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Video Card life expectancy?

T

tyguy

Gawd
Joined
Sep 21, 2004
Messages
544
I've been pc gaming since around 2000-2001. Fell in love playing duke nukem and quake in computer class. Got my first athlonn 700 mhz system, geforce 2 and I was in heaven. The past couple generations have been troublesome for me. Im currently rocking an evga geforce 8800 gtx. I recently had to rma the bad boy after roughly 2 and a half years of service. One day during a gaming session it just shutdown and would never boot again.

They ended up sending me a replacement with clock speeds and memory frequencies similar to the 8800 ultra series. I initially thought that was pretty awesome. Unfortunately this card seems to be dieing on me. I have only had it for a few months and I have a nice big coolermaster system, as well as forcing my gpu fan to 100%.

I have to manually underclock the gpu speed by roughly 30 mhz to keep gpu intensive games from artifacting or even freezing altogether. Obviously this is extremely frustrating because I just got the damn card, and will have to rma it yet again if they let me. I havent registered this card because it didnt have a serial number like my first card did. Plus I feel like im being jerked around having already payed a rma fee and they set me this card that was already on its last legs.

I was wondering what other peoples experiences were with videocard life? Before i had this 8800 gtx, I was a 6800 gt owner from leadtek. I must have rmad that card 4 times. It did have its own custom cooling solution, that was completely different from the reference 8800 gt design board. That could have what lead to its short life.

However im finding this very unacceptable having to continually rma my videocards. Sure a lot of these companies give great warranty service. I have never once had a cpu or motherboard die on me though. Other peoples experiences would be greatly appreciated. I'm curious if perhaps ati cards possibly have longer life spans? I myself haven't owned an ati card, everytime it came time to get a new card, nvidia was clearly the best guy. If I had the cash I would be upgrading to an i5, 5870 setup as we speak.
 
They last forever (10+ years) if cooled and handled against ESD. Most designs aren't "properly" cooled today since they know most people won't use it much past 3 years. I don't know the physics of it, but these things could potentially run for 30 years. They're not supposed to die, but running at high temperatures for a few years does weaken them. You're getting unlucky and probably had something overheat, then the card they sent you was not working properly to begin with.
 
To me it seems to be hit or miss. Here's my list and what happened:

Geforce 4 mx400 - Worked fine, no fan, no problems
Asus Geforce 4 ti4200 - Worked fine, had it until
Bfg geforce fx 5900 - Artifacted out of the box, RMAd it and works to this day
Sapphire radeon 9800 pro - worked for like a year then crapped out on me
Visiontek x800 pro - Worked fine for the year or so I had it, then upgraded to a board with pci-e so I had to sell it so sidegraded to
Sapphire x700pro - worked fine, had this card for a few years
Sapphire x1600xt - card had coil whine since the day I got it. Annoyed me so much, I had an OEM card so no warranty there, I destroyed this thing
Evga 7600gt - loved this thing to death, still running in a friends machine
Evga 8800gts - red lines after a year or so, bought off eBay so no RMA, gonna try the oven trick
Evga 260gtx core 216 superclocked - card artifacted at default speeds since day 1, underclocked it to stock and RMAd it a couple months later, new card works like a charm
 
Thanks for the responses guys. Yeah I figured under optimal conditions, videocards really should never die. Its just unfortunate we seem to be getting cooling system that last until they figure you want top upgrade again. I think I paid 30 or so dollars plus shipping to rma my 8800 gtx, so they could send me a piece of garbage. Now im probably going to have to do the same thing, and just hope I will get a good card. Thats just ridiculous to me. Im paying these guys good money. I should expect it to work, not hope and prey.
 
Indeed a bad power supply probably could. I should be in the clear though as I never skimp out by getting a poor power supply. Im currently using a tough power 700 watt.
 
I never had a video card die on me. Following are the cards I owned.

ATI Sapphire 9200 Pro (if I remember correctly)
ATI Sapphire 9800 Pro
nVidia EVGA 7900gs
nVidia EVGA 8800gt
AMD XFX HD 5870 (still too early to tell)

One thing to note is that I am not a casual gamer I play MMOs (among other games) which means the video cards are in use a lot, however I do shut off my computer at night or when I go to work.
 
I've seen several dead video cards and most of the time it was blown caps. I've personally only had one die on me, only becuase it wasn't waterproof. :p
 
My X800XT started artifacting after about three years of service. Tracked it down to the video memory. I underclocked it by something like 10 MHz and was able to use the card for another year and a half before I upgraded (yes, I kept that card for a long time).

