Defective GTX 480 from Regional... any ideas?
 

Hello fellow FIRSTies,

Our team has an Nvidia GTX 480 graphics card which was given to us and every other team at the Sacramento Regional--I assume teams at other regional received them as well. The card is an OEM reference part, manufactured by Nvidia itself, not Palit, EVGA, ASUS, or any of the other major PCB manufacturers. Ours is defective, and since Nvidia does not actually sell GTX 480s directly, Nvidia tech support's advice has been to talk to corporate. However, I cannot actually get to someone in corporate without a contact, and so I'm at a dead end. :mad: Does anyone have a contact in Nvidia, or any other ideas? Thanks.

Re: Defective GTX 480 from Regional... any ideas?
 

If you're desperate, you could always try the oven baking trick which basically (and hopefully) recontacts all soldering points, which ends up fixing a good quarter to half of all defective cards.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_taI-CkPD3M

But to play it safe, I would re-call corporate and ask for customer relations.

Re: Defective GTX 480 from Regional... any ideas?
 

Ask for the name of the manager of the tech support center and tell the suits at corporate that so and so, the manager at whatsitcalled support center, told you to call about a defective product. That should get you someone to talk to.

Re: Defective GTX 480 from Regional... any ideas?
 

A bit off topic...

But there's a regional where every team gets GTX 480's...!?!

Very jealous. What was the cause?

Re: Defective GTX 480 from Regional... any ideas?
 

Teams got them at 10,000 Lakes too, I believe nVidia was trying to promote more animation/graphics/etc. in the future.

Re: Defective GTX 480 from Regional... any ideas?
 

Every team at a regional that wins the Autodesk Excellence in Design Award gets one (we got one at Seattle Cascade) but we also got one at Silicon Valley (i don't remember for what), so we have two.

SLI anyone? :D

To answer the OP's question, try getting in contact with anyone at corporate cause they're the only ones that can replace it. If they're not being responsive tell someone at nVidia to get you a contact from corporate (or risk giving them bad press or something... lol jk). Hopefully it goes well for you!

Re: Defective GTX 480 from Regional... any ideas?
 

I believe Nvidia sponsored the Davis and Silicon Valley Regionals, giving everyone in attendance a free graphics card.

Re: Defective GTX 480 from Regional... any ideas?
 

I have to ask...Did it ever work or have you not been able to successfully get it installed?

Re: Defective GTX 480 from Regional... any ideas?
 

Every team Boilermaker Regional were given one but we haven't trade to use ours yet.

Re: Defective GTX 480 from Regional... any ideas?
 

They were given out at the Waterloo regional too, but we haven't tried ours yet. The computers in our robotics labs don't have beefy enough power supplies to run that beast.

Re: Defective GTX 480 from Regional... any ideas?
 

Thats another reason we haven't used ours yet either... They give out something for teams to use but yet you have to pretty much build a new computer to use it.

Re: Defective GTX 480 from Regional... any ideas?
 

Thanks for the advice, everyone... as far as getting a hold of someone goes, I'm no closer than I was before... apparently they can't get me to anyone in customer relations without a prior contact, so I'm still trying to work my way up the convoluted corporate ladder. Ah, businesses.

To answer Al's question, it works but it is incredibly unstable and BSODs every 20 minutes or so. This is on a pretty much brand new system with a 1000w Corsair PSU, and it's rock solid without the 480... :(

Re: Defective GTX 480 from Regional... any ideas?
 

We lucked out and received 1 at the Bayou regional and 1 at the Boston regional.

We haven't used them yet, but are considering building a rig around them.

-Brando

Re: Defective GTX 480 from Regional... any ideas?
 

Every team at SBPLI got one too.

Re: Defective GTX 480 from Regional... any ideas?
 

I am going to guess that there is a driver that you need to work with your system board. It should be OK with that power supply. I was surprised to find that it can draw 600 watts at peak consumption.

Re: Defective GTX 480 from Regional... any ideas?
 

Let's summarize this - every FRC team competing at a regional should have received one (and only one) of these cards. Nvidia donated one card to every competing team. We signed for and received ours in Pittsburgh, and were therefore not eligible to receive one when they were distributed again at Smoky Mountains.

Re: Defective GTX 480 from Regional... any ideas?
 

There was an announcement for them at the Midwest regional, but not at the Wisconsin regional. I think it was only at regionals nVidia was sponsoring, because I didn't see their logo anywhere at the Wisconsin regional. I could be wrong, though.

Re: Defective GTX 480 from Regional... any ideas?
 

I'm guessing here, but we went to three Michigan districts and state champs didn't receive one. I guess I need to assume they didn't distribute at any Michigan events.

