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Does Warranty Cover Unstable Factory OC?

WuMyster

WuMyster

WuMyster

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As title says.

Got my Inno3D iChill 780 DHS in 2014 with 3 years warranty. After a few months it couldn't handle the factory OC unless I bumped up core voltage and power limit. Then after few more months I had to reduce core and memory clock and now even more.

Will my warranty cover this? And do I RMA with OCUK or Inno3D?

TIA
 
Yes, but it can be a headache. I had one that was unstable, but it would only crash on some games (ones which kept it on P0 state for long periods). The RMA people just didn't understand it and didn't test it properly :/
 
yes - but l like above can be a headache

I had a Gigabyte SOC card years back that needed a huge bump bump in volts to run games without artefacts - and instantly artefacted on something like Furmark

yet when I sent it off - I got this report, with photos of the card running for 30 minutes plus on each of the same tests with no issues

had no way to prove or disprove - and my PSU was a high quality one - so was sent back to me and I had to live with just bumping the volts loads
 
does it also cover the amount the card boosts too? i dont know when it started but nvidia use a technology that pushes the boost past what the stock boost is?
 
Started a few generations ago, it's probably what makes them unstable TBH. I've had 3 nvidia cards with this issue now and it appears to get worse as the card ages too :/

My 970 does it, I had to alter the BIOS to cap the boost but even then it still crashes on some games. My Radeon 480 though, totally stable on the same system.

I suspect what is happening is manufacturers are setting up the BIOS on a perfect example, then just rolling it out to all cards. But then you get less than perfect ones and they can't hold the clocks.
 
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No. The core clock (Base and Boost) are set in BIOS. Nvidia's boost technology then takes that a step further and takes it past that point if there is both thermal and power headroom. However, if a card is advertised with a 1900Mhz boost clock and you don't touch any overclocking software and the card falls over itself at 1950Mhz then it is unstable at the stock clock at which the card has been advertised to perform at, since we have no way of controlling the way in which Nvidia Boost operates.

As said above, proving such would possibly be a ball ache, but the fact is if a card either crashes or artifacts out of the box, then it is faulty.
 
Not sure if I can be bothered to RMA, wait for 28 days to get a response that everything is fine.

I do want to sell the 780 off in the future and having to advertise that it can't do factory OC will reduce its price.
 
I'm surprised more people haven't brought this issue up. If you look on the Nvidia forums there are loads of posts going back to about the 4xx series from people with the exact same problem.

It's a hard one to diagnose and in the end it seems people just have to keep RMAing cards until they get a good one, give up and switch to AMD (like I did), or run the card underclocked.
 
Five.Stars said:
No. The core clock (Base and Boost) are set in BIOS. Nvidia's boost technology then takes that a step further and takes it past that point if there is both thermal and power headroom. However, if a card is advertised with a 1900Mhz boost clock and you don't touch any overclocking software and the card falls over itself at 1950Mhz then it is unstable at the stock clock at which the card has been advertised to perform at, since we have no way of controlling the way in which Nvidia Boost operates.

As said above, proving such would possibly be a ball ache, but the fact is if a card either crashes or artifacts out of the box, then it is faulty.
Click to expand...

It's not falling over itself at stock, it's falling over at 50 MHz overclock, assuming it was not a typo. Why not ask the RMA people to do the same tests you are doing so they will see there's a problem with the card?
 
Sixense said:
It's not falling over itself at stock, it's falling over at 50 MHz overclock, assuming it was not a typo. Why not ask the RMA people to do the same tests you are doing so they will see there's a problem with the card?
Click to expand...

No it isn't. If it BOOSTS to 1950mhz (which we have no control over BTW), and assuming that no overclocking software has been used to adjust power limits, voltages etc, then it is failing at the stock clocks, so no it wasn't a typo. The fact that the BOOST clocks are higher than the advertised boost clocks are neither here nor there. It is failing to perform as it should out of the box.

Again I repeat, as an end user we have little to no control as to the behaviour of Nvidia's Boost technology!
 
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