Winfast A400GT Major Problems ------Please Read-----
Hello,
I own a Winfast A400Gt. I bought it in september 2004 and it worked great until october of 2005, thats when the problem came. While I was playing Quake4 my monitor turned off.
I hard restarted the system and waited for the monitor to come on and the system to post. The system never made it to post, the monitor never even came on.
The only way I was able to get the computer to turn on was to install my old ATI Radeon 7000 APG.
I then contacted leadtek support throught their web page. They quickly responed and issued me an RMA request form. I then filled it out and sent it back to them to get a RMA number. After that I sent the graphics card in to Leadtek on Dec 17. I got the card back on the 11th of January.
The card I got back from leadtek was in a new non sealed box and had 2 new games and all of the adapters and power cables. It was not the same card that I sent in, however it apeared to have dust on it and I new that it was not a new card either, it looked like a refurbished card. I took a deep breath crossed my fingers and installed the card in my machine.
When I powered up the computer I was greeted with strange artifacts symbols, bars and colors. I contacted leadtek support John Zang the guy I was dealing with and informed him that the card that they shipped me was defective. He responed by appologizing and directing me to the technical support department. When the technical support guy he asked me what my power supply was, I told him I am using a 580Watt dual line power supply. There was no way this was a power problem.
I looked at the card and noticed that the power molex connection on the card had a darker colored pin on it with some scratch's. I thought that it may have been a case of not making proper contact so I moved the power cable connecting to the card around a bit and tried to make a better connection. I reinstalled the card and it worked exect for a few white dots and lines that would pop up every once in a while.
I was making progress or so I thought. After that I flashed the bios with new version of the leadtek 6800gt bios thinking that might work. Mabey it would give it more power I thought.
It worked. I was able to play games like morrowind bf2 rainbow six lockdown dungeon siedge 2 fear call of duty 2 far cry, the list goes on. I could play all the latest games that stress the hell out of components, most of the time. Some times all these strange artifacts and colored bars lines, characters and then it would all break apart with strange colors everywhere. After that the system reboots with the artifacts, until I power down the system. I could then turn the computer back on and the artifacts would be gone. Most of the time that is. One day while play a game the monitor turned off again, when i turned off the computer and turned it back on the corruption was worse then ever.
I tried every practical technical solution that i could think of. This included voltage, extra cooling, updated bios, drivers, operating systems, and components such as quality power supplys and cheap power supplys, different cpu's and motherboards, changed ram. I even changed the monitor as well as try the graphics card in my other systems. The results were all the same with all the diffent systems, all would display artifacts.
So after trying everything I could think of I contacted leadtek today to tell that the card is offically defective and that it was not my computer systems. They issued me a RMA request form again. This is my second RMA to leaktek. As you can understand I was fealing quite dis-pleased, even though leaktek is good about RMA's they would probley just send me another junk card i was thinking.
I got everything ready for RMA and decided to try on last thing, I read in some of the previous post's that people found a solution to this problem by propping the card up with cd cases or other small things. So I installed the graphics card in my system and got a piece of copper wire. I thread the wire through a hole on the outer edge of the card closest to the power molex connection where the card sinks the most, due to the overwhelming wieght of the huge cooling device. I looped the copper wire around steal colum near the top of the case. This way the copper wire was holding the card up on the end that sank down the most. I powered up the computer and it worked perfectly. No sign of the artifacts. I can play games and everything without crashes. 100 stable now. It seams at least, it may screw up again at any time.
It is my theory that the wieght of the cooling device forces the copper plates on the agp connection on the card to shift out of alignment with the pins of the mobo in the agp conector. This causes the artifacts, colored bars dots symbols and lines.
Conclusion
By supporting the card with the copper wire fastent to the top of the case the card makes proper contact with the motherboard, and therfore the artifacts are gone
This solve that problem for me
If you have orther artifacts or crashing in games it could be one of your memmory modules. There are 8 or them and if one is bad your games will never work for prolonged periods of time, or may crash right off the bat. The crash would restart the system.
Or
Your cooling device is not making proper contact with the chips. You may need to buy some thermal paste or thermal pads to tranfer the heat better.
Or
You may need to upgrade your power supply if you have a unit under 350watts.
Well that is my experience so far and I know that this post can help someone out there.
I just hope my graphics card stays fixed. If it doesnt im sending it back and asking for a different line of cards. Mabey the 7800gs or something.
Thanks to all who shared thier knowledge and helped me fix my problem,
Thanks to all who have taken the time to read this post,
Steve