Overclocking, Anyone Experienced?

[JoshuaA]

It appears I got the card working again after a massive wrestle with it taking approximately 3 hours of sifting through folders and registry values to delete all known traces that not even driver sweeper can remove. I then found a hotfix to the recent driver versions which isn't listed on the AMD/ATI site for some reason and well quite cheesed off why.

AFAIK it has solved the issue of the stability but since I have filed a complaint to Overclockers.co.uk over the quality of this card (Purple artifacts) then I will continue with that till they actually decide to test or refund my card.

 

[Tech-Frog]

things the inbuilt overclocking voids any warranty ATI offer, I occasionally get the dreaded pink lines on simple things like MSN windows however under heavy load (BFBC2) I have nothing but praise.

Send it back, those are artifacts, a VERY VERY BAD SIGN.

Told you so.

 

[JoshuaA]

things the inbuilt overclocking voids any warranty ATI offer, I occasionally get the dreaded pink lines on simple things like MSN windows however under heavy load (BFBC2) I have nothing but praise.

Send it back, those are artifacts, a VERY VERY BAD SIGN.

Told you so.

The failure was due to a poor driver release on ATI's side, interestingly enough they didn't even have the hotfix listed on their own site I found it from another source. I had to use Driversweeper in safemode and after a few attempts it finally worked properly.

I contacted the company over the card a while back and what they want me to do is send it off to them which I have to pay for the postage obviously and then on top of that if they deem it to be functioning fine they will then charge me a fee + return postage fee. So in the end it looks like it will cost me around 25% of the value of the card just to have it assessed.

My brother informed me to go directly to the company that manufactures the card but I've had trouble receiving a response from them.

However yes there are still green and purple artifacts occasionally only when playing BFBC2.

In other news I have introduced an additional fan on my CPU heat sink which now works in Push-Pull which has dropped the temperature on average around 3/4 degrees.

It seems to be the card that is holding back my overclocking though, I can run stability tests all day and all night with no problems, I can play most games max'd out whilst overclocked and then the graphics card will display artifacts and the game crashes but no bluescreen.

Haven't seen a blue screen since the driver hotfix either.

 

[Tech-Frog]

The card is broken.

You can demand they pay for shipping, most of the time they will.

 

[JoshuaA]

The card is broken.

You can demand they pay for shipping, most of the time they will.

In the real world though how do you expect me to prove that the card is broken when the only time I see artifacts is on one specific game and when I overclock.

They will get the card run a diagnostic on it and see that the card is functioning, I doubt they will jump on a game and run havoc with gunfire and explosions to see if it struggles and displays signs of failure. I can run video stress tests and I don't see anything bad I can play some games BFBC2 and Now EveOnline in which ship models show an odd purpleish glare.

Every test I've done has said and shown the card is fine, I doubt they're going to go any more in depth over it since the card is actually functioning.

Edit:

I've never come across a company that will pay for shipping if I claim a product is broken, they have refunded it if it has been broken but a graphics card is going to be mighty hard to prove to them that it isn't up to scratch if stress tests show no signs of failure.

On another note my friend bought a 6850HD by another brand and he suffers no issues with either game so it is pointing at the card.

However once again I need evidence to support my case.

 

[Tech-Frog]

When I returned a defective graphics card they couldn't see the problem I was having, but replaced it anyway, don't see why whoever you're dealing with wont do the same.

 

[JoshuaA]

When I returned a defective graphics card they couldn't see the problem I was having, but replaced it anyway, don't see why whoever you're dealing with wont do the same.

Probably because they have been losing out to a bunch of returns when they're not really broken. Their customer service is pretty bad they haven't given me much information other than the charges that will be incurred.

 

[JoshuaA]

Had words with them today over the graphics card, apparently my order was a "in shop" order and it means I have to take the card in with the receipt and cannot do it over the internet apparently...

Amazingly I actually ordered it online but because some retard in the packing warehouse decided he thought something was out of stock when there was 10+ left it was edging to close to the deadline that I wanted it, so I went down and picked it up. Now they are expecting me to take the card down and leave it there whilst they examine it which can take a few days rather than receive it via post... which is odd again and also annoying as its around 1:30 drive away. I'm getting more frustrated with them each time...


However I'm looking to buy a second identical SSD for my PC and run the two SSDs in Raid 0.

 

[JoshuaA]

Finally got through to someone who knew what he was talking about and actually went through the process.

He says they use 2 or 3 bench marking video programs Unigine Heaven being one if they fail to spot an error they will then actually play a game for a while using the card apparently Crysis being one of the main games.

He advised me going through the stress testing programs to ensure my card isn't faulty before sending it in case it is an expensive mistake.

My card performs brilliantly without any errors on Unigine Heaven which is kind of annoying, he insisted the best game to try out your card on is Crysis.

Anyway I'm going to hopefully discover some provable evidence to support my case.

Furthermore I'm looking more into this SSD Raid 0 combo, however I'm noticing that the next step in storage technology is likely to be the complete ditching of SATA 2 and going for PCIexpress drives or slots. These sort of drives are almost doubling what I am currently getting at 285max read/write. However currently for the cost of one of those slot drives I can buy another SSD and save money with even a little more performance over the slot drive.

 

[JoshuaA]

Oh wow...

Awkwardly I found out Microsoft have decided to encrypt our product keys into a silly format to protect us having our key stolen. Now because my key was only emailed to me and that email is no longer in exsistance it appears to be almost impossible to recover. I have tried numerous key recovery programs that all return the same "Product Key"( which doesn't include the number and letter format ). Very very frustrating, I have a 2nd drive waiting to be plugged in now and well I can't because I haven't got a serial key anymore even though this is 100% legit.

Any ideas how to recover it? Recovery software doesn't seem to even attempt to do it properly, either it returns with nothing or just copys and pastes my product key which is pure numbers.

Windows 7 Prof 64bit.

 

[JoshuaA]

Anyway thanks to a specific program allowing prolonged use of Windows 7 it's good.

A new update though 2/4 sticks of my Ram completely failcascaded the other week and I had to file an RMA. I've never seen anything like it happen, it went from being good and progressively got worse over 2 weeks until ultimately it wouldn't even POST with one stick and the other stick made MemOK work for a good 10 minutes before it managed to boot. I spoke to the people I bought it off and they said they will have to do some thorough testing to prove my point, I also did MemTest which it had about 15 errors within 10 minutes.

Sent the Ram off, Ram arrived the next day within about 10 minutes of it going into the testing phase they confirmed it wouldn't boot and the other stick was plagued with errors.

Looking at some G.Skill Ram and am going to completely avoid OCZ, never tried G.Skill have had super reliable ram of Crucial but Corsair also looks like a good alternative.

 

[tenohfive]

I skim read the thread, but I assume (by location) that you bought from Overclockers? Worth posting any problems on their forums, the members are generally very helpful. And spamming away will get you free next day delivery once you've got your post count up.