XFX 7850 1GB Double D Ed Video Card w/Never Settle $150AR @Newegg

Quote from Deusxmachina : If you go the XFX route, you apparently would use up one of your warranty claims. XFX might tell you to send DOAs back to Newegg anyway. The standard warranty period is not extended if we repair or replace a warranted product or any parts. However, if the original product is properly registered under the lifetime warranty program, a replacement card that is issued within the first two years of the warranty period will also receive the benefit of the limited lifetime warranty coverage. A third replacement within the first two years of the original warranty period will disqualify the lifetime warranty coverage for the original owner—and will default to the following coverage for the replacement item: I don't know what brand you'd buy that is much better than this one. I've heard far, far more RMA horror stories about Sapphire. (Though they are apparently much better as of late.) Sapphire even has a history of charging anywhere between $15 and $45 to process an RMA. I'd have to look again, but I think Sapphire is the one that had all the black screen problems. I guess the short answer is sometimes you can't win no matter what you do. Reminder for everyone to register their card on XFX's site within 30 days to extend the two-year warranty to infinity and beyond. Oh, and did you plug the 6-pin power cable in? Just a thought.

Yeah, it was plugged into the 6 pin power connector. Just tested the card in another system (different motherboard, PSU, HDMI cable, TV, etc etc) a little while ago and got the same crap (this time it was horizontal white lines instead of vertical). I guess it's RMA time. I have to see how Newegg is going to handle it since there's a rebate and games involved. It sucks that it sounds like XFX's warranty is limited rather than lifetime, I mean looking at the reviews it sounds like some of these cards work alright for a bit and then die. I don't want to burn up one of my replacements on a card that's obviously screwed up right from the factory.

I can't really comment on Sapphire's RMA process because I never had to deal with them. Maybe I've had good luck or something, but I have 3 of their cards which have been rock solid. 2 of which have been going for a few years now. From what I understand, the black screen issues only effected a limited run of the 7870s they made. I'm not really saying that Sapphire is the way to go, but often with computer parts you're better off spending just a little bit more for a much better product. One brand GPU that I often see on sale is Powercolor. I've had issues with them and know to stay away. You have to ask yourself why is something on sale.

Repped for the information on XFX "lifetime" warranties.

Quote from RyanL : I can't really comment on Sapphire's RMA process because I never had to deal with them. Maybe I've had good luck or something, but I have 3 of their cards which have been rock solid. 2 of which have been going for a few years now. From what I understand, the black screen issues only effected a limited run of the 7870s they made. I'm not really saying that Sapphire is the way to go, but often with computer parts you're better off spending just a little bit more for a much better product. One brand GPU that I often see on sale is Powercolor. I've had issues with them and know to stay away. You have to ask yourself why is something on sale. Repped for the information on XFX "lifetime" warranties.

I had a Sapphire 2900 I used every day, and that thing was great. I don't even know what people were talking about about it running hot and loud, other than it had an annoying default fan curve that kicked in too hard way too soon, but that wouldn't affect people who are setting their own fan speeds anyway like the OC'ers I would see complaining about it. I still winced thinking about the horror stories at the time if I would have had to RMA it, though.

I looked again, and apparently on the 7850 and/or 7870 cards, a notice from AMD went out about insufficient capacitors for the design, but Sapphire went ahead and used them anyway and then had to do a large number of RMAs. I also wasn't impressed with some latest stories about emailing them for RMA and them basically not even giving it any attention until the person starts contacting them in a more aggressive manner. There are also latest stories of RMAs going super smooth, so

Let us know what happens. It'll be interesting to hear how Newegg handles such things. I'm guessing as long as you haven't scratched off the free game bundle code yet you could just return the whole thing if you want, or at least do an easy exchange. But, yeah, not sure how the rebate fits in there then.

I don't know about newegg, but I have had a number of DOAs on amazon and it was always super smooth refund / exchange process. Really, computer parts just have DOAs it happens. Historically, Sapphire was regarded as one of the best despite recent claims. I think Asus, MSI, and Sapphire were regarded as top 3 brands and XFX was always a tier below. I'm kind of glad I held off for a better deal because of your post though.

Quote from TheIronist : I don't know about newegg, but I have had a number of DOAs on amazon and it was always super smooth refund / exchange process. Really, computer parts just have DOAs it happens. Historically, Sapphire was regarded as one of the best despite recent claims. I think Asus, MSI, and Sapphire were regarded as top 3 brands and XFX was always a tier below. I'm kind of glad I held off for a better deal because of your post though.

