[blog] Why MSI sucks...

[Grimspiller]

Those latest svns aren't any faster than beta,aren't they?

[Air]

Nope, typically they're a good bit slower, but that should be fixed eventually.

[pcsx2fan]

444 fsb is not a normal fsb... its kinda high you know, not all boards can make it with that high fsb, only the ones that are made purely for OC and you have to pay somewhat more for that (nothing below 100 eu/us is good for that)

My current board is GA-EP31-DS3L (rev 1.0) which officially support 400 fsb I purchased in 2008, It was under $100. Apparently not a high-end board but made for overclocking.

Front Side Bus
1600(O.C.)/1333/1066/800 MHz FSB

[ilovejedd]

Hmm, didn't have any problems with my RMA. MSI 890GXM-G65 motherboard shipped via UPS Ground Friday, MSI received it Tuesday (Monday was a holiday) and I got my replacement on Wednesday. They didn't even ask for a copy of the receipt. Alas, it's still sitting in the box. Haven't had time to do the build. I'm having too much fun replaying the StarCraft and Brood Wars single player campaigns before the SC2:WoL release on July 27.

Alas, even with so-called military class components, I'm not going to attempt touching any of the voltages this time. I just changed the Vcore by a little bit (0.05, I think?) and my system went haywire.

[dralor]

Yeah evga is nice. I had a 7900GT SC die on me and they replaced it with no hassles about 2 weeks later with an 8800GT. Which has a lifetime warranty on it though I think they are starting to phase that out with their newr card and instead going to to the sti.ll high end but less extreme 10 year warranty.

[Gene]

I agree that EVGA is great. I had experience when my EVGA 7300 GS fan got busted then I RMA my graphics card and received it back within 2 weeks.
It appears that EVGA would do the process faster if you have the receipt of the store. If you don't, then they will prolong it.

How about trying out Gigabyte ATI 5770 1GB?
I'm using it and it works flawlessly. The fan is fairly quiet and never got any issue with it.
Or how about an upgrade to GTX 460? I've heard many good things about it. The card is cheaper($200ish), cooler, and more energy efficient. The 1GB version is little bit faster than ATI 5830 and little bit slower than ATI 5850. EVGA GTX 460 1GB superclocked should probably surpass ATI 5850.
I'm planning to get it when it goes on sale. Probably like $20 cheaper XD

[SamSoNight]

Regarding the RMA thing: People really should stop BAAAWING and Q_Q if they have been disappointed by a company on one mere occasion, like BAAAW my XYZ from ABC company broke, so I will buy NEVAAAR from them again Q_Q. It's called bad luck. Also MSI did not make a great mistake here, it is pretty common that companies do not cover up for the shipping costs.

[Air]

Regarding the RMA thing: People really should stop BAAAWING and Q_Q if they have been disappointed by a company on one mere occasion, like BAAAW my XYZ from ABC company broke, so I will buy NEVAAAR from them again Q_Q. It's called bad luck. Also MSI did not make a great mistake here, it is pretty common that companies do not cover up for the shipping costs.

... that's why I said naturally. It's not just common policy, its standard policy. I don't think anyone ever cover shipping costs. Though with shipping costs being near $10 each way these days, its getting to be an annoyingly expensive policy.

It's also pretty common that companies actually replace your part with the current editions of your model even if they don't have your exact model in stock anymore, and its also pretty common that companies don't delay your RMA for over a 2 more weeks because they expect you to arbitrarily email them a copy of your invoice 2 weeks after you sent the RMA with TWO copies of the invoice packed with it.

It's also common that companies do NOT send you scary lies. Specifically I got an email that read:

Sorry to push you on this, but we cannot let RMA’s to be pending too long. If no feedback by today, then we will give you the latest selling price as the refund amount. Thank you for your attention.

I received that two business days after the initial request for an invoice (it was over a weekend in which I was without internet -- happens a lot to me with my job). I sent the invoice in a reply 2 days later, the minute I saw the email. And guess what? It wasn't too late; they used the invoice price. The guy just sent me that to scare me into replying quicker.


Edit: My original blog had the whole story, but then it got long and so I decided to just blurb it and make myself feel better. This was an ordeal that spanned roughly 3 months of hardware crashes, troubleshooting, tech support, RMA requesting, packaging, and finally getting angry emails and responding with (yet another) invoice (along with a lengthy rant on how I've been working really hard to properly troubleshoot this problem, did not send the card back until I was certain that it was not going to remain functional for me, etc., that I followed all instructions to the letter when packing the product to help ensure a speedy RMA, and that I don't have an internet chip implanted in my head yet and live in rural PA, where internet isn't always available in the airwaves either -- and when it is, it costs $10 a day usually -- and that I didn't really think I deserved to be clothslined into some crappy deal because someone didn't like waiting a mere 2 business days for a response).

.... and then more waiting.

[Air]

... though the primary bulk of my rant was a polite letter describing how I am a software developer and I really was looking forward to being able to work on DX10/11 stuff again; since that was the primary reason I bought the card (which it is -- I hardly ever use the card for anything besides programming/development/testing still). I dunno, thought maybe I could appeal to their desire to support software that recommends/requires new fancy APIs and newer higher-priced cards, etc.

For the curious, their reply to my rant was:

Its fine. Thank you for the invoice

... so I was left once again to wonder how long it might take them to mail a check to me. No timeframes, nothing. I mean it'd been ok if they said "it might take 2-3 weeks for us to stamp this envelope." It would have seemed stupid but then I'd known what to plan for. But no, the best I have to go from is their RMA mission statement about processing and shipping RMAs "inside of a week!", which was null and void long before they even started emailing me,and then threatening me for the invoice they stupidly lost.

[Air]

Regarding the RMA thing: People really should stop BAAAWING and Q_Q if they have been disappointed by a company on one mere occasion, like BAAAW my XYZ from ABC company broke, so I will buy NEVAAAR from them again Q_Q. It's called bad luck. Also MSI did not make a great mistake here, it is pretty common that companies do not cover up for the shipping costs.

Let's touch on that shipping bit once more:

I'm pretty sure the check mail-back policy they stuck me with is mostly to do with aforementioned shipping costs. Specifically: if they mailed me a replacement, they would have covered shipping for the mail-back, and it would have been roughly $8-10 even with UPS bulk shipping rates (cross-country journey). So by sending me a check, and forcing me to buy a new card myself, they just stuck me with another $8-10 above and beyond the shipping costs penalized to most other RMA'ers.

Now do you see why I brought up shipping? I had to pay shipping on the original card, the mail back, and the replacement; the latter being the one that most RMAs don't get stuck with. Because its standard policy for companies to ignore shipping costs, they can save themselves money and inflict more damage on the customer by just mailing a check back and making you pay to re-buy the stupid thing on your own.