Don't Ever Buy PNY!

[DragonReborn]

While I know that is a strong statement but I just wanted to drive my point home (never the subtle type): PNY is a stupid weak baby of a reference board copier. Yea, I said it. I went into CompUSA after calling 15 mintues beforehand to find out that they have seven, seven mind you, VisionTek Ti4400's in stock and there is basically no one in the store so don't worry about them selling out. Well...I stroll in there and bam! Out of stock. All they have left (coincedentally) is PNY. Well, I have been waiting for too long and everybody there assured me, and against my best intrests, I went ahead and bought the card. Well...on default settings it gives me minor artifacts in 3D Mark and Jedi Outcast. Not to mention it gives me this just "unstable" feeling. I cannot explain it. Also, I tried OC'ing it and I could barely get past 300/600 without the entire screen blanking over. I also have a heavily cooled case: with two Panaflo 120mm blowing right on the vid card and CPU plus two 120mm sucking air out the top...AND this is the OC I get from PNY?! Not very happy. So, point of the story: don't ever buy something for $300 that you are not completely happy with...especially a video card. Also, anyone else have any problems with PNY? Thanks in advance.

 

[BD231]

You got a bad card, return it and get a working one. This certainly sucks for you but that dose not mean every PNY video card on the market is faulty. I've used their ram and video cards in the past on more than one occasion and have never once had any problems with their products.

 

[Adul]

return the card for another and see if that one is bad. then you can rant all you want. But in this case you have the luck of the draw.

 

[microAmp]

You got what you paid for and the o/c is not a guarantee, but the artifacts you are getting really sucks, have you tried exchanging it at CompUSA for another PNY?

 

[Bozo Galora]

phone conversation from a guy on another forum to PNY:

hello, just bought a brand new PNY GF4 Ti4400 and when I boot, I get strange flourescent images,
sometimes pieces of the icons are missing, sometimes screen stays black at boot up.

well, send it back we'll look at it.

(Later)

Did you get card I sent? (19 minute wait)

Yeah, its bad. We'll send you a new one.

Do a lot of them go bad?

Yeah, we got 500 of them right now sitting here.

What do you do with them?

Throw them in the trash.

What O/S and chipset did you try my card on?

Hold on..........(29 minute wait)

Don't know - just our regular test system

Can I speak with your supervisor?

Sure, hold on (37 minute wait)

Hello?

Yeah, what chipset do you use to test to see if a card is good? Is it P4 or AMD CPU, or both.

Ahhhh.....dunno about that.

Thanx.

 

[BrunoPuntzJones]

<< PNY is a stupid weak baby of a reference board copier. Yea, I said it. I went into CompUSA after calling 15 mintues beforehand to find out that they have seven, seven mind you, VisionTek Ti4400's >>

Visiontek IS the Nvidia reference board maker. Shouldn't complain about it since that's exactly what you were about to buy.

I'm running a PNY Ti4400 right now at 300/670 and absolutely no problems. Haven't pushed any higher as I'm waiting on some new ram.

 

[sniperruff]

haha bozo... ur not making that up?
hmmmm maybe i should hang out at PNY's test center's garbage and grab some of those Ti 4400's...

 

[Lvis]

I had a rather long ordeal with pny myself, you can read about it here.

The head guy I talked to, said they have a machine for testing the boards. He implied it wasn't a computer, just some kind of testing rig. If you rma it, there is no chance they will send you your old board back, because they are so backed up. I made sure of this before I sent mine in; as I didn't want it back.

It worked out fine for me, but they do seem to be new at the video card business. If you get a bad card, it can be a pain in the ass.

 

[BrunoPuntzJones]

Doesn't MSI make PNY's boards anyway?

 

[ST4RCUTTER]

Doesn't MSI make PNY's boards anyway?

It's been known for some time now that MSI makes boards for PNY. So I guess DragonReborn's warning should apply equally to MSI?




Dragon reborn or just another fool who can channel?

 

[pm]

I have been very happy with my PNY Ti200. They have a lifetime replacement warranty and I've heard they are ok to deal with on RMA's from a co-worker.

 

[MisterMe]

<< haha bozo... ur not making that up? hmmmm maybe i should hang out at PNY's test center's garbage and grab some of those Ti 4400's... >>



Why? They're all bad anyway... Really though, I'm amazed that you guys put so much stock in a comany's RMA procedure anyway. I mean a real human being in charge of testing and scrutinizing every board that get returned to them? No way! I figure at the most they might have some pass or fail type machine that might be fired up once a week to run a batch or two...all the others just get replaced with new units...

 

[Yossarian]

No one should ever buy a component from a company that produces any single piece of defective hardware. We must wait for 100% compliance.

 

[MisterMe]

<< No one should ever buy a component from a company that produces any single piece of defective hardware. We must wait for 100% compliance. >>



And wait, ....and wait, and wait, and wait, and wait, and wait..........

