[LittleNemoNES]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

Originally posted by: n7

It's now been 37 days & counting since i paid for my GTX 280.

The most unfortunate thing about this is that by the time you get your third card the 55 nm GTX280+ will have probably arrived.

In my case, the card had dropped $100 by the time it came back. I basically robbed myself of $100

 

[BFG10K]

Originally posted by: gersson

In my case, the card had dropped $100 by the time it came back. I basically robbed myself of $100

Yeah, prices dropped again after the 4870 X2 launched. I've checked them now and it's ridiculous how cheap they are.

Must...resist...urge...

 

[n7]

Heh, if you can get one from a place with a good return policy, go for it.

They are obviously great cards when working.

If i could easily go to a store where they had them for a decent price & keep exchanging till i got a good one, i'd have done that.

Kinda too late for that now though.

 

[Janooo]

I'm sorry for you. That sucks.
You didn't listen to an advice. What can I say.

 

[BFG10K]

Originally posted by: n7

Kinda too late for that now though.

Yep, it was always my intention to wait for the 4870 and when that arrived I was waiting for the 1 GB variant.

By the time those were available it was almost a given we could expect the 55 nm GTX280+ by the end of August so I decided to skip the 65 nm version altogether.

 

[Janooo]

An overclocked 1GB 4870 will be very close to 55nm 280 as well. It's very hard decision. Buying what makes you feel good is the best.

 

[Rubycon]

Isn't the defect just a mechanical issue though? I know when a CPU heats up to the throttling point within seconds of being loaded it ALWAYS points to poor contact between the IHS and the heatsink surface. I know it's touchy when you've spent that much on a graphics card to break out the screw driver and start stripping it down but the fix may be easy!

I've talked this with my broker that sources and tests hardware before it gets to me as something like this would REALLY be inconvenient in my position. I am told they test everything to spec, etc. However they indicated that both cards acquired were fine and I can attest this is correct. What boggles the mind is how so many of these can slip past the manufacturers in this state? They don't stress test them at all obviously.

 

[n7]

Originally posted by: Janooo
I'm sorry for you. That sucks.
You didn't listen to an advice. What can I say.

Maybe you can say what you are talking about?

 

[Janooo]

Originally posted by: n7

Originally posted by: Janooo
I'm sorry for you. That sucks.
You didn't listen to an advice. What can I say.

Maybe you can say what you are talking about?

Check the first page.