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How much of an ungrateful barsteward should I be?

WJA96 said:
It's about 10% slower - about 2500 3DMarks. It only matters because I blew £1000 on graphics cards in September 2007 and now I have a slower system as a result of one dying and the manufacturer doing the right thing in sending me a MUCH better card, it just happens to be incompatible with my old SLi setup.
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3DMarks, shmedeemarks, most games will have a less than a 10% difference and I doubt you could tell the difference with the naked eye. There are plenty of benefits to running single card anyway - less power usage, less driver and compatibility issues.

As you said, it's not even your main gaming comp anyway. Just sell the left over 8800 and pocket yourself some free money.
 
This really is a no-brainer. I can't see how you can't work this one out for yourself!

They gave you a card worth about 3 times the one you sent back so just either :-

Sell the 8800GTX and be happy with the single 280 doing your CUDA stuff or even put the money from the 8800 sale towards a second 280.

or

Sell the 280 for some nice wedge and hunt down another 8800GTX and be left with a nice bit of leftover readies.

They obviously sent you the 280 as they have no 8800GTX's left over so just be grateful and move on.
 
WJA96 said:
I had a nice SLi system - 2 BFG 8800GTX H2OCs on a hacked X58 motherboard and the whole thing was water cooled - chipset, CPU and GPUs (obviously).

Anyway - one of the 8800GTXs stopped working sometimes and I RMA'd it back to BFG and they very (VERY) kindly sent me a GTX 280 H2OC as a replacement.

So the question is - it's actually slower with a single GTX 280 than the two 8800GTX's in SLi - should I complain to BFG as they promised me an 8800GTX H2OC replacement and then sent me a significantly better single GPU card?
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This happened to my friend; tell BFG that you had two 8800GTx's in sli but because they sent you a 280 you cant SLi anymore and they should send you a second gtx 280.
Thats what happened with my friend.
 
psychas said:
Huh :confused: How can u tri sli 295 as if u have 2 of them it is quad sli already ? i think u got your self confused
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LoL, more beer plz.

I think this is a very interesting situation and you managed to keep your temper with some of the reply's, well done.

It does throw up an interesting dilema within what appears to be a very good returns policy.

Have you spoken yet to BFG? Whilst as previously stated, they have upheld their end of the bargain, they sound to me like to kind of comapny that may just do a bit more given your predicament. Worth a shot IMO.
 
silly question, but would you get similer results if you took one of the gtx280's from your tri sli rig and put it in your second rig, the one that now has a gtx280 and a 8800gtx, leaving you with two sli gtx280 rigs to use for cuda. obviously it would effect your gamming rig's performance but only till you can get your new cards in april.
 
Heh, if only I had a GTX280..:p

Back on topic, why not? You were told you'd be sent a Geforce 8800GTX H2OC and you were sent a GTX280 instead. If BFG don't have any more of the former, you'll have to decide which card is worth keeping...
 
If your just using it for folding... then I'd have thought you just got a ~30-40% performance boost for nothing... the 280 has much higher gigaflops than 2x8800GTX.
 
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I would suggest doing real-world tests with whatever CUDA applications you're running to see if it is actually slower or faster because 3DMark is that poor of a comparison tool. 3DMark is about the only benchmark in the industry that will favour the fact that you have a dual-card/dual-GPU setup over the fact that the card you're running has more computational power and bandwidth. That might just be me though.

If it turns out the single GTX 280 is slower than the two 8800 GTX cards in the application you're running (i.e. not 3DMark), tell BFG that you're highly grateful for the card, but that you really need an 8800 GTX for your specific application. Or y'know, 'accidentally' break the other 8800 GTX. :p
 
HummuH1 said:
LoL, more beer plz.

I think this is a very interesting situation and you managed to keep your temper with some of the reply's, well done.

It does throw up an interesting dilema within what appears to be a very good returns policy.

Have you spoken yet to BFG? Whilst as previously stated, they have upheld their end of the bargain, they sound to me like to kind of comapny that may just do a bit more given your predicament. Worth a shot IMO.
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The only thing that has driven me to annoyance in this thread is the number of people commenting who patently haven't read the thread and keep trotting out the same old stuff about games and how they would make a bit of money out of it.

BFG, EVGA and other companies offering very long term warranties do seem to be relying on the fact that most customers getting a significant upgrade as an RMA return will be delighted and not query the fact that BFG don't carry stocks of EOL parts. I'm one of those users who spent over £1000 on top end parts 18 months ago and I generally buy BFG or EVGA because they have the best warranty available.

I haven't spoken to BFG because 99% of me is saying it would just be downright ungrateful to do so. I actually have no doubt at all that if I contacted BFG and explained they would send me a second GTX280 H2OC but that just seems to be an abuse of their excellent RMA service. On the other hand, they probably factor this sort of thing into the original purchase cost, so maybe I will give it a shot;)
 
Rroff said:
If your just using it for folding... then I'd have thought you just got a ~30-40% performance boost for nothing... the 280 has much higher gigaflops than 2x8800GTX.
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Sadly not. DC is all about the number of shaders/cores and two 8800GTXs beat a single GTX280 by quite some margin especially with the new beta clients that allow two cards to run together as one super-card.
 
well if u have two 295 in other rig and so just get another 280 u will be happy. i bet two 280 will work better then two 8800gtx on cuda or folding or what ever u do
 
WJA96 said:
I know I got a superb deal from BFG. I also suspect strongly that if I contact them and ask they will tell me to send the other 8800GTX back and they'll swap that one out for a GTX 280 as well, the question is should I do it?
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Considering you sound like a total addict/ valuable customer it seems reasonable to explain the basis of your sli system and how its been affected and request a swap of the working 8800gtx to another 280.
 
I would happily have a 10% slower system for no multi-gpu issues. Think of the power you are saving. What 3dmark are you comparing? Look like 06, I would look at Vantage High GPU scores and far-cry2, cod 4/5 scores before I really took a view on the performance hit.
 
I've just had a look at differnet reviews and on avergae I would say a 280 is only 5% slower at 1920x1080 with AA in games. A 8800GTX should sell for what £80? I woudl keep it and sell the remaining 8800 and make a profit. Else see if you can find on 8800GTX OC on ebay or something and sell the 280 for £240+ quid and make a bigger profit.

Yes you are being ungrateful because with some thought and only a little effort you can make a profit out of this and the performance hit is minimal and not worth worrying about!

I'll buy the 280 :)
 
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