BFG 8800GTS 640mb OC problem

eric_knapper · 14 Oct 2009 at 15:49

I bought a BFG 8800GTS 640mb OC card from Overclockers about March/April of 2007 the card has been fine until yesterday while playing in game I noticed the textures to begin corrupting then the machine rebooted. It would continue to do this each time I tried with varying amounts of time before crashing however when running at the desktop everything was fine. So I checked all the fans were working removed all the cards ram etc cleaned everything out and tried again same problem. So I ran the Nvidia stability test no problem and ran a Memtest again nothing reported.

So next I tried uninstalling the current drivers and installed the older 175 ones when rebooting from the install the Bios page screen has some vertical corruption lines on it and also the windows boot screen has several columns of blue horizontal line of graphic corruption. When the Os has finished booting to the desktop there is no corruption and all seems fine but the card now reports an error of “device cannot be started Code 10” and all graphic operations are very slow. No matter what combination of drivers I use the problem now remains the same.

I have contacted BFG in the US but have not got a reply yet. Any thoughts on this is it definitely a bad graphics card do you think?

Thanks
Eric.

reflux · 14 Oct 2009 at 16:20

Sounds dead/dying to me.

pogomonkeh · 14 Oct 2009 at 16:26

my 8800gts 640 died month or so frm same time period as
well as a m8s 8800gtx ;/ with similar probs as well as bsods

hardtarget · 14 Oct 2009 at 16:31

My EVGA 8800GTS 640MB started to blue screen then died last week.

TheMorningStar · 14 Oct 2009 at 17:14

got an oven handy...?

eric_knapper · 14 Oct 2009 at 17:40

TheMorningStar said:
got an oven handy...?

As a last resort if I don’t get anywhere with BFG support I will give that a try. Any recommended temperature and time to reflow?

Going through the various scrap machines that I’ve been given to fix over time I’ve found an old Dell with a Pci-e Ati X30 card in it I’m just salvaging some other bits to get that one going to see if the card works I’ll then swap it for 8800 to make sure it’s the graphics card.

Eric.

Sean_UK · 14 Oct 2009 at 18:36

Use something like EVGA Precision to reduce the factory overclocks a smidge, and see if same problem persists

neilzomg · 14 Oct 2009 at 18:53

monitor the in game temps and idle temps, try to underclock the card to see if it fixes it. if it dosent then your card is unfortunatly dying

hardtarget · 14 Oct 2009 at 20:15

Screen shot of mine. Seems to be ok around windows, but once I try to play any game it bluescreens :eek:

TheMorningStar · 14 Oct 2009 at 20:31

eric_knapper said:
As a last resort if I don’t get anywhere with BFG support I will give that a try. Any recommended temperature and time to reflow?

Going through the various scrap machines that I’ve been given to fix over time I’ve found an old Dell with a Pci-e Ati X30 card in it I’m just salvaging some other bits to get that one going to see if the card works I’ll then swap it for 8800 to make sure it’s the graphics card.

Eric.

tbh i was joking...

bfg have a 10 year or maybe lifetime swop out policy i think they should be offering you a replacement. something along the lines of an 8800gt/9800gt/gts250 as a replacement. I wouldnt risk doing such a thing to a card in warranty. make sure to ask for a replacement that has atleast 640mb of memmory quoting you play on a high resolution and they will have to give you a 1gb version if they are feeling nice anyway. i hear people generally do better with bfg replacements if only they made ati cards :S if you got it from ocuk could be worth asking on the formums if a staff member could maybe give them a nudge in the right direction even if it has been a while since you got it

eric_knapper · 14 Oct 2009 at 21:42

TheMorningStar said:
tbh i was joking...

bfg have a 10 year or maybe lifetime swop out policy i think they should be offering you a replacement. something along the lines of an 8800gt/9800gt/gts250 as a replacement. I wouldnt risk doing such a thing to a card in warranty. make sure to ask for a replacement that has atleast 640mb of memmory quoting you play on a high resolution and they will have to give you a 1gb version if they are feeling nice anyway. i hear people generally do better with bfg replacements if only they made ati cards :S if you got it from ocuk could be worth asking on the formums if a staff member could maybe give them a nudge in the right direction even if it has been a while since you got it

Yeah I was taking the idea with a pinch of salt as I know the current internet tech solution for failing electronics is to bung it in the oven at gas mark 6 with a few tatters and everything will be fine

But in almost 20 years of putting these things together this is the first time I have had an actual failure of a component apart from a hard drive that didn’t work out of the box and so I don’t really know how good these various companies are on returns even though I usually buy or recommend BFG or eVga when it comes to graphics cards.

Anyway BFG have come back to me with the RMA details so I’ll get it sent off. I couldn’t try under clocking the factory overclock as the device cannot start code 10 error seems to stop the software from even seeing that. So I have that old Ati x30 card installed as a stop gap and it’s working (just no gaming for me) and I’ll see what BFG do.

It is a shame that eVga and BFG don’t produce Ati cards though I was looking at replacements just in case and with Nvidia’s current problems a jump to the Ati 58xx cards seems the way to go.

