| Friday, January 28 2005 |
MSI sold lower grade NX6800GT-T2D256E (PCI-E) to customers. The affected cards have only 12 Pipelines and 5 Vertex Units as following screenshot from Rivatuner shows.
A real 6800GT has 16 Pipelines and 6 Vertex Units. Here the same Rivatuner Screenshot.
Based on this, the cards MSI is selling should be called '6800NU'.
The missing pipelines greatly affect performance, in 3DMark2003 for example, by over 10%.
3DMark Link MSI 6800
3DMark Link Pine XFX 6800
It is unclear how many cards are affected and whether only germany is affected (that's where we found those cards). There is no statement from MSI so far.
German retailer MIPS-Computer says: "We received several MSI 6800GT which had only 12 Pipelines and 5 Vertex Units. This made us wonder a bit because MSI always delivers good quality. We sold none of the defective cards to customers."
When we tried to unlock the Pipelines with Rivatuner we experienced massive artifacts which lets us think that either wrong GPU chips were used by accident, or that MSI is using cheaper lower-grade chips.
Gigabyte had similar problems in August/September 2004. In their case an incorrect BIOS was put on the sold cards - after that a BIOS Update released on their website.
Other sources tell us that Pixelview is still selling 6800LE's as 6800NU.
In case you bought such a card we recommend returning it to your retailer. Do not try to unlock the pipelines or overclock the card (both makes you lose your warranty). Also make sure to verify that you are affected by this pipeline issue before returning your card.
MSI responds here.
A real 6800GT has 16 Pipelines and 6 Vertex Units. Here the same Rivatuner Screenshot.
Based on this, the cards MSI is selling should be called '6800NU'.
The missing pipelines greatly affect performance, in 3DMark2003 for example, by over 10%.
3DMark Link MSI 6800
3DMark Link Pine XFX 6800
It is unclear how many cards are affected and whether only germany is affected (that's where we found those cards). There is no statement from MSI so far.
German retailer MIPS-Computer says: "We received several MSI 6800GT which had only 12 Pipelines and 5 Vertex Units. This made us wonder a bit because MSI always delivers good quality. We sold none of the defective cards to customers."
When we tried to unlock the Pipelines with Rivatuner we experienced massive artifacts which lets us think that either wrong GPU chips were used by accident, or that MSI is using cheaper lower-grade chips.
Gigabyte had similar problems in August/September 2004. In their case an incorrect BIOS was put on the sold cards - after that a BIOS Update released on their website.
Other sources tell us that Pixelview is still selling 6800LE's as 6800NU.
In case you bought such a card we recommend returning it to your retailer. Do not try to unlock the pipelines or overclock the card (both makes you lose your warranty). Also make sure to verify that you are affected by this pipeline issue before returning your card.
MSI responds here.
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