this is scary info, guys. gary key put it in the anandtech blog today. sorry to paste the whole article, but it looks to be very important for those who haven't bought a card yet or even for those who have one but are just relying on the stock cooling solution.
We rarely discuss what actually occurs during the testing of a product. After all, those details hardly matter in the grand scheme of things. What matters is if the product meets or exceeds its specifications and more importantly, provides value to the consumer who purchases it. At times, we might express our frustrations when testing a product and even discuss a few problems we ran into along the way. Otherwise, it is business as usual on the publishing side and simply trying to tell it like it is when discussing a product?s merits, good or bad. We feel that most readers just want to know if the product works as advertised and not some editor whining about what they had to go through during testing.
We whine enough amongst ourselves and we figure at some point during the day, you probably get a good dose of it as well, so we try our best to insulate it from our articles. However, as they say, things are a changing. Now, we have the ability through these blogs to discuss those things that do not make it into an article after our illustrious copy editor cuts it; provide quick first looks at a product, report exclusives and interesting news, or just plain give you a ?tears in the beer? synopsis of today?s events in the computer world.
This particular editor ran into one of those perfect storms on Monday. After experiencing a particularly difficult day of testing, we normally just bite our lips, openly howl in an empty test room, throw Mr. Potato Head across the room, and toss a couple back before Miller Time officially starts (illustrious editor ? We do not condone this, nor has it actually ever happened, but we are looking for more Mr. Potato Heads). However, our favorite way to relieve stress is to go chase down the neighborhood cat (metaphorically speaking, editor ? Or is it?) with the biggest vehicle we can find in the parking lot.
Even after checking off each item on the stress relief list, it was time to do something different, especially considering the cat was having no problem outrunning the Prius. That something was to take out a fair amount of frustration on a couple of favorite suppliers, not as a reviewer in private, but as an actual paying consumer of their products. That is an important fact as the cards were not early production or first look samples; these cards were shrink-wrapped, on the shelf, and available for sale. The reasons for our high level of frustrations are not important, all right they really are, but a touch of guilt and remorse has set in so here is the abbreviated story version.
During testing of the 790FX and Phenom products (that is yet another story but one that cannot be printed on-line) , we decided to provide 3870 CrossFire numbers on the 790FX and compare them to 8800GT SLI on the 590SLI board with our retail Phenom 9600. At the same time, we were working on the AMD 690G/NV7050 Phenom comparisons with both on-board video and single card HD3870/NV8800GT results for those who like to game via AMD/NVIDIA. Of course, this means a lot of card switching, but considering just how limited the supply is of each video card, we were taking extra precautions with full ESD controls in place plus many prayers. Turns out, we could have just sprayed the boards with kerosene and lit a match to them since we were still going to have failures with or without ESD protection and hourly prayer services.
Within a few minutes of each other, we had a BFG 8800GT OC and HIS HD 3870 both fail. Both cards were in SLI and CrossFire configurations respectively when they met their maker in the great digital divide. We had already completed the single card and stock speed SLI/CF tests and were just doing a final run through on the cards with them overclocked to ensure stability with the motherboards and drivers. We did not manually overclock these particular cards; we utilized the auto overclock capabilities of each driver set to determine the clock speeds. In fact the overclock results were only about 7% higher than stock. Our philosophy is to test each feature available and run several benchmarks to verify those features. The 8800GT card failed while running SupCom at 1920x1200 and the HD 3870 card failed during Crysis at the same resolution. We administered emergency care immediately, but after a few minutes on life support, each card passed away. Now the fun starts.
We had purchased the BFG 8800GT at Best Buy and the HIS HD 3870 at Newegg. The first order of business was to return the 8800GT, get credit, or more importantly exchange it for a working product, as we did not have a backup. Why no backups, well these products are still experiencing shortage problems and the likes of ASUS, Gigabyte, and MSI are just now entering the market due to chipset allocations so our normal backup capability was gone. The other reason is that this is not our first failure, nor even second, or even third for that matter, but Anand will explain that side-story shortly. A quick trip to the local Best Buy netted a credit only situation as the shelves were bare, but a helpful employee told us another store was showing two units in stock. We hoped in the car and took off on a 30-minute jaunt across town. Sure enough, the store had two units, but they were both returns, for what reasons we do not know.
Striking out on that front, we turned our attention to the web. After searching all of the major sites for the BFG card, we arrived at two options. The first was to purchase a replacement card (8800GT OC2) at BFG for $339.99 plus $37.97 next day shipping for a total cost of $377.96, well above the $279.99 we originally paid for our 8800GT OC card (note ? OC card back in stock at BFG for $299.99 plus shipping today) . Since either BFG card was not in stock elsewhere, our second option was to find a similar model from one of the other launch partners.
