My leadtek (winfast a400 GT TDH) geforce 6800gt is doing crazy things

Leadtek, is a shoddy company with poor customer support. From now on, my money is on BFG. BFG has the best customer support in the industry. The few bucks I spend extra on a BFG is well worth it than buying the cheaper Leadtek after this experience. People have been telling me that for RMA's BFG crossships you a card so you experience little to no downtime. But hey these are individual cases, so I don't know if this applies to everyone. I do know that they have a real lifetime warranty on their cards. A "real" lifetime warranty means the life cycle of the card as long as you own it and not just the product(manufacturing) cycle like all the other companies that say "lifetime warranty". Anyway enough of my BFG fanboyism, do your own research and go with a company you feel comfortable with. Just don't buy Leadtek!


atomicplayer: You can either accept the offer and pay the $70.00 or reject it on principle. If you accept it, you will still be able to game on AGP for a little while longer and avoid upgrading your whole system to PCI-E. Of course if do choose this option, what I would do is sell your new leadtek 7800gs when it arrives and buy a BFG, eVGA, or [insert your favorite non-Leadtek brand here] 7800gs. That way you won't have to deal with their customer support again if/when your new card breaks.

Or you can try to negotiate with them by telling them that you feel that paying $70 is out of the question after all the hassle they have put you through. And if they don't give you a new card you will contact your lawyer and the Better Business Bureau about their warranty pracitses.

Or you can completely reject it and have the satisfaction of telling them to f-off and stick it up their ****.

I don't know your financial situation or your upgrade cycle, so I won't tell you what to do. Either way you go, we won't think any less of you.

Please message me when you hear from them

I have been in the process of upgrading to a 7800gs however leadtek is no longer returning my e-mails. So please inform me of your experience with them.

Thanks

Pick up the phone and call them up, ask for Eric and if he's not available request John.

Leadtek Research Inc.
910 Auburn Court, Fremont CA 94538, U.S.A.
Tel : 1-510-490-8076
Fax : 1-510-490-7759
Web : http://www.leadtek.com

I got my replacement card today, so far, so good. Ran it though a bunch of 3Dmark benchmarks without any glitches. I changed the cooler back to the nv5 silencer ... I weighed them, the NV5 is 14.8 ounces, the stock one is 19.8. That should put less strain on the card.

It's been 3 weeks and they still haven't replied to my request for an RMA number. Spoke to a guy with a heavy Asian accent named John Zhang. He told me 'the man who is in charge of RMA numbers is out of the office". When I pushed onto when I will recieve my RMA he said maybe next week. 3 weeks and waiting.

Anyone interested in a class action? :haha:

I cannot wait till I upgrade to PCIe and say goodbye to LeadHECK.

Leadtek visits this site on a regular basis and reads all your posts.

Hello oiboy. I hope that they respond to your e-mails, however I think there is more behind this then you are letting on to. For example how long since you bought the card. Is it past the warrenty? Where do you live? Did you use the web site to request service? If you cant get anything dont with Zohn Zhang you will have to go higher up. Check the directory when you call in to leadtek. Forgive me for not reading your prior post's.

Hope it works out for you.
Steve

Barrans...I purchased the card in October 2005. In the user manual it says the warranty is 1 year. After having the same 'issue' as numerous others on this forum, I deduced it was not an isolated event. I recieved an RMA request form and submitted it along with a copy of my reciept as requested. I will try again tommorow but I'm not optimistic. I'm in Canada, and the office in California is the one that covers my warranty. The store where I got it told me to contact the vendor directly as they will help me for the first 30 days only.

If Leadtek actually read the posts here and cared, they would overhaul their customer service department and perhaps implement advance RMA's; at least on this card, obviously there is a manufacturing flaw there.

Hey guys. I've been using the WinFast PX6800 GT TDH video card from Leadtek since September 2005. Just recently, however, I began having problems-the same problems listed here. Oddly, I'd reboot and the artifacts would be gone, and I could load the game(WoW) again.

For a few seconds. Then artifacts appeared, the computer would freeze and I'd reboot again. I figured I needed to update drivers, so I uninstalled my drivers, and installed the one from the Nvidia site. My monitor turned off.

