7900gt problems

Question

My first card died after playing fear for 2 weeks.  It was at the msi factory overclocked settings teh whole time.  Then I had the flashing screen of death and the only fix was to restart the computer.  Also games would artifact like crazy.  Then I RMAed the card back to newegg and underclocked the card to nvidia reference specs and it seemed to be fine.  After 2 days I brought the card back up to the msi factory overclock specs and it artifacted but no flashing screen which was nice but I RMAed because the performance wasnt what I paid for .  Has msi fixed the 7900gt probs like evga did supposedly or no?  When I get my 3rd card should I just stick with nvidia reference specs?   I would like to hear some opinions.
Thanks

Answer 1

I have sent out the card.  Out of curiousity i just want to show this.
http://msicomputer.com/support/sup_genwar.asp
From the Date of Manufacture
The warranty period starts from the manufacture date.  To determine the warranty entitlement for the product, the Customer must carefully verify the first four digits of the Products serial number.  The first two-digit number represents the manufacture year and the subsequent two-digit number represents for the manufacture month.
For example:
“ 0312 234562 ”       means its manufacture date is December, 2003
“ 0402 234562 ”       means its manufacture date is February, 2004
my serial number is  0605 127722 so it was manufactured in May, 2006  The cards started coming out in march or around that time.  Fenix said that the cards were fixed at some point at the beginning of my topic and slicksickwilly talked about the new revisions too.  It would seem that my card hasnt been manufactured recently and im guessing that is what newegg.com had in stock.  I think that this maybe the reason for my problems.  Eitherway Im crossing my fingers for MSI to come through with a fresh card.
Found this on wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_7_Series#GeForce_7900_GT
I think its an interesting read.
GeForce 7900 GT
This video card was released on 9 March 2006. Like the 7900 GTX, it is a revised version of the G70 GPU(G71) that is produced at 90 nm. It too offers all the features of the 7800 series as well as an attractive performance-to-price ratio.
Featuring 24 pixel pipelines, it is actually faster than the 256 MB version of the GeForce 7800 GTX, yet has an MSRP of $299 USD (for the base clockrate). The overclocked versions are priced up to $349 USD.
Shortly after the initial launch of the 7900GT CO/KO/Superclock series, a trend of hardware instability became more and more prevalent. Some symptoms of the unusually large number of defective cards include: artifacting while rendering graphics in graphics benchmarks such as 3DMark03, 3DMark05, 3DMark06 and Aquamark3, artifacting while playing games, BSODs (Blue Screen of Death), total system restarts, and blinking screen.
A large batch of the 7900 GT XX (note: XX may signify CO/KO/SC variants of the 7900 GT) are believed to have defective and/or malfunctioning memory modules, thus causing instability and ultimately, total card failure. Another proposed cause of large-scale instability among the 7900 GT XX include undervolting from the factory. That is, the 7900 GT XX run at a 1.2 volt GPU core voltage, while their higher end relatives, the 7900 GTX, have 1.4 volt GPU voltages, thus permitting higher clock frequencies (GPU/RAM). The 1.2 core volt coupled with factory clocks of up to 520/770 (1540 effective) may suggest that the core voltage is simply too low to allow for higher clock speeds. Another point to note is that the 7900 GT XX and the 7900 GTX are both based around the exact same core, featuring a 90nm process, allowing for a smaller die size and fewer total transistors within the core itself; it now becomes apparent that the 7900 GT XX are actually meant to run at 1.4 volts, much like the 7900 GTX, but are factory undervolted to 1.2 volts.