MSI's RMA process
- Thread starter John Reynolds
- Start date
DuckThor Evil
Legend
There are some really good non-reference designs with GF110 chip on them, like the Asus Direct CU2 model that I tried to promote to JR a little while back
It's bulky, but of higher quality.No shit on that. I think I'm going to try getting MSI's tech support to swap my bad 570 for a 6970 since they're similar in price. Plus the 2GB of memory won't hurt with my 30" display.
Well, after bouncing around a bit a tech called me and said they're going to pay to have this 570 returned. He said he's also going to personally look at it to determine what's going on (am I having bad luck with these boards or is my system eating them). If it's bad, he mentioned an upgrade for my problems, but if that upgrade is a OC'd 570 then no thanks. I'm going to lean toward a 6970 at this point if I can talk him out of it.
MSI ended up sending their Frozr II, which is just a 570 with a better cooling solution than the reference cooler. And it went tits up today after about 6 weeks of use. Lockups, blocks of colors across the screen in 3D apps, geometry errors, just stuff that suggests a memory module going bad.
Well it is an nVidia card....
Thing is, I can throw a GTX 285, 460, 470, or a Radeon 5870 in this system and they all run fine. But get a MSI board and run it for 2-5+ weeks and sooner or later you start seeing these errors. I can reseat the card, play with different driver releases, but the errors stay. First and last f'n MSI product I ever buy.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure it does. Just strange it works fine for a month+ and then starts going bad. And check Newegg, lots of others having the same issues.
Did you check your temps while experiencing any of these issues? The reason I ask is because the lone MSI card I purchased years ago (X800 XL) had a loose heatsink from the factory and would overheat during gaming and shut the machine down. I had to tighten the heatsink screws to get it to seat properly. MSI may have a QC issue on one of their production lines. I also recall Sapphire having an issue with pre-production 68xx cards during the run-up to the Barts launch late last year, and having to send a review sample back because of it.
So that is 4 for you now JR? Jeez that is either some amazing bad luck or terrible manufacturing, or something is really wrong.
Neweggs MSI 570 have 5/5 stars or 4/5 stars. Seems strange if the product is failing that often. I did see your review and others as well. I would not think MSI would want to sell a faulty product though as it tarnishes their name. No doubt after your thoughts here I would be very hesitant to buy one from them or one at all. I was planning too as well this aug/sep time frame. I had my own issues recently with and AMD board, though it was dealt with quickly and easily. I honestly wonder if components nowadays are operating with a smaller margin for error and fail more often for strange and seemingly inexplicable reasons.
edit:
BTW I was out of town and when I returned today my BFG 8800GT was dead with red lines all over. Awesome. That makes it so the last 3 video cards 2 AMD and 1 Nvidia based have all failed on me. Super duper as they say. So apparently I will be purchasing another card sooner than I planned...
edit2: So I removed the drivers and the offending video card and now the onboard AMD one will not work either. It starts loading windows and the screen turns black right before logon screen. I can press caps lock etc and see that the computer is not hung, instead the display is just blank. I ended up putting the borked card back in and then loading AMD drivers. Tried again and same thing. Can only get to the safe mode with no command prompt. Tried DVI and VGA on the motherboard. VGA says cannot display this mode, DVI just has nothing. I think I hate everything now. It just seems like random luck whether things work. At least the 8800 lasted for a couple years.
I can only load the command prompt startup and see anything.
edit3: Ah so finally it is fixed. Safe mode uninstall everything with command prompt. Reboot into normal windows on onboard GPU, install drivers again and voila. I guess since I had a different adapter installed when I first did drivers somewho the install was borked. Makes sense, but it did not work at first with no drivers either so who knows WTH was going on. Just happy it works for now.
