5700 dilemma – are the drivers as bad as they say?

[Bounce]

It's 100% awful and it's doing my head in, It's been over 2 weeks now, and it's taken 2 weeks for OCUk to tell me whereabouts in the world my card is. Can't get a response for powercolor at all, comms with them is like a blackhole. I'm never gonna buy another powercolor product, I'll be done with OCUk if this carries on much longer. £450 to be sat here with no card, no thx. I hear EVGA are the best rma wise, so I wish I'd bought an EVGA 2070 super, I just want a refund now tbh. Comp sucks with no freesync goodness in games ;(

Dreading what I'm going to be sent back too. Brand new card, my one fixed, or someone elses fixed? hurm :s

What card did you buy the Power Cooler 5700?

 

[LeMson]

What card did you buy the Power Cooler 5700?

Powercolor 5700XT Red Devil

 

[RandomMonkeH]

So I

I let the game auto detect settings, I played at 1080p, my native resolution. My monitor is 144 hz, I set the FPS cap to 249. For the most part I got 149 FPS. AMD 2600 4.1 ghz, ddr3 cl16 3200 16 gig ram water cooled. GPU 5700 non xt, water cooled, I used the basic OCing that comes with wattman. Slid everything to max. First time playing UT, now I know why people compared some of the combat mechanics to DNF. About 15 minutes of gameplay.

Hardware Acceleration was a known issue for any web browser, it was fixed a long time ago. You simply had to uncheck it in your browser settings. Enhanced sync was another known issue. Both issues were eventually in the driver notes as known and then fixed issues. That's what was crashing YT. When it started happening it took me all but 5 minutes to google the fix. Here are the latest driver notes. I can't say you won't have any problems.

p.s. Upscaled res to 1440p the game bugged, then I alt f4 out. Reloaded the game and the fps was about the same as 1080p. Maybe smoother? Upscaled 4k I got like 70 fps. VSR upscaling does this the first time you upscale some games, then after a reload you don't have it happen again.
uplift driver over driver.

Thank you for testing this, I really appreciate it - that all sounds pretty encouraging.

It's 100% awful and it's doing my head in, It's been over 2 weeks now, and it's taken 2 weeks for OCUk to tell me whereabouts in the world my card is. Can't get a response for powercolor at all, comms with them is like a blackhole. I'm never gonna buy another powercolor product, I'll be done with OCUk if this carries on much longer. £450 to be sat here with no card, no thx. I hear EVGA are the best rma wise, so I wish I'd bought an EVGA 2070 super, I just want a refund now tbh. Comp sucks with no freesync goodness in games ;(

Dreading what I'm going to be sent back too. Brand new card, my one fixed, or someone elses fixed? hurm :s

This doesn't sound very good - surprised that the retailer doesn't handle if it is within the first six months.
PC are supposed to have a three year warranty, but I only see mention of two on their site.

I was looking in to Sapphire, but their RMA process seems to be just as bad.
As you said, EVGA seems to offer anecdotally the best customer service, although from what I've been reading all flavours of the RTX cards seem to suffer their own issues.


So summarising, basically new drivers have improved things, and the cards are more stable - but the warranty from PowerColor is rubbish, and swapping it for a Sapphire is probably no better.
A 2070 super is probably less hassle in the short term, but more expensive and might die anyway, so make sure you buy it from EVGA or somebody with good service.

Maybe I should admit defeat, buy a cheap bottom end card and revisit the entire thing in six months!

 

[LeMson]

This doesn't sound very good - surprised that the retailer doesn't handle if it is within the first six months.
PC are supposed to have a three year warranty, but I only see mention of two on their site.

I was looking in to Sapphire, but their RMA process seems to be just as bad.
As you said, EVGA seems to offer anecdotally the best customer service, although from what I've been reading all flavours of the RTX cards seem to suffer their own issues.


So summarising, basically new drivers have improved things, and the cards are more stable - but the warranty from PowerColor is rubbish, and swapping it for a Sapphire is probably no better.
A 2070 super is probably less hassle in the short term, but more expensive and might die anyway, so make sure you buy it from EVGA or somebody with good service.

Maybe I should admit defeat, buy a cheap bottom end card and revisit the entire thing in six months!

The supers don't seem to be dieing like the non supers, hence me saying I'd buy a EVGA 2070 super lol

 

[RandomMonkeH]

The supers don't seem to be dieing like the non supers, hence me saying I'd buy a EVGA 2070 super lol

I heard the issue might be to do with Micron memory, some saying it definitely isn't and also claims that failure rate is no more than average - so that's about as clear as mud.
I'm assuming there is no AMD partner that offers EVGA like warranty.

