GTX 670 Freeze

[Xulos]

Me neither, non single word from GB... 

[Akumasama]

I'm sure in a few weeks someone will finally notice this thread. 'til then let's keep bumping it!

[Dark Mantis]

Hi guys ! Sorry for not picking up the thread earlier but I have been very busy. The problem here is that this forum (and centre) mainly deals with motherboards and the graphics card division is not here. I have just been reading back through the thread and I can understand your being a bit irate. I think that sometimes the tech support section has a little trouble with the language as some replies are certainly just cut and paste jobs that don't always have a lot of relevance to the real problem. I will have a word with our admin and see what he can sort out for you. The only problem is that you don't really come under our area. Have you tried your local office ?

EDIT: Have PMed him for you.

[Akumasama]

There was no localized support for my country. Only thing I tried is the centralized support thing through the email form, I'm sure you got what I'm talkin of.
But there I only got very generic and copy/paste replies, despite my very accurate posts.
Don't want to blame anyone, just saying what happened.

Personally I sent my card in RMA to the shop I bought it from, but they're having issues in reproducing my setup. First they didn't have another PCIE3.0 motherboard (the issue only happens in PCIE 3.0), then they found one but it's a different chipset (Z68 instead of Z77), after a few hours of test there was no appearent issue on the Z68 chipset card. Which seems strange to me, because in my setup problems happened within a matter of minutes, whenever I used the card in PCIE3.0 (was working fine in 1.1 and other modes)

Anyway, this is a very very very very tricky issue that only affects a minority of Gigabyte GTX 680 and G670, as you can read in the other threads from anandtech that I linked somewhere throughout this thread.
Personally I'm not in a "OMG I HATE YOU GIGABYTE!" state, I'm perfectly aware this is a very small issue, but at the same time I would have loved some official word to know:
1) What causes this issue
2) If it's possible ot solve it through bios updates


I had to buy another Videocard from a different brand btw, didn't want to risk getting another faulty Gigabyte windforce, as unlikely as that would have been. Atm I just hope the shop I bought my card from will be able to reproduce this issue and refund me of the cost, I still have to see that money back and I paid it in late june... But of course, I guess this has nothing to do with you, it's just between me and the shop.

[Dark Mantis]

It is a difficult situation for you there.  Which is your nearest service centre then ?

I have messaged our Admin but he isn't back until Monday when hopefully he will contact you.

If your shop is local it might be worth taking your system to them and let them see your problem first hand ! Obviously in your case it is no good trying to recreate the problem with different hardware.

[Akumasama]

Local Gigabyte assistance Center? In Florence I think, not too far from here.
Shop is not local. I'm in Siena, shop is in Latina (close to Rome), it's a very reknowed and important online shop in my country.
From this point of view I'm glad that in the end, after a full week of throrough and stressing tests, I was able to identify the problem in my system (i.e. the videocard), otherwise I would have had to send them my WHOLE system, and that would have been a mess, and expensive.

I already did some tests with 3 different PCs with my GTX 670 Windforce. In my new PC, my old PC, and a friend's PC who has a very very similar configuration to mine (same processor, different motherboard but same chipset) and we switched videocards.
His card worked fine on my system, mine produced the same errors on his system.
That's how I've been able to isolate the problem, because as you probably have already read, this problem appears only in PCIE 3.0 16x, the videocard works fine in, like, PCIE 2.0, and that's why when I tried it on my old PC I couldn't spot any issue.

Also, it is not a general issue of ALL GTX 670 Windforce. I have friends who bought a system IDENTICAL to mine on the same shop, and their card works just fine. But this is pretty obvious anyway, if this was a matter of ALL cards, you would have seen THOUSANDS of posts over these boards, and not just a few.

Last but not least, it seems this might be an incompatibility between SOME "print" of the Gigabyte GTX 670 Windforce and SOME PCIE 3.0 chipset. Like the X79 and the Z77 for instance, since appearently it works just fine on Z68.
All in all, I'll never stop to say how STRANGE this issue is. I've been a technical PC assistant for more than 15 years and I swear I've never seen an issue as strange as this one.

[darivo]

Good news then

Im plannig to get a sli with otjer wf, but with this issue........

