I knew the deal was too good to be true. Completing my new pc, I bought a Saphire Radeon X850XT 256MB 256bit pci-e video card for less than 100 bucks.

Awesome deal, unfortunately it lasted just past windows installation before the fan started making aweful screeching noises, and the screen started artifacting Badly.

Sent it back to newegg last nite via fed ex express, for over 20 more bucks... takes away some of the value of the card now...

I don't think newegg has any more of these cards, so I'm pondering what to do now. If there are anymore of these cards in stock, thats what newegg will send me. If not I'll be considering 7600GT, 7900GS.

That 256MB X1900XT for 240bucks is an incredible value, but its a Saphire... which I'm not crazy about any more...

Any thoughts are welcome.

The Stu

Yeah, Hopefully they have a replacement that works for me. I'm just bummed because i don't have my new pc for another week now... and with the extra 25 bucks for shipping i couldve been looking at some other cards, i don't really know if a 7600gt is actually better than this one though....

Ah well, i guess you gotta just expect things like this to happen.

In other news the rest of my pc blew away my expectatations... theres just a big empty gap where my gpu should be now...

My brother had a GF 4600. A little while later I got one too, both were ASUS boards, same model. About 2 years later, his fan starts making some really nasty noises on boot, but it soon stops after a minute or 2. A little while later, mine starts doing the same thing. Soon after, his fan died, frying his card badly enough that he could no longer play any games. It only worked in 2D mode. A bit later, I upgraded to an ASUS 6800GT and gave my 4600 to my brother. Sure enough, the fan on that one also died and fried the card.

Sometimes companies just put REALLY crappy fans on their products. After upgrading to an eVGA 7900GT, the ASUS 6800GT went to my brother, and although it's very loud, it still works just fine.

@srdsprinter: Check out these articles:

Mid-Range Roundup
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2812

Silent Mid-Range Roundup
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2825

Note: X800 XT is 15% faster than X800 GTO.
X850 XT is 4% faster than X800 XT.
(under HL2)
I think the X850 XT and 7600 GT are probably about the same, except the 7600 GT has SM3.0 support.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

So... If you RMA a faulty card, and they declare it faulty and send you a replacement, you still have to pay the shipping? That's a crappy returns policy.

No, they will ship it to me. I just had to pay the cost of shipping it to their headquaters across the country. I fedex express (fast and not cheap) to them so i can get a replacement sooner.

Forbin, I think I'll be happy with a card that works Thanks again for good info. X850XT was only 20 bucks less than 7600gt. 7600gt has smaller fan(that probbably works) and no external power connector. Hopefully replacement x850xt will be last card i need for a little while!

Sounds like you just got a dud, I had a Saphire Radeon in my machine and it worked well, still does in my friends machine.

The 7600GT is a very nice card, I got one a couple of weeks back, suprisingly quiet fan. Nice that it gets all its power from the pci-e so cuts the wiring down slightly.

Yeah, I have a Sapphire 9600xt in my old pc (only working pc right now ). Its worked okay, it really helped my pc's performance, as the jump from mx440 to 9600xt really made s2 playable via enabling hvs.

Knock on wood, I am just really glad the mother board works, as I really was nervous about having to take everything back out of my pc. The mobo is an Asus A8N-SLI Premium, which is pretty notorious on being either really good, or really broken.

Thanks for the good word. Hopefully I'm back up and playing this time next week...

i used to have a 9600XT from sapphire, ran great, even when oc'ed

OT - Whaddya mean about it working or being broken? i used to have a deluxe which just gave up the will to live, but my Premium is working absolutely fine

Quote from Jakg :

i used to have a 9600XT from sapphire, ran great, even when oc'ed

OT - Whaddya mean about it working or being broken? i used to have a deluxe which just gave up the will to live, but my Premium is working absolutely fine

I buy my pc equipment from newegg.com. They let you put in reviews of the hardware and software you buy there. The asus a8n-sli premium is one of the most popular motherboards on the site. Of the over 1000 reviews of it, it seems like 20% of these are from people who have had bad experiences.

I imagine that people who get bad equipment are far more likely to write a bad review than satisfied customers are to write a positive review. It seems to be an excellent board so far, and I can't wait to get some more experience with it.

Hopefully I get that opportunity soon! New x850xt.... please hurry!!!

Quote from srdsprinter :

I buy my pc equipment from newegg.com. They let you put in reviews of the hardware and software you buy there. The asus a8n-sli premium is one of the most popular motherboards on the site. Of the over 1000 reviews of it, it seems like 20% of these are from people who have had bad experiences.

I imagine that people who get bad equipment are far more likely to write a bad review than satisfied customers are to write a positive review. It seems to be an excellent board so far, and I can't wait to get some more experience with it.

Hopefully I get that opportunity soon! New x850xt.... please hurry!!!

wierd, i inherited my dads deluxe, but i put it in my pc and it gave up the will to live, now we both run the Premiums, had no problems at all!