how long do most cards live for?

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xnikx

[H]ard|Gawd
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whats the average life span of a vid card used for heavy gaming.

i have a 8800GTS playing games on max setting on 1680x1050
 
I recently gave away my gainward gf3 ti200 to a friend who now plays Dawn of War on it on low res. I still use my voodoo3 3200 to troubleshoot agp systems. And this is the card that killed my amd k6-2 mobo circa 8 years ago :D

Given the complexity and power consumption of today's cards though, I think that lifetime warranty might come in handy a couple of years down the road for a lot of people.
 
When you say life, do you mean how long it will function before something in it fails and it will need to be replaced because it's scrap?

Or do you mean how long can you effectively use it at your settings before it needs to be replaced by a better card to give you the same performance?

If it's the second, it might largely depend on the amount of eye candy and anti-aliasing and other goodies you have enabled. I'm no expert though, so wait for someone who knows more to come in...
 
how long it will function before something in it fails and it will need to be replaced because it's scrap

and do all evga cards come with a life time warrenty? i only have a 30day warrenty from newegg.
 
usually the fan will go first, but that's after a very long time, probably 100 000 hours, if you dust it off every so often
 
how long is that like 5 years? i have my fan at 80% will that affect anything?
 
100,000 hours is 11 years. I hope you dont expect to use that thing that long.
 
lol no. few other questions tho about dust

how much dust r we talken is bad, i have dust sitting at the end of each fan blade that i cant reach. its not like long strands or thick dust, its like dust that builds up on a thin layer. is this bad for it? i removed some lengthy strands of dust from the fan.

do i also have to clean the dust in the hs?

i dont know if this is true or not but on another forum someone sayd that removing things from the mobo alot can shorten the lifespan of the hardware and the mobo? is that true?

with canned air do i spray right ontop of the fan?

and do i have a lifetime warrenty or is that only for people who pay for one?
 
xnikx said:
whats the average life span of a vid card used for heavy gaming.

i have a 8800GTS playing games on max setting on 1680x1050
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It probably takes a couple of hundred years for the environment to decompose the plastics used in the card.

In a PC: it strongly depends on the environmental conditions. If it overheats, it won't last very long. If it does not overheat or get killed by over voltage, it is generally assumed that solid state devices to not 'wear' out. As such, your GPU won't die of natural causes for a while. It depends how fast the connectors will degrade to the point of being unusable. Probably a lot longer than you will ever want to keep the card. I still have some slotted Celeron's that run perfectly fine. My brother's PII laptop was decommissioned, due to the hdd going down the drain. We have a pentium (133, I think) running as a music terminal in our bar.
 
i have a Geforce2 GTS V7700 that the blue orb just died on but the card still works as longs u don't try to run a game.
 
my old 8500 dv aiw still works, as does a 9600 i have. my ti4200 died about a year after i bought it. the old tnt2 riva that the ti4200 replaced for a time still works too i think.
 
Here's my opinion.

New DX10 cards that have sufficient umph may last for quite a while. Here's why, the GPU's seem to have reached top levels of performance for capabilities that game developers only recently seem to have mastered.

HDR and all that extra goodness are really only now starting to come out in force with all the new titles. In addition, you now have them transitioning and learning the newer DX10 API. Games that push the envelope in terms of what DX10 can do (and no Crysis and the other titles, with as fantastic as they'll look, are not pushing the capabilities of DX10 yet.)

Through on top of this the game developers needing to master "multi-Core CPU" "optimizations", so that not only are they compatible (pretty much all current titles are), but actually garner benefits from multi-core procs. Since clock speed is not going to increase any futher, just more cores being added, game devs need to really get a handle on "mult-core optimization".

While this is all going on, you'll see more low-end and mid-range cards coming closer to the capabilities of the high-end cards, but your new high-end card you just purchased will last well for several years with all the settings on.

The only reason this wouldn't be the case is that the new DX10 cards from nVIDIA and ATI turn out to be duds in terms of true DX10 performance. In this case, like the FX series during the inception of DX9, you'll find that you need to upgrade almost immediately.

