What was your worst video card / graphics blunder?

[CurseTheSky]

We all do dumb things. Whether you over-volted your card to death, bought an AGP card for your brand new PCI-E motherboard, forgot to install ramsinks with your new aftermarket cooler, or bought a 2900 XT to show up your friend's brand new 8800 GTX, let's share our stories and (hopefully) laugh about worst "oh shi--" moments.

I haven't done that badly. My worst was when I bought a FX 5900 SE (fancy name for the XT) in CompUSA solely based on the flashy box. IIRC, for a bit less I could have grabbed a 9600 XT, or for a bit more, I could have walked out with a 9800 Pro. Needless to say, it was upgraded (along with the rest of the computer) to a 6800 GT promptly.

 

[happy medium]

The first time I plugged my 7800gs AGP in, and a alarm went off.
It scared the shit out of me, and took me an hour to figure out why.
Never had a card with a external power plug before.

 

[Qbah]

I went with a S3 Savage 3D over a Riva TNT2 when building a PC for me and my flatmates years ago at the uni. Man that card sucked big time in games... Luckily it craped out after a while and we bought a proper card then - the TNT2

 

[Maximilian]

I bought an X1900XT, it didnt wow me like i thought it would, it was loud, it was hot, it died after a while. POS. 7900GTO that replaced it was much better, although it didnt wow me much either.

 

[Absolution75]

Not much of one, but I bought a custom heatsink for my 6800GT and didn't bother to overclock it. A waste of $50.

 

[blanketyblank]

Not sure if this counts, but greatest blunder was buying a laptop with geforce go 6600 intending to use it for gaming. Lasted a little over a year before the gpu burnt out. I had another laptop with a hybrid geforce 7200 which also burnt out though the integrated still works. Lesson learned is integrated is fine for a laptop, and if you want to game get a destkop.

 

[Ben90]

XFX non-reference card

 

[sandorski]

Wrench, slip, whacked a doomihicky on my Radeon 9800 Pro and broke 1 of 2 pins off. I managed to clamp it down to get it to work again, but that lasted only a month.

 

[ahenkel]

Trying to game on a geforce 6200le

 

[MJinZ]

We all do dumb things. Whether you over-volted your card to death, bought an AGP card for your brand new PCI-E motherboard, forgot to install ramsinks with your new aftermarket cooler, or bought a 2900 XT to show up your friend's brand new 8800 GTX, let's share our stories and (hopefully) laugh about worst "oh shi--" moments.

I haven't done that badly. My worst was when I bought a FX 5900 SE (fancy name for the XT) in CompUSA solely based on the flashy box. IIRC, for a bit less I could have grabbed a 9600 XT, or for a bit more, I could have walked out with a 9800 Pro. Needless to say, it was upgraded (along with the rest of the computer) to a 6800 GT promptly.

No, I've never made any video card blunders...

 

[Barfo]

Ordered 4 GTX 480s for quad sli and they blew out my underpowered PSU.

 

[Skurge]

bought an fx5500 jst b4 hl2 came out thanks to nv hype machine, got a 9600pro a few days afta hl2 came out

 

[happy medium]

bought an fx5500 jst b4 hl2 came out thanks to nv hype machine, got a 9600pro a few days afta hl2 came out

This ones for you buddy.........


I bought a 5750 card only to wait 3 months to play HD movies without my screen flickering and for the power saving features to work right. I still have the piece of shit.

 

[Skurge]

This ones for you buddy.........


I bought a 5750 card only to wait 3 months to play HD movies without my screen flickering and for the power saving features to work right. I still have the piece of shit.

At least yours got fixed.

 

[faxon]

buying an evga 7800GT from a place with a horrible return policy (MA labs), when i could have got it from newegg for the same price. card was bad, had to RMA it to evga, got it back worse, was unusable. sold it to a guy i knew at school whose dad worked for nvidia so he could swap it for one that worked, got enough for a 6600 GT. never buying an emprex product ever again, the 6600GT only worked without some weird screen artifact like it was trying to roll up a film it was playing back, or like the screen was being generated by a flipcard (it was really fucking weird), using omega drivers instead of the standard ones. replaced THAT with a 2900pro 1GB, for $300, when the 2900XT 512mb was $175, and i could have got an 8800GT instead for the same price. ironically was still happy with my purchase through till a year later when i started picking up properly on computer hardware as a hobby. after upgrading from my 9800 PRO i basically didnt get a good value for my money till i got my friends used 9800GTX for $60 when they cost more than twice that still, and my 5870s i replaced it with on launch day after that

 

[Skurge]

We all do dumb things. Whether you over-volted your card to death, bought an AGP card for your brand new PCI-E motherboard, forgot to install ramsinks with your new aftermarket cooler, or bought a 2900 XT to show up your friend's brand new 8800 GTX, let's share our stories and (hopefully) laugh about worst "oh shi--" moments.

I haven't done that badly. My worst was when I bought a FX 5900 SE (fancy name for the XT) in CompUSA solely based on the flashy box. IIRC, for a bit less I could have grabbed a 9600 XT, or for a bit more, I could have walked out with a 9800 Pro. Needless to say, it was upgraded (along with the rest of the computer) to a 6800 GT promptly.

I always though SE stood for sucker edition

 

[mfenn]

GeForce "4" MX 440. First thought "WTF, I thought the GeForce 4 had DX8?" Needless to say, I got screwed by Nvidia's marketing dept.

I upgraded to a GeForce 4 Ti4200 shortly thereafter (my longest-lived GPU ever!).

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Replaced the fan on my old 9800pro, hand slipped and a little cap popped off, too little to properly solder back on. On the plus side, this accident prompted a full rebuild.

Next real fuck-up was buying the 7900GT. The stock fan on that thing was WAYYY too small, the UltraShadow engine was broken to all hell and it was all around a piece of shit card.

 

[MentalIlness]

I had bought a ATI 7000 PCI at Walmart (years and years ago) thinking it would run Command And Conquer Generals.....ROFL

Boy was I surprised when it ran slower than the integration.

However, My Voodoo 3 3000 AGP was great at running Quake.

 

[MagickMan]

Matrox G400, so much money for such a mediocre card and the drivers were shit.

 

[thilanliyan]

Buying a 8800GTS 640 for CAD$600 on launch day. Also, my waterloop leaked around the CPU block and leaked onto the GTS 640...thankfully it didn't destroy the card.

 

[hawtdawg]

I had an ati 9800 pro that i fried from overclocking the AGP bus.

 

[badb0y]

At least yours got fixed.

Burn.

For me it was the FX 5800. Yes I fell for it.

 

[GZFant]

GeForce FX5200

...I rest my case

 

[pmv]

Had an agp voodoo3 that would freeze up in direct3d games but not opengl ones. Spent an absolute age taking it out and reseating it, trying every possible driver, old and new, official and hacked, and searching for hardware conflicts. Eventually gave up and bought a geforce.

Then belatedly realised I could rma the voodoo, so I did so, got a new one and sure enough it worked perfectly, it had been a hardware fault all along. But I now had no use for the new one as I had the geforce _and_ on top of that then felt I had to buy another (pci) v3 so I could use it as a second card to run the glide games I still hadn't finished with. So ended up buying 3 video cards when 1 would have done.