 

[pm]

<< Why? They're all bad anyway... Really though, I'm amazed that you guys put so much stock in a comany's RMA procedure anyway. I mean a real human being in charge of testing and scrutinizing every board that get returned to them? No way! I figure at the most they might have some pass or fail type machine that might be fired up once a week to run a batch or two...all the others just get replaced with new units... >>

Are you guessing or do you know this from experience? My experience at high tech companies is that each and every return is checked for the source of the problem and binned. If it doesn't fall into an existing catagory (at least not at first glance) then a real person spends time to determine the source of the problem.

If you don't bother to check what the source of the problem is, then how are you going to know what to avoid in the future? Every company that I have seen has a QRE team whose sole job is to improve product quality and the best way to do this is to examine returns and send back feedback to the design team as to what is wrong.

 

[BD231]

Are you guessing or do you know this from experience? My experience at high tech companies is that each and every return is checked for the source of the problem and binned. If it doesn't fall into an existing catagory (at least not at first glance) then a real person spends time to determine the source of the problem.

If you don't bother to check what the source of the problem is, then how are you going to know what to avoid in the future? Every company that I have seen has a QRE team whose sole job is to improve product quality and the best way to do this is to examine returns and send back feedback to the design team as to what is wrong.

 

[Yossarian]

Er did you mean to add a comment of your own to that quote?

 

[docgonzo]

I also had a bad PNY card. It was an Nvidia Ti4600. Ocassionally on start up it would give me multicolored verticle bars. Although pleasant to look at, it was frustrating to buy a $400. card and have even a minor inconvience. Endless hours of adjusting settings did not take care of the problem, which seemed to be random. Also, it would not always kick my monitor on, on start ups. And then, heaven forbid, I would have to actually reach up and switch the monitor on MANUALLY! can you believe it?!

I bought the card at the local CompUSA, so I took it back. Luckily, I had made a friend there who did not stick me with the 15% restocking fee (highway robbery) and I was able to switch to the VisionTek Ti 4600. I have had no problems with this card, and have not had to turn on or off my monitor since, thank the maker!

However, according to the round up on Anandtech's home page, and elsewhere, I have learned that neither the PNY of Visiontek cards are that overclockable when compared to the ASUS among others. And neither are considered to be the "top of the line" reference boards. Had I known this before I spent all my money for this rig, I would have sought out the ASUS Nvidia card. But, I have no regrets! I love my Ti4600- LONG LIVE NVIDIA!!! (at least until some of these new competitors come and stomp them, hehe)

 

[BD231]

Er did you mean to add a comment of your own to that quote?

Nope, PM said it all for me.

 

[boi]

I had a PNY Geforce2 Pro. One day while looking in my computer, I saw a brown burn mark on the PCB. I could boot fine and web surf but in 3d games, it crashed a lot. I can't use the warranty now because I overclocked it before(only 5% though).

 

[Neurofreeze]

My question is, if the card already gave you minor artifacts and a general "unstable" feeling at stock, WHY THE HELL DID YOU OVERCLOCK IT? It's not working correctly at default, did you expect it to miraculously get better overclocked? Overclocking generally voids warranties, by the way. So not only did you risk messing up a potentially messed up card, you also voided your warranty and cheated PNY.

 

[Acanthus]

I have a PNY Ti500, runs great, overclocks great (14%), i tried to use the TVout one day, black and white, no matter what i do to it, its always black and white, i email PNY tech support. They tell me its a bad driver and give me a link to a large NVIDIA driver database (cant remember the URL) after trying ALL of the drivers (about 15 different revisions) having only 3 of them work with tvout at all and of those three all three were still black and white. I called PNYs support staff, after being on hold for a very long time the guys tells me i have a bad card and need to send it back to them, without even asking me system info, all i told him was "my Ti500s TVout is always black and white" when he asked me to describe the problem. I wont own another PNY.

 

[ChrisADuffy]

DragonReborn, did they take the card back?

 

[DragonReborn]

Well...I've created quite an issue. I must say that when I first posted this I was angry; more at myself for not waiting and buying the card I was looking for. Of course ALL PNY cards are not terrible wastes of space but you have to admit that people do complain about them a fair amount...more than I've heard of other video card manufactures. Which is saying something since I don't think they sell as much as say VisionTek (don't flame me on this...I'm just guessing). Also, on the artifacts issue: when I first saw them on the first run I rebooted...took a couple breaths and went up again and I didn't see them for awhile (they'll still rear their ugly head once and awhile). I then started some minor OC (cause I bought a special warrenty with CompUSA that said they would deal with any problems that came up--yes including OC'ing) cause lets be honest...the reason us 4400 buyers don't buy the 4600 is cause we think we might be able to OC close to 4600 speeds (and yes, we would rather not pay $400 for something when we can pay $300). I also just dropped $300 on a card...it should be able to take some abuse. So...I apologize for making the earlier blanket statement about PNY being a crack whore--all my evidence was not in yet and my conclusion is hardly sound (as of yet). CompUSA is being a tad difficult with the full refund idea. They want to just give me store credit and I would do that if they had a VisionTek coming in sometime this year (seriously they don't know when the next one is coming in--so sad). I just want my money back so I can go buy a Leadtek...speaking of which, anybody have any problems with those? Thanks in advance.