Im sure with bios update will be solved

[slyve]

I received my 670 gtx Windforce yesterday and i have a Red screen showing up.... I tried changing to pcie Gen1 on my Asrock Extreme 4 Z77  but the issue still occured... I have downloaded 3 different drivers from nvidia (the one on the cd doesn't work too) and the issue still shows up a minute after i am on my desktop on win7. BIG RED SCREEN, so frustrating! I will try to plug my graphic card at work on another computer eventually to see if it s coming from the card.

It looks like other people have the same issues (and not just Gigabyte it seems), now i am wondering if i should flash the bios on the card and see if that can solve the issue. Did anyone else here tried this?


For infos, my Specs:

Asrock Extreme 4 Z77
I5 3570K
SDD Kingston HyperX 128gb
HDD blue WD 1 TB
16 gb ram 1600MHZ corsair
WIN7

[Akumasama]

I'm sorry about that slyve, but honestly it seems to me your issues has a different source.
Maybe it's just a defective product? Sometimes it happens that, say, 1 card over 100.000 comes out as "defective".
Just send it in RMA to your local shop?

[Therion]

I'm running a z77 mobo with one of these on PCI-3 16x and I'm having the crashes too. I contactated Gigabyte through their 'Global Technical Service' on the 1st August before I'd seen these posts and they told me to RMA it to my retailer. My retailer failed to find a fault (probably because they didn't test it on a PCI-3 mobo, and then went ahead and sent the card to Gigabyte. I've now been without a card for 22 days and I am furious. Why didn't GTS have information on a known fault? I wasted 40+ hours trying to diagnose the problem with my new build before I came to the conclusion it was my GPU and because GTS told me to send it to my retailer instead of Gigabyte direct it's added about 15 days extra before I can get a resolution. I have never had such a poor RMA case in my 15 years of building PCs.

I also wonder how many people out there bought this GPU and are later planning to upgrade to Ivy only to be hit with this same issue. Given the amount of people on here who seem to have the issue it seems quite widespread. If only Gigabyte would admit the fault and tell us they are working on it I'm sure people would be a lot less irate. For all we know it might be a simple bios fix planned in the next release but the lack of info from gigabyte is probably resulting in a lot of people asking for refunds and taking there money elsewhere.

[Akumasama]

My retailer failed to find a fault (probably because they didn't test it on a PCI-3 mobo

Heh... happened to me too.
My retailer went on "summer break" at the beginning of august, they should be open again now, but didn't hear from them.
They've been careful enough to test in PCIE 3.0 16x (I sent them a very detailed mail) but they couldn't find any issue, at least not on a Z68 chipset motherboard.
I suggested them to try a Z77 one, since on the TWO PCs I've been able to test it on (mine and my friends) both had Z77 chipset, altough different motherboards, and both presented the same identical issues.

I wasted 40+ hours trying to diagnose the problem with my new build before I came to the conclusion it was my GPU

/manly hug
I feel your pain... took me a damn week to individuate the issue. At first I tested the videocard on my old system (PCIE 2.0 16x) and it was working fine, so I initially excluded the Videocard as possible cause.
Then I finally found out the PCIE 3.0 16x issue... sigh...
But yeah, it would be awesome if Gigabyte could give us:

1) A full explanation on what is the cause of this issue (which affects only a minority of cards)
2) If there is a way to identify them through serial code
3) If there is a way to fix it through bios updates or if the cards have to be returned to Gigabyte

I also wonder how many people out there bought this GPU and are later planning to upgrade to Ivy only to be hit with this same issue.

That's what I thought too, this issue might affect a larger number of cards than we initially thought because I'm sure there are many more users out there with this issue who aren't even aware of it because they are running the card in PCIE 2.0 16X (Sandy Bridge CPU)

[slyve]

I am going to my retailer today (NCIX) and hopefully can do a refund. Sucks to hear all those issues.. now i need to make a decision whether or not i grab another gigabyte. The product felt solid but if it s broken with Z77 chipset i won't bother. Good luck for everyone having those issues

[darivo]

don't we have official news at now??

this become to be very very strange...

[Therion]

Apparently my 670 is coming back to me tomorrow. The retailer who RMA'ed it doesn't know what Gigabyte did. They can't tell me if it's a new card, my old card repaired, if GB found a fault, or even if it will now work. GB GTS told me to contact the RMA department via email but the RMA department failed to read my email and send me a generic "fill in this form" email. They have since ignored all my subsequent emails.

Have to say this:

Worst RMA experience I've ever had.

[Xulos]

That's why i sold mine gtx 670 OC and bought asus dcu II . Non single word from GB, you just lost one loyal customer...