Gigabyte 3070 gaming OC - Artifacts during stress tests on 2 different cards

[LPoint]

Hi guys,

So I managed to snag myself a 3070 gaming OC during November and was excited to get the new system up and running.

When I went to install it in my system for the first time, I noticed a bent pin on the power connector inside the 8 pin socket. I managed to straighten it out with a small screwdriver and get the PSU connected to the card and everything seemed ok until I ran Heaven and 3DMark Time Spy stress tests on the card.

When running Heaven, I get black screens every now and again which last for about 2-3 seconds, and then the screen returns, along with some artifacts which flash up on the screen momentarily every so often (bars across the screen).

When running Time Spy, I get artifacts, much the same as the ones in Heaven, but without any black screens.

I assumed it was the dodgy power connection causing the issue on the card, as it is a known issue on Gigbabyte 3000 series cards, see this thread for context: https://www.overclockers.co.uk/foru...-oc-vision-power-connector-concerns.18900176/

I sent my card back to OC, and this morning received a new card, this time with no bent pins, and the power connected just fine. However, when I ran Heaven and Time Spy, I get exactly the same defects.

My assumption now (and I admit, this is my first ever build so I am not very knowledgable on this sort of thing) is that either I have an issue elsewhere in my system which is causing these artifacts/black screen, or the factory overclock on these cards is unstable.

I'm hoping that some of the more experienced members can help me troubleshoot this issue.

so, the first question - for anyone that has this card, do you have any issues when running these benchmarks? For info, it doesn't matter at what resolution I run the benchmarks, I run at 1440p which is my native resolution, and at 1080p, the same thing happens on each.

Second question - do you think something else in my system could be causing this issue? Possibly the PSU? full spec listed below:

Board: MSI b550-a Pro
CPU: Ryzen 7 5800x
RAM: Kingston HyperX Fury RGB 16Gb (2x8) 3600 DDR4 CL17
PSU: Corsair CX650M
GPU: Gigabyte RTX 3070 Gaming OC
Storage: 1 x 500GB Sabrent Rocket 4.0, 1 x 500GB Crucial P2, 1 x 1TB Seagate Barracuda
Case: Cooler Master H500 ARGB (mesh front panel)
CPU: EK 240 D-RGB AIO

All drivers are up to date. I have DDU'd and reinstalled the Nvidia display driver as well.

Any help/advice would be very much appreciated.

thanks in advance,

L.

 

[LPoint]

Glad I didnt buy the one that popped up earlier.

Gigabyte have a history for bad batches, eg AMD 7850, AMD 7870, GTX 780 etc not seen it for a while lets hope this is not the same.

Tell tale sign is when they appear in clearance marked QTY 10+

I'm hoping it's not a general issue, I would've expected to see at least one other case online of people having similar issues under stress tests, which so far I haven't done.

Keeping my fingers crossed that I can resolve it. My current thoughts are to replace the PSU with a better one and see if that resolves the issue.

 

[LPoint]

Problem is so few cards have been sold it might not come out online as quick and people might dismiss it as a one off.

When you have 25000 cards sold and 2% are dodgy it gets known, 2% of 250 not so.

What you need to do is publish the model/SKU details and see if anyone has the same one then ask them.

Fair point, hopefully someone else with the card sees this and can verify their results on stress testing.

When you say model/sku, wouldn't that just be what I mentioned above in the OP?