My 9800 Pro...:(

[Esturk]

Seems that my 9800 pro fried today. After returning home tonight my computer was frozen, I reset my computer and was greeted by nasty red bars on the screen. I have attached a screenshot of what it looks like.

Turning off the computer and examining the card revealed that the fan had died.. The damn thing was already hot as hell with the fan working. Damn, why does ATi have to put such crappy cooling on their high end cards? ****. This was stock cooling on a Retail Built by ATi 9800 Pro.

Anyways, it's no biggie as I have a lame old MX440 to use until I can buy a new card. Guess I won't be playing Guild Wars for a while. Runs like @ss on this MX440 even at 800x600 and lowest visual quality. Who wants to play a game that runs and looks like crap? Not me.

So, thanks for taking the time to read. Post your comments and questions if you like, and I will reply as soon as I can. It's funny because the card still works.. It just looks like in the picture all the time.

[RF]

Well that sucks, but what really surprised me was seeing "My 9800 Pro " on the main page, and seeing it was your card that had died. I was definately thinking "Haha, cooliscool did it again"

[General Plot]

RIP to the 9800 Pro. My brother is dying to get that card. He's gonna shed a tear when I tell him about this one. I'll make a note to myself if I ever buy ati cards in the future, I'll be sure to replace the cooling.

[Player-X]

You can buy a new heatsink first to test it out before declareing that card dead

[Esturk]

Originally Posted by Reichfuher

Well that sucks, but what really surprised me was seeing "My 9800 Pro " on the main page, and seeing it was your card that had died. I was definately thinking "Haha, cooliscool did it again"

Yeah, no doubt eh? Well I didn't even have it overclocked at all. And I've done absolutely no modding.

Originally Posted by Player-X

You can buy a new heatsink first to test it out before declareing that card dead

It appears that the damage is already done. I'm going to have to get a new card. Probably get a 6600 or another 9800 Pro. I won't get anything less than what I had before. That would be a waste.

Thanks for the suggestion though.

[ViperXtreme]

why not just save up for some more? maybe at least a GeForce 6800nu/GT or if you prefer ATi, a X800XL? 6600 would probably a downgrade if you get that, and if you get a 6600GT, you probably wont notice much perfromance difference except in benchmarks.

[Player-X]

I also had some similar problems before, the fan on one of my gfx GFX card failed and I am getting image corruption, I replaced the fan and it worrked fine afterwards

[D.D.]

also, if its stock and nothing else works, Rma is always good.

[cooliscool]

Yeah Esturk, you could RMA it with stock cooling and ATi will replace it. It was a screwup on their part, so you don't have to feel guilty about doing it either. ;p Actually, my friend sent his dead 9700 Pro without a cooler or anything on it, and ATi replaced it, no questions asked. About a week later he had a new 9800 Pro on his doorstep.

If you look in Hushy's upgrade thread, you'll see how I commented on ATi's crappy stock cooling.. that's why I got a VF700-AlCu. Couldn't trust that puny piece of aluminum ATi calls a heatsink, even for stock use.

[Esturk]

Originally Posted by ViperXtreme

why not just save up for some more? maybe at least a GeForce 6800nu/GT or if you prefer ATi, a X800XL? 6600 would probably a downgrade if you get that, and if you get a 6600GT, you probably wont notice much perfromance difference except in benchmarks.

I honestly don't prefer ATi, as I got the card used. I'll probably just wait until I upgrade my whole system. Then I'll buy a PCI-Express card instead. By the way, if you'd read my last post, I said I wouldn't get anything less than a 9800 Pro. Which means nothing less than 256bit memory and 8 pipes. So a 6800NU or even Ultra is probably a good idea. Although I was very happy with the 9800 pro. The only PC game I play is Guild Wars really.

