Last week, I called Newegg to try and RMA my nearly $400 dollar XFX 5870. Since it had been nearly two months I was told I would have to deal directly with XFX. I was extremely frustrated with all the constant crashing etc etc.

The guy on the other side of the phone also added that, "off the record" a rep with ATI had spoke with a few of the people there at Newegg and had told them, the problem is very wide spread and that one of the things they are looking at is a small part / component of the video card that is rapidly degrading out of spec.

I then contacted the only other email I had of someone that worked in the hardware sector, a guy I became friends with who works at XXXXX. Yes, I know, they make mice. But I thought it was a shot since he is a very hardware and performance oriented and has and still does attend many trade shows, lan parties etc. So I emailed him and received a response this morning.

He basically confirmed what I had heard from the Newegg customer rep. But where the CSR at Newegg said that could be one of the problems, my friend said they had heard it "was" the problem. To me, this would explain the same problem everyone is having but at the same time how random it appears. I am no expert.

What really bothers me is why HardOCP or one of the other top news sites doesn't get an offical comment for us from ATI since they all clearly have friends at ATI.

Why hasn't ATI come out and talked about this problem.

Eyeinfinity is cool and all but honestly, I'm looking at Nvidia as my new home. I am currently trying to get rid of my 5870 card. Not only that, I canceled my plans to purchase 3 new 32" LCDs for my Eyeinfinity setup.

And, to anyone curious, yes I reformatted, CPU or GPU or MEMORY was not overclocked. Many fresh installs between two different machines.... end result, gray vert lines crash screen hardlock. Basically, the same thing that has been happening to thousands of other issues. I've had nearly 100 crashes to date.

Why is ATI letting this continue? Why haven't they come out and talked about this huge huge problem?

HT on, 2000Mhz + DDR3, Single 5870 & Cat 9.12:

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dmv=1710998

http://i526.photobucket.com/albums/c...-1300Cat91.jpg

George, how long does that Heaven demo run for?

Nice... the heaven unigine demo is interesting when you start it and run it, you actually have to hit the benchmark tab/button up top for it to into benchmark mode which i didn't realise LOL. Reportedly runs for 4.5 mins - never timed it myself but that's what i read

.