Yeah, completely highjacking and mis-directing a thread, that started out as presenting the first possible real information that might prove that the PVP is defective on the original 6800 cards. At least, it's very, very, very interesting (to me) to see that NV bother to take the NV40 for a re-spin at a different fab. That implies a couple of things: 1) NV plans to keep the NV40 around, at least for a little while, 2) a fouondry change and a re-spin is the perfect time to implement any necessary changes to the chips internal layout to fix issues, and 3) he also presented some data on WMV-HD playback, that does seem interesting, except that information is inconclusive due to lack of a 'control' subject to compare it to. But this definately suggests that more observation and testing is needed. If, in fact, there are now two silicon revs of the NV40 floating about, one with a dead PVP, and one with a working PVP, then I don't think that there should be any question that: 1) NV intended for the NV40 to have full PVP functionality, and 2) NV should be compelled legally to replace the defective units.
So, does anyone know what the silicon rev number is for the "old" and "new" cards? There was some info posted previously that showed an "A1" rev, but that wasn't clear to me if that was from the "old" or the "new" NV40.
Not to mention, although I thought it odd to need 4 RMAs (or was that 3 RMAs, with 4 cards), there didn't appear to be any concrete evidence in the OP's post to suggest that the RMAs themselves were fraudulent. Both considering that XFX isn't known for the highest level of QC on these cards, that the 6800's run hot, almost dangerously so (even to the point of affecting their functionality at stock clock speeds in some cases as mentioned in the past in other threads here). As for modding the card by swapping the cooler, that doesn't inherently make it a fraudulent RMA, unless the person actually flied to get the RMA.
(If I buy something at a store, and it claims no returns on opened packages, and I open it, and then I want to return it, and I beg and plead to the store-owner to allow a return, or if the fact that the package was clearly opened was self-evident to the person working at the returns desk, and they accept the return anyways, is that fraud? In my book, no, it isn't. It would be fraud if you re-shrink-wrapped the box before attempting to return it, to make it look like it wasn't opened, and never mentioned that fact. Otherwise, it's a business decision to make an exception to their general policies.) Without knowing the actual details, I would be a bit slow to immediately go out on a limb and start accounsing people of that.
No, Rollo did it just because the implications of the OP offended his sensibilities as an NV-can-do-no-wrong fanboy, because it offered the potential for proof of defective PVP hardware, which would totally contradict nearly everything that Rollo has been saying about it so far, that it wasn't a hardware problem at all, they just needed driver support, etc.
I wish that the OP had taken some digicam snaps of the two different GPUs, showing all of the production codes, resistor strap settings, etc. Sigh.
Edit: fixed the accidental bolding of everything.