Greetings,
I've received four videocards from EVGA to replace a dying GTX 1070 FTW. I saw darkfalcon09 and Egrady's posts, so I figured I'd write here as well since I am suffering a similar fate. Below is an overview of my RMA history.
April
My original RMA was for an EVGA GTX 1070 FTW which began to die with 5 months warranty left. The following symptoms occurred over a period of three weeks:
A) Crashing in highly populated areas in an MMO running the game client at high settings
B) Stalling and hangs on medium settings with the following errors in game log:
>DXGI_ERROR_DEVICE_REMOVED
>DXGI_ERROR_DEVICE_HUNG
C) Crashing on medium settings
D) Crashing more frequently, including minimal settings.
I wrote to tech support on April 11th and my RMA was approved.
August
What I received: EVGA GTX 1070 FTW-DT. This unit ran very well at first but began to die in a similar fashion as the first. I began to crash-to-desktop in high-pop areas in the same MMO. The situation worsened over time and I began crashing in other lower-spec games. Finally, the crashes were causing blue screens. I reached out to tech support again. After a couple of emails it was agreed that the unit could be faulty, so another RMA was approved (I regret not testing more thoroughly because I was told they couldn't reproduce the crashes).
September
What I received next was an EVGA RTX 2070 XC. The following things occurred:
Initial installation was OK. I loaded into a game. Within 5-10 minutes of being in the game, "space-invader" artifacts appeared on my screen and my computer crashed. Windows wouldn't load display after rebooting. I called tech support this time. I was greeted by someone who seemed to empathize and he approved another RMA, this time with a pre-paid shipping label. He suggested I look into trying a new PSU.
September #2
I received another EVGA RTX 2070 XC, the following things occurred:
1. Initial driver installation was OK. Started an FPS, but after entering the menu screen I blue-screened.
2. After reinstalling drivers I got pink artifacts and no Nvidia control panel.
3. I took the videocard out of my motherboard and reinstalled Intel graphics driver, everything was OK again.
4. I reinstalled Nvidia GPU, artifacts returned, no Nvidia control panel.
5. I re-seated the videocard into a different PCI slot after removing drivers, no improvement.
6. Tried with a new PSU, no improvement.
7. Attempted to install the videocard in a friend's computer and it wouldn't work.
Another RMA was approved.
October
I received a third EVGA RTX 2070 XC and proceeded to install it without any issues. I tried out a couple games and it worked. I played for two or three hours and then I went to sleep (very relieved).
Problems returned the next day. While playing an MMO I experienced artifacting quickly followed by crashing. Since then, I've done the following:
1. Fresh Windows installation.
2. ASUS RealBench - failed at Luxmark.
3. Furmark - failed after about a minute with artifacts followed by driver failure.
4. Took apart PC, took out GPU. Reinstalled Intel display driver. Furmark ran on Intel driver.
5. IntelBurnTest - passed.
6. Memtest86 overnight - passed.
7. Reinstalled the 2070 XC, used Furmark again and it failed.
8. I brought my computer to a friend's house. After installing the 2070 XC in her system I experienced the same failures in Furmark and RealBench.
9. I installed her EVGA GTX 970 into my system. It worked. Furmark continued to work. RealBench passed as well.
Her GTX 970 is 5 years old. My GTX 1070 FTW only lasted 2 years 7 months. I would appreciate any help before buying a new videocard. TBH I'm afraid of buying another videocard.