Hi guys, I am a 17 year old student, who two years ago was fortunate enough to be able to build my own PC. I am by no means an expert when it comes to computer hardware, but I do know my stuff from reading guides on this site, help from my friends and watching guides on youtube. The following guide may seem like a wind up story by a Nvidia fanboy, but its not.So without further adieu here is my story:
So the first problems I started to have with my computer were with my radeon 6850 after about 6 moths of owning it. After playing a long nights session of bad company 2, the next morning the picture being sent to the screen was splitting in two. I did some troubleshooting and it turns out it was bad memory on the card. I decided to get a VTX3D 6950 (which I know is not that well known of a graphics card brand, but VTX3D basically use the same PCB's as powercolor cards) I defiantly noticed the performance bump from the 6850 to the 6950 but the games looked horrible - Even with the anti aliasing bumped up to the max the games still looked like there was no AA turned on at all. I got a lend of my friends 6870 and the picture was defiantly better on that card, even with the AA settings turned to the lowest setting. I RMA'd that card and amazon sent me out another one and the card was exactly the same. I decided to stick with it for a few months to see if AMD would release a driver update, but even with the subsequent driver updates, the games still looked the same so RMA'd it again.
I then, seeing all the great posts about the twin frozr iii cards, bought a tfiii 6950. nothing but problems with that card as well. The games, while they appeared to be performing as they should, the mouse movement seemed to be slower. When it comes to first person shooters, mouse movement is obviously vital. I could not simply try to bear with it so I sent it back to the retailer, and with the credit, bought the sapphire 7850. Games appeared to run slower than the benchmarks indicated but I decided to keep it until I noticed at 50% fan speed, it would make a horrible grinding noise. The retailer sent it back to the manufacturer and they deemed the "PCB to be unfixable" so there might have been another problem with the card apart from the fan.
I bought another 7850 since I was happy enough with it (apart from the fan issue) and I decided to purchase the asus 7850. When I installed it, I was extremely impressed with everything the card had. There was no mouse lag, the games performed better than on the sapphire but also looked as good as they did on my 6850 and the cooler kicked ass. I thought this card had no flaws with it until one night while playing FSX, the game crashed with a grey screen. This is a symptom of bad video memory and I rma'd it after some troubleshooting. I got an replacement from the retailer a couple of weeks ago (I only had the opportunity to play games this weekend) and while playing skyrim, I get textures flashing, black things just popping in in front of me randomly, etc. I also played black mesa source and was getting artefacts after an hours game play.
Before I got the sapphire 7850, I thought to myself there is no way in hell that I could have gotten so many bad cards in a row, so I decided to replace my gigabyte AM3 board with a Asrock 990fx extreme 3 and just after my 1st asus card died, a new corsair power supply but nothing has changed at all.
Really not happy with with this gaming computer and my overall experience with AMD cards. The only card I have been truly happy with was the 6850 since everything just worked as it should have. Is it normal to receive as much doggy cards as I did ? Are nivida cards better in terms of reliability? The Ironic thing is that I had an xbox 360 for a few years, and it never gave me one problem even though its considered to be an unreliable console. Nothing in my system is, or never was overclocked. I always take precautions when it comes to assembling PC hardware. For starters, I always make sure that I am grounded to prevent ESD, I never force components into the slot, etc. When going from different graphics card driver revisions, I ensure to always use driver sweeper and each January, I do a yearly windows reinstall.
Just to prove that this is real, here is my GPU-Z screenshot:
http://i.imgur.com/3hH2y.jpg
So the first problems I started to have with my computer were with my radeon 6850 after about 6 moths of owning it. After playing a long nights session of bad company 2, the next morning the picture being sent to the screen was splitting in two. I did some troubleshooting and it turns out it was bad memory on the card. I decided to get a VTX3D 6950 (which I know is not that well known of a graphics card brand, but VTX3D basically use the same PCB's as powercolor cards) I defiantly noticed the performance bump from the 6850 to the 6950 but the games looked horrible - Even with the anti aliasing bumped up to the max the games still looked like there was no AA turned on at all. I got a lend of my friends 6870 and the picture was defiantly better on that card, even with the AA settings turned to the lowest setting. I RMA'd that card and amazon sent me out another one and the card was exactly the same. I decided to stick with it for a few months to see if AMD would release a driver update, but even with the subsequent driver updates, the games still looked the same so RMA'd it again.
I then, seeing all the great posts about the twin frozr iii cards, bought a tfiii 6950. nothing but problems with that card as well. The games, while they appeared to be performing as they should, the mouse movement seemed to be slower. When it comes to first person shooters, mouse movement is obviously vital. I could not simply try to bear with it so I sent it back to the retailer, and with the credit, bought the sapphire 7850. Games appeared to run slower than the benchmarks indicated but I decided to keep it until I noticed at 50% fan speed, it would make a horrible grinding noise. The retailer sent it back to the manufacturer and they deemed the "PCB to be unfixable" so there might have been another problem with the card apart from the fan.
I bought another 7850 since I was happy enough with it (apart from the fan issue) and I decided to purchase the asus 7850. When I installed it, I was extremely impressed with everything the card had. There was no mouse lag, the games performed better than on the sapphire but also looked as good as they did on my 6850 and the cooler kicked ass. I thought this card had no flaws with it until one night while playing FSX, the game crashed with a grey screen. This is a symptom of bad video memory and I rma'd it after some troubleshooting. I got an replacement from the retailer a couple of weeks ago (I only had the opportunity to play games this weekend) and while playing skyrim, I get textures flashing, black things just popping in in front of me randomly, etc. I also played black mesa source and was getting artefacts after an hours game play.
Before I got the sapphire 7850, I thought to myself there is no way in hell that I could have gotten so many bad cards in a row, so I decided to replace my gigabyte AM3 board with a Asrock 990fx extreme 3 and just after my 1st asus card died, a new corsair power supply but nothing has changed at all.
Really not happy with with this gaming computer and my overall experience with AMD cards. The only card I have been truly happy with was the 6850 since everything just worked as it should have. Is it normal to receive as much doggy cards as I did ? Are nivida cards better in terms of reliability? The Ironic thing is that I had an xbox 360 for a few years, and it never gave me one problem even though its considered to be an unreliable console. Nothing in my system is, or never was overclocked. I always take precautions when it comes to assembling PC hardware. For starters, I always make sure that I am grounded to prevent ESD, I never force components into the slot, etc. When going from different graphics card driver revisions, I ensure to always use driver sweeper and each January, I do a yearly windows reinstall.
Just to prove that this is real, here is my GPU-Z screenshot:
http://i.imgur.com/3hH2y.jpg
Hades
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Hades
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maybe I'll be in luck but the card may decide to live on over It's warranty.
