Shitttttttt!!!!!!

[RacerX]

I bought a Sapphire Radeon X800Pro 256MB AGP video card last February. It just died on me tonight. The display is all corrupted and looks like shit. I'm gonna see what tech support will tell me tomorrow. I had to stick my 9800 back in. Son of a bitch.

[tisl]

What? I bought my Sapphire Radeon 9700 Pro when it first came out and I still have it running even though my only form of cooling is a large floor fan. I think you got a bad card. Is there a warranty or something?

[Yian]

You sure your card is bad? Could it be the connector, or a driver problem? It would be a bitch if you have to get it replaced.

[amirin]

i would check on the hsf first, could be its just not sticking too well with the chip.

[RacerX]

I've been having problems for over a week now. It was video corruption after random lengths of time - and it didn't matter if I was at the desktop or in a 3D game. I would get garbled lines and squares on the screen but I was still able to somewhat makeout the image and could shut down or reboot Windows. Windows never locked up - the video just got corrupted.

I checked the HSF last week - the fan was spinning properly and the mounting was good. I don't have the side on my case on and I keep my room temp at about 65° F.

I've checked the temps with ATITool and it will screw up no matter what the temperature. At idle in Windows desktop my Radeon core temps were at 38°C and under load would hit about 60°C. I have a decent PSU - Antec 430W True Power.

It is definitely a defect and the hardware has failed. I'll see what kind of response I get from ATI on the warranty - Sapphire's support website actually directs you to call ATI's toll free support number.

I popped my 9800 back in and it's working beautifully - thank goodness. It is definitely a big drop in 3D performance though - I tested BF2 and I dropped the res from 1600x1200 to 1280x960 and it still isn't nearly as smooth as the X800 was at 1600x1200.

Thanks for the input fellas. Tomorrow, I'm off to the land of phone hold music, East Indian accents, and "did you reboot your computer and check your cables".

[Yian]

Sounds like you are having artifacts. If you don't overclock your card and you have artifacts on your screen, your card is probably defective. Good luck getting a new card.

[RacerX]

Thanks Yian - that's a good term - artifacts, only worse. I just filed a warranty claim with Sapphire. It's definitely toast. And I was wrong about when I bought this. It seems like I've had it for a while but I just got it back in June. We'll see how long "the warranty process" takes.

[RacerX]

Well, I got a little bit of a run around (for a few days) from Sapphire and Newegg as to which company was going to honor the warranty for my dead video card. I finally got a Newegg rep that said Newegg would handle it so I sent them my card. They are shipping me a replacement card that will be here on Tuesday.

**BONUS**
They don't carry the exact model I had anymore so they are giving me a better card in replacement at no extra charge.

I had:
Sapphire X800Pro 256MB AGP 475Mhz core / 450Mhz RAM, 16 pipelines

They are sending me:
ATI ALL-IN-WONDER X800XT 256MB AGP 500MHz core / 500MHz RAM, 16 pipelines

Newegg took a while to get this resolved but I'm happy now - I was only expecting to get a direct replacement - never thought it would be an upgrade. I just kept calling and pursuing it and I was polite the whole time. I guess that's the best thing to learn from this - keep pestering them and talk to different customer service representatives.

[no_nonsense4857]

Cheers man :D

Its rare to get to see a customer being truly happy after a product failure and consequent running around. Given your patience, you deserve it dont you? ;)

[SuperDavidGT]

dude, fucking score

[Subservient]

Wow, you're lucky! Wanna send me your old 9800 pro? hehe.. I'm stuck with an nVidia 5800. Slightly worse, but hey!