Hopefully you will get a resolution soon, from what I've been reading Powercolor can take around 28 days to turn around an RMA.

 

[atomixers]

Thank you for testing this, I really appreciate it - that all sounds pretty encouraging.





This doesn't sound very good - surprised that the retailer doesn't handle if it is within the first six months.
PC are supposed to have a three year warranty, but I only see mention of two on their site.

I was looking in to Sapphire, but their RMA process seems to be just as bad.
As you said, EVGA seems to offer anecdotally the best customer service, although from what I've been reading all flavours of the RTX cards seem to suffer their own issues.


So summarising, basically new drivers have improved things, and the cards are more stable - but the warranty from PowerColor is rubbish, and swapping it for a Sapphire is probably no better.
A 2070 super is probably less hassle in the short term, but more expensive and might die anyway, so make sure you buy it from EVGA or somebody with good service.

Maybe I should admit defeat, buy a cheap bottom end card and revisit the entire thing in six months!

I'd love to contradict you and say save a bit of cash and get a 5700XT, but you're probably right, an EVGA 2070s would probably be your best bet if you had to buy something this year.

You can always play the waiting game with hardware, and the 30xx range of cards will most likely a nice improvement on what's currently available, especially if you're into ray tracing, but the extra £100 or so on the 2070s will probably be the best bet if there's games you want to play now.

 

[RandomMonkeH]

I'd love to contradict you and say save a bit of cash and get a 5700XT, but you're probably right, an EVGA 2070s would probably be your best bet if you had to buy something this year.

I already have a 5700xt, I'm just debating whether to swap it for a different card.

It seems to be a very uncertain time for market recently, the long term price gouging and a confused product line up by Nvidia, Crypto mining shortages and retail prices well above MSRP, Disruptive but unpolished product launch from AMD and now Intel looming on the horizon. With Black Friday and Brexit coming up too - I'm finding it hard to make an informed buying choice.

 

[atomixers]

My 5700 XT experience, like yours, has been less than stellar, but for the moment it’s working well enough for it not to be that much of an issue for me. If the what seems to be twice monthly driver updates can fix your specific problems it’s possible you can make good use of it until the middle of next year, by which point we should hopefully be able to see what the next release of hardware from both sides will be.

 

[RandomMonkeH]

I've decided I will return the 5700XT and pick up a 2070S instead.

I think I could wait out the driver issues as it looks like they are getting them fixed, and I suspect the card will do well as the performance is tweaked over time.

However, 2 years of not-so-great warranty on the powercolor vs 4 years on say a Gigabyte OC or 3 years no quibble from EVGA is hard to ignore (although I notice EVGA are going through difficult times at the moment).

Shame really as customer service is the easiest thing to do well, and yet always seems the hardest thing to get right.

 

[Blackjack Davy]

So let me get this straight, you've bought a 5700xt and you've decided to return it because you've heard stories of issues with drivers? And you havn't tried it, you havn't even opened it yet?!

Let me tell you this the holy Nvidia (peace be upon it) is not a land flowing with milk and honey, it has issues with drivers too.

 

[Ezyryder]

So let me get this straight, you've bought a 5700xt and you've decided to return it because you've heard stories of issues with drivers? And you havn't tried it, you havn't even opened it yet?!

Let me tell you this the holy Nvidia (peace be upon it) is not a land flowing with milk and honey, it has issues with drivers too.

Indeed, I have a 1080ti and whilst it is a solid card I have had some driver issues in the past, good thing is that is running everything ok right now apart from an old release I am playing that has flickering textures in the menus.

 

[RandomMonkeH]

So let me get this straight, you've bought a 5700xt and you've decided to return it because you've heard stories of issues with drivers? And you havn't tried it, you havn't even opened it yet?!

Let me tell you this the holy Nvidia (peace be upon it) is not a land flowing with milk and honey, it has issues with drivers too.

I purchased a PowerColor 5700xt for what I believe was a good price, and saw it generally had a very positive reception and reviews.

Then I found an unusual amount of feedback on driver issues and problems with older dx9 games (a few of which I still play).
It seemed like more than just the usual odd whingers, so I trawled the owners thread on here to find many similar reports.
Hence I posted this thread to find out if was something to be concerned about.

LeMson has also posted he has the same exact card and is having no fun with the RMA process, and again when I look more closely, similar reports everywhere of RMA hell with PowerColor.