We located two cards (up to four-today) from XFX and EVGA in stock at TigerDirect starting at $299.99 and going up to $329.99 with next day shipping costs of $49.79 to $50.79, resulting in a total cost of $349.78 or higher. Not only were the cards more expensive but the shipping cost was ridiculous. That was our starting point and we continued to scour the web for better pricing and availability. Our next stop was Dell and they had the Superclocked EVGA 8800GT for $317.99 with only $16.00 being required for next day delivery, great, until we add in the required tax for a total of $361.54. We had the shipping cost where we wanted it; just the initial cost and taxes exceeded TigerDirect?s total cost at this point.
We ended up at Buy.Com and found the standard XFX 8800GT in stock for a price of $289.99, about $40 more than originally planned at launch, but after adding in $34.96 for overnight shipping, we had a total cost of $324.95. Figuring that was about as good as it will get and needing to take a break to find Mr. Potato head?s left ear , we hit the change order button (they do not show you shipping costs up front) to input our correct credit card information and then hit place order. Well folks, through the magic of real-time inventory systems, we got the dreaded, item no longer in stock message. We tore off Mr. Potato Head?s left ear, nailed the trash basket with it, and continued our hunt.
Our next trip took us directly to EVGA?s web store. We found the 8800GT SSC in stock for $299.99, we were joyous, and a guaranteed overclock to 700MHz on the core was worth the extra $20 over our original card cost while matching the slower cards at TigerDirect. We placed the item into the shipping cart, selected our zip code to get shipping costs, and then we passed out for a few minutes. No, we had even reached Miller Time yet; it was the thought of paying at least $91.79 for next day delivery with AM service coming in at a relative bargain at $100.88. Come on folks, it is not as if EVGA is a small time operation and does not get preferred shipping rates from UPS. This is highway robbery for a lack of better words. Very disgusted, we tossed what was left of Mr. Potato Head out the window (think we finally nailed the cat without trying ? editor - just kidding we hope, but Sprinkles is nowhere around today).
Our final stop was at MWAVE, a quick search netted the EVGA Superclocked 8800GT being in stock for $289.90 with next day delivery at a more reasonable $24.32 for a total cost at $314.22. We whipped out the credit card, finalized the order, and woke up Tuesday morning to the sounds and fumes of FedEx delivering our new product. With it in hand, we resumed testing until today. Not being ones to let a sleeping cat lie (we know it is ?dog? but in honor of Sprinkles we changed it), we decided to manually overclock our cards and try for a couple of Phenom based 3DMark records. Yep, another failure, not going to mention which card yet as it still might come around after a cool down period, but right now, our display resembles a nice snowfall screensaver at stock settings.
We might have had bad luck or were just plain stupid with the 12% overclock today, but something is not right in our opinion. The base fan speeds are extremely low at idle and then do not ramp properly as the temperatures increase during load. Of course, playing around with fan speeds utilizing Riva Tuner or nTune can solve this problem, but should a user really have to do this? We think not. As such, we are looking at other potential problem areas. Of course, our card was cooking eggs at a temperature of 107C before the black screen and reboot so who knows, well Anand has a few ideas. He has a great theory as to what is happening that he will present in an upcoming 8800GT article. We would like to state that we could have had a card fail from any of the launch partners. The reason being is the same company manufacturers the cards and then relabeled for the likes of XFX, BFG, or EVGA.
Overall, not a good experience from a shopping viewpoint, something we are sure most of you have experienced looking for the 8800GT. Besides all of the prices being significantly above the $200~$249 promises made at launch (something we understand based on supply and demand but still do not like), we were just floored with the shipping costs at TigerDirect and EVGA, the others were somewhat within an average range for most of the e-Tailors. The good news is that since yesterday, several sites from Newegg to Frys.Com now have 8800GTs back in stock, although, still at a premium cost.
In the case of our HD 3870, well we could not find any in stock on Monday although an alert at Newegg showed the HIS card back in stock but at a price of $269.99. We had just completed the RMA procedure and dashed off to replace this card at a hefty $50 premium over the original $219.99 price. Unfortunately, we were not quick enough on the keyboard (or maybe the email) and the units sold out by the time we reached the checkout confirmation. We had a bit of good luck in this area and our friends at Gigabyte were able to ship out two of their just arrived 3870s to us. With an extra 3870 in hand now, we are going to try an experiment tonight to see if we had a fluke or if pushing the card (even a little) will create the failure again while under load.
While we have heard of problems in the forums with the 8800GT cards overheating and a few DOAs, it was not until we actually started testing under a variety of conditions that we figured out our luck is running short, or there might be fire brewing under that smoke. It might just be bad luck considering the loss of the 3870 card at the same, but until we finish testing, who knows. What was equally disappointing was the shopping experience in trying to procure a card on an emergency basis at a reasonable cost. Well there you have it, actually it?s not as bad as what we remember after reading it (illustrious editor ? ask Sprinkles if he agrees), but Mondays are sometimes like that at times.