So take your pick, either everything will rock well and for some time, or it'll all suck from the start and new cards will come out to address the limitations. I suspect they'll rock as both ATI and nVIDIA had learned from the previous spectacular failures.
 
ok i got a question a bit off the topic, i was cleaning my gpu with a qtip and people with a g80 should know what im talkin about. underneath the hs there are these white foam things, i chipped one. i usually idel at 55C, when i turned my comp on it was fine ideling at 55C but now im ideling at 58C. u think this is caused by the chipped white foam thing? or do u think it just rose for som odd reason?

edit : i think this just randomly happened, i just did a artifact scan for 10mins only hit 76C, and now my temps r ideling at 55c again. just thought ide get ur opion on this.

can som1 awnser my above questions tho?

also i had a 6600gt in my sisters dell and when it died i pulled it out and the hs was filled with thick dust, do you guys think thats why it died?
 
xnikx said:
ok i got a question a bit off the topic, i was cleaning my gpu with a qtip and people with a g80 should know what im talkin about. underneath the hs there are these white foam things, i chipped one. i usually idel at 55C, when i turned my comp on it was fine ideling at 55C but now im ideling at 58C. u think this is caused by the chipped white foam thing? or do u think it just rose for som odd reason?

edit : i think this just randomly happened, i just did a artifact scan for 10mins only hit 76C, and now my temps r ideling at 55c again. just thought ide get ur opion on this.

can som1 awnser my above questions tho?

also i had a 6600gt in my sisters dell and when it died i pulled it out and the hs was filled with thick dust, do you guys think thats why it died?
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The white foam thing is thermal tape. It's what's used to transfer heat away from the memory chips and onto the heatsink. Without the tape, that memory chip will not be cooled by the heatsink. I may be wrong but I dont think so.
 
WarriorX said:
100,000 hours is 11 years. I hope you dont expect to use that thing that long.
Click to expand...

Dunno man, the fan on my Ti4200 just crapped out. Been using it since I got it (way back in the day)

So, instead of ditching the card, I strapped an 80mm fan to it with wire ties! Problem solved!

Now to see just how long this beast will last.:D
 
Spoonie_G said:
The white foam thing is thermal tape. It's what's used to transfer heat away from the memory chips and onto the heatsink. Without the tape, that memory chip will not be cooled by the heatsink. I may be wrong but I dont think so.
Click to expand...

i chipped the edge of the one closest to the fan.(the smallest one)

edit: ok now im scared, i think i did mess something up i played only 15 mins of oblivion and i hit 69C.
 
xnikx said:
i chipped the edge of the one closest to the fan.(the smallest one)

edit: ok now im scared, i think i did mess something up i played only 15 mins of oblivion and i hit 69C.
Click to expand...

what series is the card again?
hat temp isnt to bad running obliv me thinks
 
You have an eVGA card?

MAKE SURE YOU REGISTER IT ON THEIR WEBSITE WITHIN 30 (90?) DAYS OF PURCHASE OR YOU GIVE UP YOUR LIFETIME WARRANTY!
 
fuck, i only had a 30day warrenty, which is way up. and i just recently registered.

please excuse me because im very, very upset now!!
i dont think i have a warrenty for my 8800 anymore!!!

and to correct myself i use to idel at 52C now at 57C

and i checked evga and when i first registered i misplaced the last number which was a 6 with a 5 so i needed to register again!
 
hmm... my Riva 128 is still operational and it´s almost 10 YEARS OLD, but i cannot compare that card to the GeForce 8800, i guess u should ask the nVidia (or Ati) engineers
 
im calling evga to ask about my warrenty.

just talked to a guy at evga

i have the lifetime warrenty

YOU DO HAVE TO REGISTER WITHING 30 DAYS FOR THE LIFE TIME WARRENTY

he also told me you dont want to go over 75C.

i told him i did a artifact scan and only hit 76C and got no artifacts so he sayd im fine as long as i dont go over 76C.

he also recomened i put new thermal pads, where can i get these?

and do you think because i chipped off part of the thermal pad it will damage the card?
 
im not going to sell sry lol.

i dont think its damaged i all did was chip a little bit off. can this damage the card?

i just got done playing 3 counter strike source scrims and highest i hit was 66C.
 
just so you get the idea, my grandfather is still using a P300 system bought 8 years ago to play minesweeper and browsing internet, this pc has often been in very tough environmental conditions, has often been moved around/transported to other places, not a single component was replaced, not a single time it failed to boot, it is amazing and always filling me with confidence of pc hardware durability.:eek:
 
yah i hope my card lievs for a while but can someone awnser wether or not my card is in danger? the chipped part is really reavally anything it was just the edge. the temps went up.

if i do i dont mean to sound rude im just really worried.
 
