Looking at buying a 7900GT...

mcwildcard · 26 Aug 2006 at 14:38

The time is fast approaching for me to upgrade my 6600GT, I've been quietly coveting the 7900GT since it's release and I'm beginning to get that tell tale symptom of daily checking the prices for the cards I have my eye on, which generally means I'm soon going to cave in and make a purchase.
The clear leader currently is the Gainward 7900GT GS 256MB, which looks by far the best value for money (especially taking into account the clock and memory speeds), but after checking on these forums I see that there is quite an ongoing saga with these cards (amongst others).
With my current set up I am limited by what I can have, I have an Arctic Cooling Silentium T1 case with a custom 300w PSU that is not upgradable, but after doing a bit of research I see that the 7900GT cards use an equal (if not slightly less) amount of power as my current 6600GT, which gives me no power issues.
The only way I could free up more power for an ATI card is to switch to a Conroe CPU, which would also mean a new motherboard, and I currently cannot afford that by any stretch of the imagination.
So really what I want to know is which 7900GT cards are currently the most reliable and would I be better off waiting a couple of months for these continuing problems to possibly be addressed?

Tetras · 26 Aug 2006 at 14:43

From what I have read your best off with ones that are not factory overclocked and EVGA is one of the most reliable brands

Darkwave · 26 Aug 2006 at 14:44

I would suggest waiting, and seeing what the 7950 GT has to offer. It should be phasing-out the 7900 GT and will be quite a bit more powerful from what I have heard so far.

Were I in your position though, I would be looking around for a second-hand 7800 GTX. Matches the 7900 GT in speed, power draw, etc. and has none of the reliability issues that plague the 7900 GT to this day.

According to what was last publicised by eVGA and XFX, they have a 5% failure rate, and another way of looking at that is one-in-twenty which is phenominally high. There is a thread on here right now about someone on his second 7900 GT and it's just packing up I think.

Kabaala · 26 Aug 2006 at 14:48

BFG had/have the same problems with theirs. The one i had would start to fill up the monitor with what looked like dead pixels when trying to overclock it.

mcwildcard · 26 Aug 2006 at 15:35

Thanks for the advice!
I've been using this as a guide for power usage, the 7900GT is incredibly efficient, and is clearly better than the 7800GTX or anything else in it's class really.
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000662.html

Which specific non-factory overclocked 7900GT card does everyone recommend?
(Not just make, but model too)

OC_A64 · 26 Aug 2006 at 15:57

The non overclocked cards shouldnt have any issues at all. The GT's regulation is designed to cope with them at their stocks speeds (give or take a little) it's only the overclocked cards which are at an increased risk of failure

Reality|Bites · 26 Aug 2006 at 15:58

The Asus seems good so far, I have one.

Darkwave · 26 Aug 2006 at 16:01

OC_A64 said:
The non overclocked cards shouldnt have any issues at all. The GT's regulation is designed to cope with them at their stocks speeds (give or take a little) it's only the overclocked cards which are at an increased risk of failure

No, it's all of them. The factory overclocked ones just fail faster (straight out of the box in most cases.)

OC_A64 · 26 Aug 2006 at 16:03

Ulfhedjinn said:
No, it's all of them. The factory overclocked ones just fail faster (straight out of the box in most cases.)

The fail at STOCK clocks? Or the cards fail when overclocked?

LoadsaMoney · 26 Aug 2006 at 16:04

Yeah its the whole lot, stock or overclocked, doesn't matter they are all borked.

Darkwave · 26 Aug 2006 at 16:07

OC_A64 said:
The fail at STOCK clocks? Or the cards fail when overclocked?

At stock, OCed, factory OCed, makes no difference. 5% of them go bang because of faulty design/manufacturing.

lay-z-boy · 26 Aug 2006 at 16:13

The problem was the ram on the cards, evga have sorted it out by moving to a different supplier.

OC_A64 · 26 Aug 2006 at 16:16

lay-z-boy said:
The problem was the ram on the cards, evga have sorted it out by moving to a different supplier.

Nope, new "modded" cards are still having the issue.

re comments of stock cards still having the issue, have just read about and yea they are still dying. Doesn't seem to be in the numbers that the overclocked cards are (unless they arent being reported as much...?)
Still a bit baffled by this though, as I'm sure many people have worked around the issue by dropping cards back to the stock speeds (450/1320) and the artifcating went away...?

