Mystery of a beta card?

[Muk]

Hi all,
I'm hoping you can help me with a mystery I have been trying to solve. I recently bought a 8800GTX from a person on craigslist. It worked fine when I tested it. Once I got back home, I realized it crashes about an hour into a game. This happens with different PSUs, drivers, nothing else OCed etc, fan on max... Upon looking closer at the card, it has some text at the bottom that says " SERIAL NO. B" and then a 5 digit number. Is it possible this is a beta card, sent to reviewers? Perhaps it has the resistor bug? I looked into that but couldn't find the 50k resistor. Thanks for your help.

 

[BRiT]

Not a beta card.

Which game? Which OS? Which drivers?

 

[Blazkowicz]

congratulations, you've been ripped off.

 

[Anon Lamer]

Does it crash on all games? What happens if you let it loop 3dmark?

 

[Muk]

The reason I was asking is that I noticed newer cards dont say SERIAL NO: B on them, so I thought this was for reviewer's cards. But maybe not. It crashes in all games. But this isn't a tech support forum so I rest my case.

 

[Skrying]

The reason I was asking is that I noticed newer cards dont say SERIAL NO: B on them, so I thought this was for reviewer's cards. But maybe not. It crashes in all games. But this isn't a tech support forum so I rest my case.

Contact the person, get your money back.

 

[Muk]

They don't return emails or phone calls

 

[Skrying]

They don't return emails or phone calls

Craigslist doesn't provide some sort of protection in cases like this? How about the method you used to pay for the card?

 

[digitalwanderer]

Most beta cards come with a little sticker that clearly says they're beta or reviewer samples and that they're not for resale, just FYI.

 

[Nite_Hawk]

Hi all,
I'm hoping you can help me with a mystery I have been trying to solve. I recently bought a 8800GTX from a person on craigslist. It worked fine when I tested it. Once I got back home, I realized it crashes about an hour into a game. This happens with different PSUs, drivers, nothing else OCed etc, fan on max... Upon looking closer at the card, it has some text at the bottom that says " SERIAL NO. B" and then a 5 digit number. Is it possible this is a beta card, sent to reviewers? Perhaps it has the resistor bug? I looked into that but couldn't find the 50k resistor. Thanks for your help.

What are your temps like? Are you sure the heatsink is properly seated? What happens if you underclock it? Any image artifacts or anything?

Anyway, sounds like the guy knew he sold you a bum card. Good luck, but I think you'll have a lot of trouble getting your money back. Might want to call up the card manufacturer and see if you can get a warranty replacement. Dont' tell them you bought it off craigslist.

If that doesn't work, perhaps try to find some utilities to disable parts of the card and see if there is some bad hardware you can work around.

Nite_Hawk