Neweggs MSI 570 have 5/5 stars or 4/5 stars. Seems strange if the product is failing that often. I did see your review and others as well. I would not think MSI would want to sell a faulty product though as it tarnishes their name. No doubt after your thoughts here I would be very hesitant to buy one from them or one at all. I was planning too as well this aug/sep time frame. I had my own issues recently with and AMD board, though it was dealt with quickly and easily. I honestly wonder if components nowadays are operating with a smaller margin for error and fail more often for strange and seemingly inexplicable reasons.
edit:
BTW I was out of town and when I returned today my BFG 8800GT was dead with red lines all over. Awesome. That makes it so the last 3 video cards 2 AMD and 1 Nvidia based have all failed on me. Super duper as they say. So apparently I will be purchasing another card sooner than I planned...
edit2: So I removed the drivers and the offending video card and now the onboard AMD one will not work either. It starts loading windows and the screen turns black right before logon screen. I can press caps lock etc and see that the computer is not hung, instead the display is just blank. I ended up putting the borked card back in and then loading AMD drivers. Tried again and same thing. Can only get to the safe mode with no command prompt. Tried DVI and VGA on the motherboard. VGA says cannot display this mode, DVI just has nothing. I think I hate everything now. It just seems like random luck whether things work. At least the 8800 lasted for a couple years.
I can only load the command prompt startup and see anything.
edit3: Ah so finally it is fixed. Safe mode uninstall everything with command prompt. Reboot into normal windows on onboard GPU, install drivers again and voila. I guess since I had a different adapter installed when I first did drivers somewho the install was borked. Makes sense, but it did not work at first with no drivers either so who knows WTH was going on. Just happy it works for now.
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So John, what do you have now or what are you looking for? I got a couple 4870s laying around if you need 'em to hold you over....
I have an iffy 8800GT. It was my brother's card and he was having frequent corruption and lockups so we replaced it with a 6850. But I didn't want to just dump it so I pulled the pathetic single slot cooler that was letting it break 100C while sounding like a mosquito and put an Accelero S1 on it. It seems to be working fine now but I'm thinking there are bumpgate solder issues due to repeated extreme heating/cooling.
Have you by chance had all your cards die with the same PSU?
I'll let you guys know if my MSI Twin Frozr 560 Ti OC blows up at some point. One worrying thing about some of these 560 cards is the lack of VRM or RAM heatsinks. They do get direct airflow though.
I have an iffy 8800GT. I pulled the pathetic single slot cooler that was letting it break 100C while sounding like a mosquito and put an Accelero S1 on it. It seems to be working fine now but I'm thinking there are bumpgate solder issues due to repeated extreme heating/cooling.
Have you by chance had all your cards die with the same PSU?
Nope this was on a corsair PSU and the previous two were on an antec PSU (though the 8800 was on that PSU for a little bit). I think the heat issue might be it the shroud was hotter than hell. I also thought maybe something just melted and borked it who knows. 8800 is pretty old nowadays anyway. This thread has me scared for buying anything new though now
I will probably wait and try to get a deal on a 460. I saw some for $100 when I looked, but the deals were over. That was with rebates. Something will come up again.Man, completely forgot about this thread again. OK, this is embarrassing but I'll fess up to it. The card is fine. The problem, I *suspect*, is that once junior was born we moved our bedroom downstairs so the kids could each have their own room (it's a 3 bedroom house we had built in 1998). So the master bedroom that had been my study for almost 10 years become our bedroom, and my study got moved to the loft above the living room.
So what I suspect is happening is that the wife and kids are causing too many vibrations in the loft. After my last post I reseated the card and no more problems. Heck, I think I've done it several times since my last post to fix it, and every time no more anomalies on the screen.
Honestly, I think it's the wife. She's only 120-125lbs, but she's always driven her heels into the ground when she walks (she swears it's from tap dancing lessons as a kid). MSI says they test the boards that are RMA'd and the first two were bad, so I assumed it was another bad card from them.
So what I suspect is happening is that the wife and kids are causing too many vibrations in the loft. After my last post I reseated the card and no more problems. Heck, I think I've done it several times since my last post to fix it, and every time no more anomalies on the screen.
Honestly, I think it's the wife. She's only 120-125lbs, but she's always driven her heels into the ground when she walks (she swears it's from tap dancing lessons as a kid). MSI says they test the boards that are RMA'd and the first two were bad, so I assumed it was another bad card from them.