Did it "chip" off in an area that was touching the actual components of the card? (memory chips, or the GPU) If it only came off in an area that didn't have contact with the card itself(just stuck to the heatsink, but not to any part of the card), you're more than fine.

How big was the chip?

Idle temps can depend on a lot of things. If you just turn on the computer and take an idle temp after a few minutes, it will be different than taking an idle temp 10 minutes after game-play. Chances are high it's coincidental and you're being paranoid.
 
i dont think it was actually touchin the hs, it may have been by a lil bit. the temp rises r definitly from what happened. idleing at 52c and now ideling a 58c. when i came home from school i was at 52c then i went to clean my gpu, chipped the pad, now 58c. the chip wasnt any bigger then the 0 on ur keyboard.
 
Im a bit confused as to why you felt the need to take the heatsink off and clean the GPU? I don't want to sound insulting but if you didn't even know what the "white foam things" were for, what were you doing taking the heatsink off? Furthermore, how is it possible that your card got dirty enough already that you would even need to take the heatsink off? I've run cards for a long time in a cigarette smoker/slob's house and they get pretty filthy, but nothing that has ever required me to take the heatsink off.

I'm just curious, that's all. You have a lifetime warranty, so just calm down, use the card for a while, and see if it causes any problems.
 
It varies really; I'd be really happy if any of my video cards lasted over 2 years solidly.
 
I've had my Gigabyte 5900XT for...I think about 4 years now. Friggin stock heatsink still works (even the blue LED!), that card is a beast!
 
I would like for stock speed (Non overclock), silent pipe (no fan), easy 10+ year. I still have some old card running older Pentium back in 1995.
 
Happy Hopping said:
I would like for stock speed (Non overclock), silent pipe (no fan), easy 10+ year. I still have some old card running older Pentium back in 1995.
Click to expand...

Yeah but those cards are significantly different than the cards of today, I honestly doubt any 79xx card lasting more than a couple years, lol.
 
havent had one die yet of natural causes, longest was a 9700 PRO, was still going on 4 years, until i replaced the heat sink a week ago and did something to the memory as it no worky worky now :(
 
zenogias said:
Im a bit confused as to why you felt the need to take the heatsink off and clean the GPU? I don't want to sound insulting but if you didn't even know what the "white foam things" were for, what were you doing taking the heatsink off? Furthermore, how is it possible that your card got dirty enough already that you would even need to take the heatsink off? I've run cards for a long time in a cigarette smoker/slob's house and they get pretty filthy, but nothing that has ever required me to take the heatsink off.

I'm just curious, that's all. You have a lifetime warranty, so just calm down, use the card for a while, and see if it causes any problems.
Click to expand...

i didnt take off the hs, i was cleaning the edge where there was long strands of fur( i have a cat that sheds alot ). i was useing a qtip and as i was cleaning i accidently chipped the side of the thermal pad.

the life time warenty doesny cover physical damamge, such as burns. So do u guys think this will cause any physical damage or burns.

incase i do have to buy thermal tape/pads(what ever they use) where can i get them, do i also need thermal paste, do they all work with 8800gts?
 
DeadlyAura said:
Dunno man, the fan on my Ti4200 just crapped out. Been using it since I got it (way back in the day)
Click to expand...

Yeah, I've seen a few "older" cards work just fine with stopped fan. My roommate uses an old card and doesn't game, so never worried about it overheating.

Hell, fan on my mobo chipset stopped moving months ago without any problems. I left it on to function as a heatsink, good enough.
 
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