Galaxy aka KFA2

[Moonjock]

These cards are cheap but only come with a 12 month warranty. What can you all tell me about them?

Tigerdirect has a GTS for $299 after rebate.

 

[rallyimprezive]

I am curious about the same thing. Anyone?

 

[Shadow703793]

Not sure about the quality of Galaxy products, but thats kind of extensive for a 8800GTS (i'm assuming it is a 8800). A 8800GT is a better option. Either way I would still stick to a good brand like ASUS, XFX, Evega, etc

 

[blue_wister]

I found a 512mb Galaxy 8800 Gt for $230 + free shipping...by far the cheapest price I've found. I'm not sure I'm willing to pay an extra $50 for a better warranty from another brand...

 

[Moonjock]

Yes sorry it was a KFA2 8800GTS 512. Which appears to be a Galaxy. I found a Galaxy 8800GT for $221 after rebate form NCIX.

 

[old school]

I have bought a couple of Galaxy cards. I heard they have been building cards for the US guys for years. They have all been great quality and look cool. Thy have the same blue color pcb.

 

[armil]

First: Apologies for ressurecting a dead post.

However, ironically, this is the #1 google hit for "KFA2"

Just wanted to share my story, especially since its been bad enough to make me take the time to try and warn people away from Galaxy or KFA2 (Same company.)

I purchased an 8800GT from them with rebate. The ram on it was supposed to be 2GHZ instead of 1.8GHZ, however, in the BIOS the card was not overclocked (false advertising? I wouldn't actually get the chance to see if it would actually do the advertised 2GHZ) When I got the card, I replaced my 7900GT with it (previously my system was 100% stable, except some motherboard power management with S3 sleep issues. (since patched in bios))

The card I bought I got crashed with windows vista TDR errors occassionaly depending on the game I was playing. And it would cause screen corruption sometimes after vista triggered driver recovery. Finally after 3 months of troubleshooting, (Including, 7+ drivers, reformat, powering the card with a seperate psu. 3 motherboard bioses, replacing ram, testing ram, burning in for a large amount of time, etc, and switching back to the old card, which worked flawlessly again.) I emailed galaxy's tech support. OVER A WEEK LATER, I get a broken english response saying, "I've forwarded this email to KFA2 Support, our north American company." If it took me a week to forward an email at my job, I wouldn't likely have a job. Anyways, a few days later, KFA2 sends me a "install these drivers after using a driver cleaning utility like this, linking me to the drivers on their website." Which was even more frustrating, since I clearly said in my email that I tried the drivers off their website with a driver cleaner beforehand and that I had reformatted. I replied that I had done this, and 5 days later I get an email with a ridiculously long form to fill out, 1/2 the information I had already provided that they were asking for. I returned this form, and waited.... another week. I finally had to send a scathing email that I was going to file a BBB complaint (one of my next steps after this post) and post, magically a day later I get a broken english "sorry, here's your RMA info, please send it in." (Shipping was on me, nice...)

I shipped the card in, and returning it seemed fast enough. But when I got the new package back, something immediately set off a red flag (or should have.) the return box was 100% fine, but the Gfx. card box was sealed poorly with boxing tape, it screamed "previously opened" (the first card had no tape like that). I put it into my computer, and tried to play games. But the symptoms were now worse, instead of driver recovery errors, my computer now just colored the screen a solid color and stopped responding. Suspicious that it may not have in fact been my card, and instead my PSU, I put my old card in it's place and everything was flawless. So I started thinking, the only real difference outside the cards with the old generation and the new generation (I know it's not this simple) is power usage. I bet it's actually my PSU (had gotten some poor reviews for voltage fluctuation on the 12v rails) so I went and spent 100 on a new corsair 620HX, (wonderful PSU btw, quiet, low heat, stable) and the problems persisted.

Finally as an act of desperation, I patched the BIOS of the card to run the memory 200mhz slower, after testing, the card still crashed, but no crashed killed windows, only reset the drivers, and the crashes were at least 4x as infrequent.

Since the new card had different/and worse and modding the BIOS made me sure that it was the memory on the card. I sent a RMA back asking for a actual NEW card (they stopped using the crappy heat sinks on their newer card, but I received one with an older single speed fan), that was 10+ days ago. And I still haven't gotten a reply. I finally called their phone support again, and got an Indian guy who could only barely speak English, (I understand you guys have an accent, but at least if your American tech support be able to have proper sentences.) and he gave me a brush off at best "I'll forward your request to the RMA department, expect an email. Have a good day."

So, if you're going to buy a Galaxy/KFA2 card, hope you get a good card, or you'll be buying another card, from another brand, to ever have a stable computer.

*rant off*

P.S. Sorry this was so long winded, I don't want people to waste their time with this company in the future.

 

[Lord Lollipop]

I've owned this card for about six months.

It has run perfectly since the day I bought it.

The only change that I made was to replace the rather weak heat sink with a real one from Thermalright.

My card's video memory runs at 1.8GHz (factory setting). I didn't waste 3 months of my life trying to drag an extra 200MHz out of the ram.