Gear-In-A-Nutshell Review:

Something did not go well when the 980 series GPU’s were manufactured. I had nothing but problems.
EVGA’s customer support / RMA program made what could have turned out to be a nightmare, into a fairy tale. I somehow emerged with a GTX 1080 FTW in place of my 980 GTX K1ngpin.
In a world where everything is made over seas and when QC falls short – providing excellent customer support, standing behind your products as well as your warranty is what separates you from the competition. EVGA excells on all of these points.
Shit happens, but EVGA made right and has earned my loyalty for years to come.
EVGA’s GTX 680 could take a direct hit from a nuke and keep running.
GeForce GTX 1080 is running 100% stable at this point. Fans kick on when they should, no artifacts, running cool under load. Benchmark stats coming soon.

Hats Off To EVGA Customer Service – Geforce GTX 1080 FTW Review – In Progress –

We just recieved our new EVGA Geforce GTX 1080 FTW GPU. There is a story behind how we ended up with their newest lineup of GPU’s and it is the story that compelled me to write this review.

Six months ago I decided to build a new rig for working on gaming on. As always, I went over the top to ensure that I would be future proofing my setup for at least a good three to four years. Admittedly, the only game I actually play is DOTA 2 so a powerful rig really is unnecessary but my side business involves a good deal of work / renderings on Solid Edge as well as graphics work on Photoshop and Corel Draw. There is nothing worse than trying to do work and having to wait ten seconds while the computer is processing the rendering. It throws off my whole work process and this was exactly the case I was having with the rig I built five years ago.

My last setup was using EVGA’s GeForce GTX 680 GPU. This card worked well and never let me down all those years and so the decision was simple when I was looking to build the new rig.

The Build Essentials:

Intel Boxed Core I7-6700K 4.00 GHz 8M Processor Cache 4 LGA 1151 BX80662I76700K

G.SKILL TridentZ Series 32GB (4x8GB) 288-Pin SDRAM DDR4 3200 (PC4 25600) Intel Z170 Platform / Intel X99 Platform Desktop Memory F4-3200C16Q-32GTZB

Samsung 950 PRO Series – 256GB PCIe NVMe – M.2 Internal SSD (MZ-V5P256BW) (Primary Drive)

Samsung 850 EVO 1 TB 2.5-Inch SATA III Internal SSD (MZ-75E1T0B/AM) (Secondary Drive)

Corsair HXi Series, HX1000i, 1000 Watt (1000W), Fully Modular Power Supply, 80+ Platinum Certified, 10 year warranty

MSI Computer ATX DDR4 Motherboard Z170A XPOWER GAMING TITANIUM EDITION

EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB SC+ GAMING ACX 2.0+, Whisper Silent Cooling w/ Free Installed Backplate Graphics Card 06G-P4-4995-KR

I ordered a GTX 980 Ti so how did I end up with EVGA’s newest 1080?

The GTX 980 Ti SC+ I ordered initially gave me issues from the get go. Shortly after the build we did a stress test on the system using the Unigine Heaven Benchmark. The shop where the PC was assembled had just done a build that was running dual TITANS in it and we wanted to see how my rig stacked up against it. While running the benchmark, about half way through we started noticing hangups and artifacts in the program but it made it all the way through the test. I took this rig home and decided to run the benchmark again for the heck of it. The artifacts and hangups were noticeably worse and then the rig crashed to a pink screen. I was sad, very sad. Fortunately I still had my trusty GTX 680 so I swapped video cards out and all was well. I had ordered the GTX 980 off Amazon so I returned it for a full refund.

My GTX 680 lasted me years. After reading through forums regarding the 980 GTX, I was convinced that I had received a bad GPU – based on what I was reading this was a fairly consistent trend. Staying loyal to EVGA I decided that I would buy the 980 GTX Kingpin instead, it was $200.00 more so I assumed that this GPU went through more stringent QC and my issues would be solved.

After returning the GTX 980 SC+ I upgraded to: EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB K|NGP|N w/ACX 2.0+ (72%+ ASIC), Whisper Silent w/ Multi-Color LED Cooler, Customized Overclocking Graphics Card 06G-P4-599

This card was a nightmare from day one. I had issues getting the PC to recognize it, it would never run stable and BSOD on me from time to time. The BSOS’s stopped happening to me for a few months and then one day the GPU decided to just stop working. At this point I was pretty pissed. To my dismay I was outside of Amazon’s return window so I was forced to use EVGA’s RMA program. Fortunately I had my old trusty GTX 680 so I could continue working, albeit a bit more slowly.

Off to the forums I went. I read some nightmare stories of people going through the RMA process and having to do three RMA’s before they received a GPU that was stable. Carrying on to the RMA process.

My RMA Experience and the whole reason why I am writing this review:

Before I could start the RMA process I was required to talk to one of their tech support guys so they could try and help me troubleshoot my issues. To my surprise I was talking to someone in America, not in Mumbai or South America. This I liked and was a huge bonus for me. I felt like I was talking to one of my friends helping me out with my computer problems. Communication was easy, we were unable to resolve my issues and off to EVGA went my GPU with an RMA #.

The GPU was received, determined to be bad and I had a replacement GPU back at my doorstep within five days – impressive. I put the GPU in and to my dismay I was met with a black screen. I called tech support and was met by the same cool casual voice on the other end that was happy offer help and guidance. We determined that I had possibly received another faulty unit and so we did the RMA process a second time.

Five days after doing this RMA, I called EVGA to follow up on the status at which point the tech guy informed me that they did not have the Kingpin in stock and so they would be sending me a a GTX 1080 instead. F*** Yea. I even offered to pay for the difference but they told me this wouldn’t be necessary.

The Gear-Nut Review: EVGA For The Win

In a world where everything is manufactured in China or over seas somewhere and when QC falls short, the only way companies can rise above their competition is by providing excellent customer service and support and I feel EVGA exceeded my expectations in this department. Where many companies are cutting corners to save a dollar, EVGA has invested in strong customer support and it shows. I will always buy EVGA products from here on out because I know they will have my back as a manufacturer. Even if something goes wrong I feel confident that they will resolve the issue in a timely and professional matter and knowing this is priceless.

It is evident that something went horribly wrong when they were manufacturing the 980 series graphics cards. Based on my personal experience as well as other reports I had read on the web, the issues were consistent and wide spread. With that said, EVGA stood behind their products, their warranty, and provided excellent American based customer service the entire time.

I’ve had to deal with MSI before and my experiences have been the polar opposite. I spoke with a tech guy on the other line that sounded like he was either tired or in the middle of a game that was consuming most of his attention. He was irritable and I honestly felt like I was inconveniencing him. I’ll never buy another MSI product if I can go with EVGA now.

Thankfully I had my trusty GTX 680 to swap into my system while doing this whole RMA process so I was able to carry on with my duties.

Geforce GTX 1080 FTW Review – In Progress

I am currently running the 1080 as I write this review. While it’s only been installed for two hours I have had none of the issues that I had with the 980 series GPUS. It seems that EVGA they figured out what was going on or fired their old QC guy. I will report back in a few days to provide experiences regarding this video card as well as it’s benchmark stats – fingers crossed.

Posted on July 22, 2016 by admin in Uncategorized

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