So, the last video card that I bought was a PNY Nvidia GTS 250 1k MB. I purchased it in January from Newegg. I wasn't playing many video games back then but when I started playing the Starcraft II beta was when I started having problems. My computer will randomly power off in the middle of gaming. It only happens while playing games; it does not happen during normal operation of windows or while using programs that are not graphic intensive.

It happened a couple times while playing the Starcraft II beta and i thought it might be something to do with problems with the game itself since it was in beta. So, i didn't think much of it at the time. Eventually i started playing WoW again a few months ago. While playing WoW, my computer was also randomly crashing where it would totally power off in the middle of playing.

The first thing i tried was replacing the video card with an older card (one of Jeanna's old ATI cards). After switching to the other card, I had no crashing problems at all. I tried my card again and made sure all the drivers were up to date, and it still crashed.

So, I requested an RMA with PNY since it is still under warranty. They e-mail me back and ask me a bunch of useless questions. After answering them, I shipped the card to them. I got it back a month later with some obscure form where all they wrote on it was "Pass Test". I sent in an e-mail basically asking "WTF is this and what did you do about the card?". They said that they ran it on a system and looped 3dmark over for 15 hours and the card had no problems, so it passed their test. They sent me the specs on the computer they used and the only real difference was that they had an intel chip instead of an AMD chip and the mother board was different, none of which should really matter. They were also using Windows XP.

So, I tried the card again after getting it back from them and it still crashes. I am going to have Jeanna try it in her comp today to see if it crashes on her system. If so, I am calling PNY and bitching them out.

Long story short, I recommend NEVER buying anything from PNY. They are a bullshit company. I bought the card because it was about $20 cheaper than any of the other similar cards on the market. I wonder why?