Eric.

johnerz · 14 Oct 2009 at 21:52

"and with Nvidia’s current problems a jump to the Ati 58xx cards seems the way to go."

What problems are they?

Granted ATI have the latest and greatest, but problems?????????

Unless you have been reading from unrelaible sites?

Geckovich · 14 Oct 2009 at 21:59

johnerz said:
"and with Nvidia’s current problems a jump to the Ati 58xx cards seems the way to go."

What problems are they?

Granted ATI have the latest and greatest, but problems?????????

Unless you have been reading from unrelaible sites?

The fact that their top 2 single GPU cards have been scrapped (275/285).

Their other top cards are likely to go the same way within a month.

Their new low end card has been universally slated, and is more expensive and less powerful than a last gen ATI card which targetted the same market.

The replacement to these scrapped cards wont be arriving until next month.

That's pretty much all the problems at the minute, but let's not derail the tread with talk of them, there are plenty of threads dedicated to each of these issues already - each one full of flames, baiting, fanboys, rumours and bile.

eric_knapper · 14 Oct 2009 at 22:29

johnerz said:
"and with Nvidia’s current problems a jump to the Ati 58xx cards seems the way to go."

What problems are they?

Granted ATI have the latest and greatest, but problems?????????

Unless you have been reading from unrelaible sites?

In recent years I have always had Nvidia cards not out of loyalty they just happened to be the card to have at the time and last time for me it was the 8800.

When my 8800 failed today I started looking at what the current crop of cards offered based on my usual method of price/performance/availability in that order and preferable from a good manufacturer. So I compared 285GTx's against 5850's from the benchmarks on various sites it looks like the 5850 wins the performance part of the requirements and on Overclocker’s they have 5850's starting at £200 (pre order) where as the BFG 285GTX is £270 although out of stock the next cheapest in stock being about £310.

With the rumours that those parts are now EOL it made sense to me to wait on stock for the ATI 5850 cards if I didn't get a repair/replacement for my BFG 8800. Hopefully though I won’t have to get a replacement until Nvidia have shipped some Fermi cards and comparison’s can be made.

Eric.

mattyfez · 15 Oct 2009 at 09:11

eric_knapper said:
As a last resort if I don’t get anywhere with BFG support

Eric.

Hi I just got an RMA today with BFG, my 9800gx2 has packed in, card was about 1.5 yrs old.

I hadnt registered my card with them, so I had to register with serial number and proof of purchase before they issued an RMA number, so if you dont have a receipt you will have to get ocuk to email you a copy.

Hopefully i will post it off today if I can find a decent box, as they state the retail boxes are not suitable for courier transit.

The RMA return address is in Wales so you dont have to fork out to ship it to the USA.

Somebody did mention in another thread that with the support being in the US they only reply to mails overnight, which I found to be true... but get your card registered on thier site as they wont issue an RMA unill this is done.

Does anyone know how they decide what model replacement to issue you with, as I dont think the GX2 is availabe any more?

Geckovich · 15 Oct 2009 at 10:03

They replace with a card of equal or greater power if the model you're RMAing is no longer produced.

Azzuri · 15 Oct 2009 at 11:01

eric_knapper said:
the Bios page screen has some vertical corruption lines on it and also the windows boot screen has several columns of blue horizontal line of graphic corruption. When the Os has finished booting to the desktop there is no corruption

This is the exact same fault that my BFG 8800 GTX OC that i bought in Dec 07 is developing. It hasn't got as far as not seeing the device yet but I've allready stopped using the PC and fished the card out and put it to one side in some antistatic packaging. I've contacted BFG so hopefully will be able to RMA it shortly.

eric_knapper · 15 Oct 2009 at 12:10

mattyfez said:
I hadnt registered my card with them, so I had to register with serial number and proof of purchase before they issued an RMA number, so if you dont have a receipt you will have to get ocuk to email you a copy.

This is the first time I have had to RMA something they sent the email yesterday with an RMA number and a label to be printed and attached to the box. Is this ok or do you get another RMA number once they have received the card to activate sending of a replacement?.

I don't remember if I registered the card with them when I bought it and looking for the receipt yesterday I typically could find all the others from Overclockers at the time of purchase but not the one for the card which I bought over the counter with a CC so hopefully Overclockers still have that on record somewhere if I need it.

Eric.

mattyfez · 16 Oct 2009 at 09:52

eric_knapper said:
This is the first time I have had to RMA something they sent the email yesterday with an RMA number and a label to be printed and attached to the box. Is this ok or do you get another RMA number once they have received the card to activate sending of a replacement?.

I don't remember if I registered the card with them when I bought it and looking for the receipt yesterday I typically could find all the others from Overclockers at the time of purchase but not the one for the card which I bought over the counter with a CC so hopefully Overclockers still have that on record somewhere if I need it.

Eric.

Sounds all fine to me, you have the shipping labels and the RMA number, thats all you need I think....just follow the shipping instuctions ( pack it well, send recorded delivery etc. ) they wouldnt give me an RMA number till I registered the card on thier site... so maybe you are already registered and forgot?

I had the same problem, lol every receipt but the one for the card!!