Originally Posted by cooliscool

Yeah Esturk, you could RMA it with stock cooling and ATi will replace it. It was a screwup on their part, so you don't have to feel guilty about doing it either. ;p Actually, my friend sent his dead 9700 Pro without a cooler or anything on it, and ATi replaced it, no questions asked. About a week later he had a new 9800 Pro on his doorstep.

If you look in Hushy's upgrade thread, you'll see how I commented on ATi's crappy stock cooling.. that's why I got a VF700-AlCu. Couldn't trust that puny piece of aluminum ATi calls a heatsink, even for stock use.

I'd like to RMA it.. but I bought it used.

[cooliscool]

That doesn't matter. You don't have to explain that to them. Once you request an RMA, all you have to do is enter the card's product number/serial number, explain what happened, ship it to them, wait a week or so (they sent me a new 9600XT 4 days after I sent it to them), and you'll have a new card.

ATi's Warranty Service is top-notch.

[Esturk]

Ok cool. That sounds like a fine plan. Thanks for the advice to RMA from both D.D. and cooliscool.

[blueshift]

I have a 9800 PRO at the minute. <3!

[cooliscool]

Yeah. Great card, love it to death. Its oodles of memory bandwidth make AA/AF an easy task for this thing at high resolutions.. my main reason why I don't want a 6600GT.

OT - Oxycodone rules.

[Esturk]

"Almost" any card with 256bit memory is nice eh? Heh.

Anyways, I filled out the RMA form and should be receiving my RMA number soon. Hopefully this all works out in my favor. If I send it without the fan, will they not fix it? Because I removed the fan and examined it to see why it wasn't spinning anymore.

[cooliscool]

My friend sent his 9700 Pro without a cooler at all and they sent him a new one. I've never seen them send back a repaired card, they've always been new.

I would put the fan back on though, just incase.

[RF]

Originally Posted by Esturk

"Almost" any card with 256bit memory is nice eh? Heh.

Anyways, I filled out the RMA form and should be receiving my RMA number soon. Hopefully this all works out in my favor. If I send it without the fan, will they not fix it? Because I removed the fan and examined it to see why it wasn't spinning anymore.

Shouldnt be a problem as long as you dont bullsh!t your way through the RMA form. Just send all the parts and it should be ok.

[makotech222]

no warrenty? wow that sucks xD

[ChrisRay]

Originally Posted by cooliscool

Yeah. Great card, love it to death. Its oodles of memory bandwidth make AA/AF an easy task for this thing at high resolutions.. my main reason why I don't want a 6600GT.

OT - Oxycodone rules.

The reason to not want a 6600GT is the fact that its not a really big upgrade over the 9800 Pro. But the memory bandwith is hardly a concern. Memory bandwith, while important is always over shadowed by a superior core. Neither the 9800 Pro or 6600GT can do games @ 1600x1200 with AA. And its not because of the memory bandwith. Its because they run out of onboard framebuffer space to utilize the bandwith.

A 6600GT performs almost identically too a 9800 Pro. So your reasoning is kind of silly.

[MaZa]

Originally Posted by ChrisRay

The reason to not want a 6600GT is the fact that its not a really big upgrade over the 9800 Pro. But the memory bandwith is hardly a concern. Memory bandwith, while important is always over shadowed by a superior core. Neither the 9800 Pro or 6600GT can do games @ 1600x1200 with AA. And its not because of the memory bandwith. Its because they run out of onboard framebuffer space to utilize the bandwith.

A 6600GT performs almost identically too a 9800 Pro. So your reasoning is kind of silly.

Take good average-playing resolution and enable 4xFSAA and 8xAF on 6600GT and 6800LE, which are both same speed cards but 6800LE has 256bit bandwidth. They both go exactly same speeds but when you get lot of highdetailed stuff on screen like in doom3 and similar, 128bit memory bandwidth DOES have noticable impact. When disabling FSAA and AF, both are again going in same speeds in every situation. Thats probaply how it goes with 6600GT vs. 9800Pro too.