Darkwave · 26 Aug 2006 at 16:25

lay-z-boy said:
The problem was the ram on the cards, evga have sorted it out by moving to a different supplier.

That is incorrect. They changed the RAM from Samsung to Infineon and it did absolutely nothing to alleviate the problem, they now suspect the problem to lie in the voltage regulators (irony) and haven't said anything since in regards to correcting the problem.

I doubt they will bother either, it will cost a fortune to investigate and correct this problem with the 7950 GT and possible other refreshes only a few months away that will no doubt mark the phasing-out of the 7900 GT anyway.

The best thing to do right now is to avoid the 7900 GT or risk it being one of the faulty 5%, it's that simple. Get an X1800 XT instead, or if you simply must have Nvidia then the 7600 GT, 7800 GTX, and 7900GTX (to a lesser extent) are unaffected.

OC_A64 said:
I'm sure many people have worked around the issue by dropping cards back to the stock speeds (450/1320) and the artifcating went away...?

It's a fix, but it doesn't work for anywhere near everybody unfortunately.

Many people unlike us are also hesitant to mess with clock frequencies on an expensive piece of hardware, and would rather simply have it replaced.

Kabaala · 26 Aug 2006 at 16:26

I seem to remember it being said it was the voltage regulator that was the problem about 5/6 months ago :confused:

Darkwave · 26 Aug 2006 at 16:27

Kabaala said:
I seem to remember it being said it was the voltage regulator that was the problem about 5/6 months ago

They've thought that the problem was with the voltage regulators for ages, it's only since replacing the memory failed that they actually paid it any real attention.

I have been watching this problem for a long time as I had to choose between a 7900 GT or X1800 XT myself earlier this year. Naturally, I chose an X1800 XT due to being cheaper and not having a 1-in-20 chance of going off in my face (I managed to make it do that through my own stupidity.

)

OC_A64 · 26 Aug 2006 at 16:35

Fair few said that the fixes wouldn't help too.. ah well!

Gonna go against Ulfhedjinn on this one and say that a stock clocked 7900GT shouldn't be a problem. As long as you dont start overclocking it it'll in all likelihood (*sp) live a long and happy life. If you want to overclock, look elsewhere.
X1800XT 256 is probably a better choice in general. The GT is quicker than the X1800 but it needs to be one of the higher clocked cards. Since they're falling over it's a risk...
Prefer my 7900GT over my X1800XT 512 certainly, its hella fast much smaller and cooler than the X1800XT too. It's not suffered from failure as many others have (although brought an XFX card whcih did go **** up) not sure whether thats due to the anti mem mod on it, but still...

Think the initial thoughts were that the higher clocked ram was overloading the cards regulation which caused them to fall over (pretty sure this is probably still the case tbfh). By moving to infineon ram, they basically capped the max memory clocks available on the cards as it seems to clock like cack. They also added the switching 2d/3d voltages which were meant to prolong the life of the cards this also seems to have failed!
Could well still be a regulation issue, just the move to new ram hasn't sorted it out... The mem regs on these cards do get VERY hot indeed, don't think its anywhere near what they're rated too but still can't be good.
It's amazing seeing how much cooler the reg runs with lower voltages too. Run 2.02 24/7 (2.04 = stock on the GT's) and with a BGA sink things are nice and cool. Cranking that up to 2.15 for some DDR 1000 goodness the reg is burning hot. But hey what do I know, thats probably normal!

Kabaala · 26 Aug 2006 at 16:35

lol

I bought the 7900gt pretty much as soon as they appeared so didnt know any better at the time. It was only when i started to have problems that i looked into it. I'm just surprised nvidia have taken this long to come to a conclusion that the consumers came to a long time ago

LoadsaMoney · 26 Aug 2006 at 16:35

Yeah seen as they are still going **** up with Infineon memory they are now saying 'yeah its the voltage regulators' again, truth is they don't have a ******* clue.

Kabaala · 26 Aug 2006 at 16:38

Prefer my 7900GT over my X1800XT 512 certainly, its hella fast much smaller and cooler than the X1800XT too

You think the GT is the better card out of the two? I just bought my x1800xt 512mb recently (second hand), granted its flashed to PE and OC'd but i find it a much better card than the GT.

Could be bias though through hating the GT because it was slightly borked