I had no idea what to think, so I rebooted into safe-mode (where all the artifacts promptly disappeared) and tinkered. Nothing happened in my tinkering, so I decided my best bet would be to reformat and call it a day. I reformatted, and began installing the drivers. When I tried the nvidia driver again, it did the same thing. I rebooted in safe-mode, uninstalled the driver, and rebooted again. This time I installed the driver from my driver cd. Well, I TRIED to. Instead, the computer rebooted during the intelligent installation(with Leadtek, that's slightly oxymoronic...) and I couldn't get it to work.

I called Leadtek and they beat around the bush for a bit and finally concluded with "You'd have to send it in to us so we can check it." There was no way in hell. I said my thank yous and goodbyes, and called Newegg. They listened to my problem, and offered up an RMA- but at least with Newegg, if it's really busted, they'll offer me a comparable video card or my money back.

Thank god. It's in the mail now =)

You guys have been a great help in this; been reading since the problems began. Damn laptops suck...

Thought I'd join in on this fun. Thanks google. So I've done the rma thing with Leadtek after it ran fine for five months then bombed (bought September 2004). Didn't have any real issues with the RMA process other than... talk to California only, there is a huge language barrier for Taiwan. Granted, I don't speak any Chinese, so I appreciate their effort to speak English. Nevertheless, the US Leadtek returned me a second edition card which worked for nearly a year and two months. I'm sure if I had a big bag of BC weed, this crazy graphics corruption might be entertaining... but for now it has gone belly up.

Can't say $400 for less than two years worth of gameplay was quite worth it. I expected the card to last a little longer (no overclocking), ha ha... uh... eh... :blackeye: Ah well, I needed a break from Oblivion... I'm not ready to go PCI-Expre$$. My god, no Socket 478 PCI-E boards! Except the MSI celery stick edition. Oh well, guess I'll try to talk them into letting me buy a 7800GS at some discount and pray to the gaming gods it does not go kaput.

Btw, Oblivion kicks ****. Never owned an RPG until this one, and even then it's more a blend of varying gaming genres.

7800 GS on its way...?

Ok I finally accepted to get their 7800 gs. First I filled the form that they gave me. Then I shipped the 6800 gt, gave them the tracking number and 1 hour or so latter, I received an email from Quantum view (ups) telling me that leadtek has shipped a package for me... the problem : it's written "Purchase order number : A400 GT" in the Quantum View email.

WTFF?

I'm gonna get another crappy card even though I accepted their offer ?

I sent an email to David Jiang to get some explanations, he better give me good ones.

i got same prob

same problem with mine as well.. i still haven't tried the trick of the copper wire.. tommorow I'l try... in any case, how much does leadtek warranty last for these faulty a400gt??? i bought mine on 28/02/2005-- in italy warranty is 2 years minimum for law..

You two have the same problem as me ?!!!(receiving a 6800 gt instead of a 7800gs)

no.. i mean the main problem.. the one of the artifact @boot, and in windows, in everything! I had a shock when I saw all those crappy artifacts!

Good to see I'm not alone...

I've got the Leadtek A400 6800GT and I'm getting corruption in the BIOS & (not surprisingly) in Windows. I have contacted Leadteks 'support' (Ha) and given them all the relevant info (serial number, mobo/cpu/memory/psu details), and they sent me the following reply:

Hello,

We think that your graphics card is broken so please go back to the shop where you bought the card

By Euopean law the seller has to give 2 year of warranty see link below, there is no possibility to get the warranty directly from Leadtek.

Met vriendelijke groet,
Best regards,
Mit freundlichen Grüßen,

Leadtek Support Europe

One small problem - the shop where I got the card from stopped trading ages ago! I have since told Leadtek this & asked them to confirm what options I now have to get the card repaired. That was a week ago & after two more emails still no reply.

So far I am not in the least bit impressed with Leadteks customer care and from what I've read in this thread I'm not the only one!

Does anyone know how to get a response of out Leadtek Europe - or even to take this seriously? Any tips gratefully received!