So now I'm concerned I have a brand new card which has at least some confirmed driver issues and at least one person having problems with an RMA.
My choice was open it and keep it or send it back within 14 days for a full refund. Today is the 14th day - I left it as long as I could.

I was hoping this thread would serve as reassurance, and I could crack on with the rest of my build - but really it had the opposite effect and frankly it seems that purchasing a GPU of any brand is fraught with disaster and therefore warranty is the deciding factor.

For £400+, I would expect an item that works out of the box and is going to perform well or at least work for several years.
Should it have an issue within warranty, it is dealt with promptly and professionally. I don't think that should be unreasonable expectation.

I've just not been left convinced that it was a wise way to spend that cash on a GPU. I don't expect Nvidia to be any different, but at least I have options of longer/better/easier warranty and better game compatibility which makes it a bit easier to justify. As I said previously, I would have preferred to have gone the AMD route, which is why I bought it in the first place.

 

[Orange Nexus]

I purchased a PowerColor 5700xt for what I believe was a good price, and saw it generally had a very positive reception and reviews.

Then I found an unusual amount of feedback on driver issues and problems with older dx9 games (a few of which I still play).
It seemed like more than just the usual odd whingers, so I trawled the owners thread on here to find many similar reports.
Hence I posted this thread to find out if was something to be concerned about.

LeMson has also posted he has the same exact card and is having no fun with the RMA process, and again when I look more closely, similar reports everywhere of RMA hell with PowerColor.

So now I'm concerned I have a brand new card which has at least some confirmed driver issues and at least one person having problems with an RMA.
My choice was open it and keep it or send it back within 14 days for a full refund. Today is the 14th day - I left it as long as I could.

I was hoping this thread would serve as reassurance, and I could crack on with the rest of my build - but really it had the opposite effect and frankly it seems that purchasing a GPU of any brand is fraught with disaster and therefore warranty is the deciding factor.

For £400+, I would expect an item that works out of the box and is going to perform well or at least work for several years.
Should it have an issue within warranty, it is dealt with promptly and professionally. I don't think that should be unreasonable expectation.

I've just not been left convinced that it was a wise way to spend that cash on a GPU. I don't expect Nvidia to be any different, but at least I have options of longer/better/easier warranty and better game compatibility which makes it a bit easier to justify. As I said previously, I would have preferred to have gone the AMD route, which is why I bought it in the first place.

O o, my XT is from Sapphire but my 5700 is from Powercolor. But, they work fine, so i guess i lucked out. I'm stationed in Africa, so warranty is just something i could only wish for. lol

 

[heatonpkmassive]

Hardware Acceleration was a known issue for any web browser, it was fixed a long time ago. You simply had to uncheck it in your browser settings."

That's a fix? You ever used Google street view with it unchecked? That's not a fix.

 

[heatonpkmassive]

I believe Coolermaster is a decent name where PSUs are concerned (Seasonic, Superflower, Corsair, be quiet!, and EVGA are good, too).

There are a few Coolermaster PSUs that are okay, but the majority are junk. Much worse than the others you mentioned, from which Corsair, Superflower and Seasonic would be my choices.

 

[arc@css]

There are a few Coolermaster PSUs that are okay, but the majority are junk. Much worse than the others you mentioned, from which Corsair, Superflower and Seasonic would be my choices.

Yeah, I didn't think they were the cream of the crop, generally speaking anyway. I bought a Seasonic, very happy with it so far.

 

[Poneros]

You made the right call. I've had nothing but Radeon for decades, but I'd buy Turing over Navi in a heartbeat today.

 

[Threepwood]

Totes happy with my 5700 xt, mainly playing Unreal Tournament games with it, PUBG and MORDHAU, with no issues what so ever... totally happy.

 

[Panos]

So let me get this straight, you've bought a 5700xt and you've decided to return it because you've heard stories of issues with drivers? And you havn't tried it, you havn't even opened it yet?!

Let me tell you this the holy Nvidia (peace be upon it) is not a land flowing with milk and honey, it has issues with drivers too.

The lunacy in this forums mate.

 

[Orange Nexus]

Totes happy with my 5700 xt, mainly playing Unreal Tournament games with it, PUBG and MORDHAU, with no issues what so ever... totally happy.

Love my XT cos it handles 4K just fine. But, love my 5700 more. It is twice as fast as the GTX 1060 it replaced while consuming about same amount of power.

These mid-range cards are a good upgrade from those low-end cards.