Readers on 7900 GTs frizzle, while Nvidia shrugs

WE PROVOKED a lot of response with out original article where we wrote about 7900 GTs dying. You can read the original story here.

Some of you blamed the lousy reference cooler that was just not good enough for overclocking. We picked the ones we liked the most.

I don't think the GPU itself is to be blamed. We can blame this on both Nvidia and the EOMs.

NVidia's reference cooler for the 7900GT does not provide proper cooling at very high clock speed. The 7900GTX has the same GPU which does not have this problem since it has a much better cooler.

On the other side, the OEMs are also to blame since they keep selling these crazy overclocked cards with the same reference cooler design. A very bad combination!

Just wanted to mention I just got approval to RMA my eVGA 7900GT CO. It still works ok for the most part, but I occasionally get a 'slide show' effect after exiting a 3D game like half-life 2.

There are two things I'd like to point out. First off is that EVGA has really superb customer service. They issued an RMA number and are cross-shipping me a card the same day I requested it.

Second, while fooling with the card I enabled coolbits and ran the 'Detect Optimal Settings' (stock nvidia v84.21 drivers) and this resulted in an additional 10% overclock. I left the card at it's stock settings, which are plenty good enough for now, but I'd like to point out that if Nvidia's drivers recommend a higher clock than what shipped, is this 'stock overclock' issue really an issue?

Also, (ok three points!) from what I understand, the new cards have the 'GTX' voltage mod and bigger, copper heatsink that covers the ram. From what I've gathered from reading about the issue on the net, it was the inadequate 'reference' cooling solution, that doesn't cool the ram chips, shipping in an overclocked condition, that caused the problem. So you can pim at least some of the blame on the vendors. Although, as I said, EVGA is definitely taking care of me.

Ok, enough rambling. Back to work. :-P

In regards to your most recent article on the 7900GT.

It should be noted that it does not take a week to get a RMA replacement from EVGA. They have instituted a special 7900GT RMA procedure that is complete with Next Day Air Cross Shipping.

In other words, from the day you submit the request, in as little as one or two days you could have a brand new card at your doorstep, and then you send the old card back. It's a seamless as it could be. Unfortunately the other board partners do not offer such a service free of charge.

Hi,

you were kinda lucky waiting 2 Weeks for your RMA, i waited over 2 Months (thats 8 Weeks, yes, as much as 56 days) for my flashy new amd processor. Talk about customer service.

Thanks Fuad for giving this issue more column inches. This has been a problem since NVidia permitted OEMs to OC their cards. My friends and I bought 3 eVGA 7800GTs earlier this year which were supposed to run at 475/1100Mhz. None could live up to this spec and all had to underclocked by 5-10% in order to avoid frequent crashes. To their credit, eVGA offered us new cards but since there were no guarantees that the new ones were any better we kept our cards. µ