MaX

Another one

Just thought I'd put my $0.02 in. I've had an A400 GT TDH for a year and it just exhibited the garbled screen problem this past week. Got an RMA for it and shipped it off.

Imagine my surprise when the UPS truck backed into our driveway today and the package was from Leadtek. Wow. Quicker turnaround than I was expecting, after reading some of the threads found on the A400 GT TDH after I had sent the card in for repairs.

Imagine my surprise to find a different box with apparently a newer card.

Imagine my surprise to find that it was just a newer box.
The card inside is an A400 GT. Okay.

Imagine my dismay at finding the card COVERED WITH DUST. Had to spend a half hour cleaning it before putting it in the machine.

Imagine my total disgust when the screen came up and it was filled with

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intermixed between incorrect characters so you could barely read the screen!

Is anyone actually repairing these cards the way they should be AND TESTING THEM or are they just playing musical chairs until we happen to get a card that didn't work in someone else's machine but might squeak through in this one? I do not have time to screw around installing and removing and shipping and installing and removing and shipping cards. I have work to do and this is not the way to perform customer service.

Now, I need another RMA # and this time I want my original card back... fixed! At least I know what that card has been through and that it was well taken care of. Big chance of that...

Just thought y'all would like to know that nothing's changed at Leadtek. BTW, I tried to send my less than cordial response to this waste of my time and money to the RMS supervisor's address as well as Zhang and it bounced.

Oh No!

Got one from ebay. I got Fifteen minutes of Halo play and the card flatlined.

I have been dealing with Leadtek's horrible customer service for the last two months. I will save you the long story but to sum it up, I had a 6800GT (which I paid $385 for BTW) for a year and a half when it started having the graphic problems and artifacts. After RMA'ing the card I was sent another defective card not once, but TWICE. I then contacted them and told them I was done dealing with their crap and that I wanted a working card.

John Zhang offered me the upgrade to a 7800GS for $80 and I told him there was no way I was going to pay it. He told me to contact David Jiang, who might waive the fee, which I have tried multiple times to get ahold of to no avail. They stopped returning my email's about 2 weeks ago and David never returned my calls. I have since filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau.

Leadtek is a HORRIBLE company with whom I will never do business again. I hope that my BBB complaint will help motivate them to do the right thing and get me a working video card. Good luck to those of you out there dealing with this ridiculous mess of a company.

Don't bother wasting your time with RMA's. They don't seem to have any working cards and they are not fixing the defective ones that are being returned to them. It seems to me they just keep swapping out for other defective cards and screwing over their customers.

arghhhh wtf!

ARGHHHHHH

i have a leadtek a400 ultra, bought for 400 quid.

i have now recieved my card back from rma (yes my card, not a replacement or renewal but the same faulty card - artifacts at boot etc)

well i have been dealing with te europian ones, slow.....they are the meaning of slow.....they put my 95 year gran, a dead tortoise and a slow then to shame! there response time on emails is terrible, sometimes i got responded to in german (everytime i forwarded all previous convos to them...they could see the english.

anyway, sent card semi working with artifacts to them, i come to the conclusion well i would get a replacement or at least the memory replaced which is what they say causes the artifacts.

well, the same card has returned...but wait...instead of the lethal weapon atomic bomb shielding heatsink, it had a slimmer, smaller, ''A400'' heatsink on.

memory....nada...i took the serial numbers of eash memory under the heatsink down before i sent it, with pictures of the card, serial number of card, etc etc.

o but wait....they put new heatpaste on aswell.....thanks guys, i did that before as i thought it was a heat issue...and i did a better job at putting it on.

so now here i am, card now doesnt even work, pc cant post or boot when it is inserted, card just gets really hot next to capacitors and the crappy fan it has doesnt spin....another rma to get the same awfull card...

thanks leadtek, another customer lost.

ps: leaktek is more useful then blender in a unblenderable place.

nuff said.

i got a leadtek card in july 2006 rma 3 times and finally said it was enough all three cards had the same problem and i talked with david jiang before and i was able to get a free upgrade to the 7800gs after saying that i would not pay 80 to upgrade i suggest that u e-mail them alot and call them everyday i got my card in the mail and is coming on the sept 9th dont pay for the upgrade