This is why I usually prefer getting electronics from Amazon or better yet B&M stores, it's much less of a pain to return things. It just seems like Amazon hasn't had too many GPU deals lately. I'll just have to call Newegg on Monday and see what they can do. Like I said before, I'm probably going to miss out on the $20 rebate though.

should be easy to RMA if u did Shoprunner - free return,
deadline to postmark MIR is 4/15 you have time

Quote from RyanL : Damn, I'm mad! Mostly with myself for not listening to the little voice saying to stay away from XFX. Got my card today and installed it a little while ago. I have a bunch of white bars on the screen during booting and in the BIOS. Windows gives me nothing but a black screen. I have another tower I can test this in, but that will have to wait until the morning since it's in the bedroom and don't want to wake the wife. I'm 95% sure that it's a defective card though. Question; what's the best way to go? I haven't dealt with Newegg a whole bunch in recent years, but I know that they were a major PITA between shipping it all the way to the west coast, waiting weeks for them to either ship another or credit you, and then taking a 30% hit if you want to get something else. Are they still that way? Also, I thought I remember hearing a while back that they will try to charge you for the games even if you don't use them and return the codes (I believe that I heard that one from a couple people right here on SD). Do they still do that BS? There's also the matter of the rebate which would be up in limbo if I try to RMA through Newegg (I'll most likely miss the deadline by a country mile). It looks like dealing directly with XFX might be the best way to go in this scenario, what do you guys think?

Quote from darki : Got my card Today, I can confirm the Bioshock/Tomb raider bundle was in the box. Upon registering, I was also given a Far Cry 3 Key to redeem on ubisoft' website.

Do you know if there was a limit on the number of keys for this promo? I registered my card yesterday, and I did not get any sort of email for the Far Cry 3 key.

The far cry key wasn't emailed - it was on the website after you registered. There was just a link in the middle of a page with something about get your far cry code here. Go check your registered cards and see if there's anything there now.

I've had a Sapphire card die a horrid death where I took pictures of the two locations that burned up on it. I used chat with Newegg and they told me to call Sapphire. I call to Sapphire and they told me they don't deal with people and to RMA it through the people I purchased it from. I could not get them to fix the card. After some back and forth eventually it was Newegg that folded and let me return the card that died.

As far as I'm concerned, Sapphire has no warranty that they will stand behind.

Quote from timropp : The far cry key wasn't emailed - it was on the website after you registered. There was just a link in the middle of a page with something about get your far cry code here. Go check your registered cards and see if there's anything there now.

Thanks for the info. I do remember a certain webpage after I registered saying thanks and all that, but I don't exactly remember if it had the FC3 link. I guess I just thought it would be an email. I checked my Support --> Home page, and I didn't see anything related to the FC3 link.

Do you see some sort of FC3 link on your Support Home page?

Quote from captain_cores : Do you know if there was a limit on the number of keys for this promo? I registered my card yesterday, and I did not get any sort of email for the Far Cry 3 key.

As someone else mentioned, it will be in the list of cards registered in your account, says far cry 3 right below the card, click that and it will give you a key to redeem on the ubisoft website.

Quote from darki : As someone else mentioned, it will be in the list of cards registered in your account, says far cry 3 right below the card, click that and it will give you a key to redeem on the ubisoft website.

I think it has to do with how I entered the Personal Activation Code when I registered. It must have been an O when I entered a 0 or something because I do not have anything related to Far Cry 3 on my screen at all. It said failed the first time, but worked the second time. No idea what happened there.

Quote from darki : Got my card Today, I can confirm the Bioshock/Tomb raider bundle was in the box. Upon registering, I was also given a Far Cry 3 Key to redeem on ubisoft' website.

I just registered mine and only got tombraider code no far cry and no bioshock where did you register to get the others?

The tomb raider and bioshock are one code on a physical card you should have received from newegg. They're NOT in the video card box. Mine was taped to the packing slip. you ahve to go to a website, enter the code on that physical card, and then you get the codes for the two games.

The far cry code I got when I registered my card with xfx - there's a door hanger in the video card box. It has a couple codes you have to enter on the xfx website to register the video card (the serial # and an activation code). During the process, there was a link in the middle of the page to get Far cry. Thankfully I copied/pasted the info there because I got no email with it and I don't see it now when I log in.

I guess it was a mistake by XFX.

I could go into my account previously and get the farcry 3 key, but the link has since been removed.

The code redeemed fine though that I had gotten previously.

edit, this is why, see attachment, they ran out of keys.