Re: Defective GTX 480 from Regional... any ideas?
 

I know this should be obvious, but did you connect a secon power connector to the 480?Forgetting that will BSOD it in a heartbeat.

Re: Defective GTX 480 from Regional... any ideas?
 

I dont recall them announcing that they even had any to give away?

Re: Defective GTX 480 from Regional... any ideas?
 

Perhaps certain regionals didn't announce them publicly? The Pittsburgh RD announced it during one of the opening or closing ceremonies to the crowd.

I know they were distributed at least to some teams at Smoky Mountains because 379 received theirs there.

Re: Defective GTX 480 from Regional... any ideas?
 

I don't think that system worked too well.

176 received their first GTX480 at BAE in New Hampshire, and then received another a Connecticut a month later.

We've got 2 cards now, waiting to go into one of our computers.

Re: Defective GTX 480 from Regional... any ideas?
 

I think they left Michigan out of this one.... :(

Re: Defective GTX 480 from Regional... any ideas?
 

That's odd.
Steve Cremer was handing them out personally to each pit at WPI.
They were individually marked by specific team numbers.

You might try contacting Steve Cremer to inquire.

At SBPLI they were distributed at Pit Admin by public announcement.
At VA I think they were also distributed through Pit Admin, but I don't recall specifically.
They were also distributed at NJ.

Re: Defective GTX 480 from Regional... any ideas?
 

Sorry about that - guess there was one buried in the toolbox.

Re: Defective GTX 480 from Regional... any ideas?
 

I wonder why they excluded Michigan teams.

Re: Defective GTX 480 from Regional... any ideas?
 

We didn't get one at Peachtree, or champs.

Re: Defective GTX 480 from Regional... any ideas?
 

I dropped 2502's into a personal computer after seeing this to check if ours worked (or see if climbing the corporate ladder would be necessary). This was on a 1000W Coolermaster Powersupply, I doubt it is a power issue if it is a 1000W Corsair PSU. Maybe try a different set of Pci express connectors to make sure it isn't a faulty 12v rail though Corsair is pretty reliable. Also make sure it is seated well in the pci express slot, I had to get someone else to help me get the card installed because the bracket that screws into the case didn't line up with the holes when the card was seated. Ran a few graphics benchmarks with no instability issues so it looks like we got a good one. Make sure you have all 14 power pins connected (it needs an 8pin and a 6pin connector)

What is the usual graphics card in this computer? It could be a faulty power supply if your regular graphics card has a much lower power draw. The computer I tested the GTX480 in has been running an EVGA OC'ed GTX460 for the past year with no stability issues.

Re: Defective GTX 480 from Regional... any ideas?
 

Sorry to resurrect an old thread but I was looking up info on these cards and found this.

I do have a contact at NVIDIA, as my company has had some dealing with them. These cards are NVIDIA GTX480 reference cards. They are never retailed; they're used for internal sampling, partner seeding, review samples, etc. We ended up with 2 of them: got one in NJ where we had to sign for it, and the other we got in Philly regional where they went around to the pits and just dropped them off. I didn't realize that it was only one per team, and not one per team per regional. Oops.

I put one of ours in a PC just to check it out, after seeing this post. Worked just fine in one of our monster PCs at work. Got to love 1200 W power supplies :) It should be noted that these cards run very hot, and if your PC doesn't have adequate cooling and air flow, it will overheat and cause problems for other parts of the system as well as the card itself.

You might explain to the tech support that these are reference cards given to the teams by NVIDIA, Give them the part number which can be found on the back of the card, on the sticker next to the bar code. It has the form www-xxxxx-yyyy-zzz. Maybe armed with that you can get them to ship you a replacement but I'd make sure that you're PC can actually handle the card before going through the hassle of trying to get a replacement. Does someone on the team have a gaming rig that they could try it out in?

Re: Defective GTX 480 from Regional... any ideas?
 

I had built a rig around the card around a month ago, but last week I started having problems. I have an antec twelve hundred case, with 7 fans so cooling should no be an issue. I also have a 1000W power supply, so I doubt that is the issue either. I am simply curious, but the teams that are having trouble, does your computer just go black screen then reboot?

Personally, I updated my drivers, but that did not fix the problem entirely. I turned up the fans on the case to max, and that seems to have fixed the issue. I received my card at the DC Regional, where any team that was around on Saturday afternoon got one.

Any updates from other FIRSTers?

Re: Defective GTX 480 from Regional... any ideas?
 

Are your fans all moving air in one direction? In one end and out the other works best for maximum airflow, otherwise you just end up with doldrums inside your case...and we don't want that, now do we?