My 4850 is still going strong... kind of shocking since the card runs at 70+C idle and over 85C at full load with the single-slot cooler.. Wonder what kind of life expectancy ATI was counting on when designing the card?
 
I have a GeForce MX200 here that is still going and some PCI ATI XL (pre-radeon) cards that all still work. I would say indefinitely.
 
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At least 3 years. Some go out before that but most outlast that. If you do blow a cap you can solder on a new one. They sell the caps online for cheap. A lot of the times when you do get lines or artifacts its because the contact between the gpu and the heatsink has gotten bad from age and all that. Make sure the ram and the gpu has a good contact with the heatsink and you should be good(thermal paste). Try getting a big fat eraser and rubbing the connector also to make it shinier ;)
 
My parents' computer has a GeForce 4 Ti 4200 that's been kicking for over 7 years, and it's been running 24/7 for the last 5 of those years.

That's the longest runner out of my dedicated video cards. Integrated graphics chips seem to last forever.
 
Also, I once had a motherboard that ate video cards. In a span of two or three years it managed to kill a Voodoo 4, a GeForce 3, and a GeForce 4.
 
gtg465x said:
My parents' computer has a GeForce 4 Ti 4200 that's been kicking for over 7 years, and it's been running 24/7 for the last 5 of those years.

That's the longest runner out of my dedicated video cards. Integrated graphics chips seem to last forever.
Click to expand...

Many OEM HP nForce4 motherboard chipsets seem to die quickly... There is now an extended warranty (that I got to use) to cover it...

However, this is the only chipset I know of failing, and that was HP's cooling design's fault, not nVidia!
 
It mostly depends on the power draw of the card, and the heat it produces.

Modern cards, because of high power draw, and heat, tend to last ~3 years on average, more or less, the more power draw can lead to blown caps, and makes them more susceptible to power flucuations. Newer cards are also much more susceptible to the heat sink getting clogged up, or the fan dying causing overheating, while old cards often do nothing than run windows, and they can be run nearly passive.

If the hardware lasts the first few months no problem, it should safely hit the 2-3 year mark before failing, if the cooling doesn't fail.
 
Let's see...

* Voodoo3 2000 - still works
* GeForce 2 MX 400 - still works
* GeForce 4 Ti 4200 - worked fine. switched it to an aftermarket cooler. aftermarket cooler failed, and card died eventually
* Radeon 9800 Pro - still works
* GeForce 7800 GT - still works
* 2x GeForce 8800 GTS 640 - both still work. one was obtained from a friend's RMA, where EVGA sent out a brand new card in replacement


Soon I'll be getting a Radeon 5850, so we'll see how long it goes for, lol. Will probably add a second one at some point down the road.
 
I had a GeForce 4200/4400 Ti died in less than 6 months.

My X1900XT has started to fail. Immediate crash after loading a game and when playing back video the PC eventually crashes within 30 minutes.

Waiting to replace it with HD 5850.
 
The only card that I've ever had die on my was my 9700 pro. It gave after about 3 years of hardcore use, no overclocking, jst hours of intense gaming over the years. After it died, I pulled the HSF off only to find what looked like a charred GPU core, the whole area around the core (which was supposed to be greenish) was brown/black discolored. Then I realized there was a shim that separated the core from the HSF by about 1mm. I bet if that HSF was in direct contact with the core the card would still be working to this day.
 
I've had

9700 Pro: Still working, can still play Source games :D
7900GT: Died after ~1 year, got 7950GT from RMA
7950GT: Still working, afaik (sold it to a friend)
4850: Still working :)

The result is obvious, Nvidia cards fail more than ATI ones :p (for those without a sense of humor, that was a JOKE)
 
I would like to hear some input from our hardcore folders.

For myself I ran an Asus 4850 for almost a year non stop folding/gaming, then I replaced it with a EVGA GTX 275 which has been running non stop for about half a year. Not a huge amount of overall time, but if you take into account the time they have sat at 100% utilization I'll bet a year worth of folding would put about 5 times as much stress as moderate gaming for that same year.
 
si 1mb something or other - still going the last time the box from 95 was powered up
riva tnt2 - worked for the month I owned it before replacing it with...
gf2 gts - still going to this day
ati radeon 9800 pro - went for a couple years before the fan stopped and it went poof with lots of smoke
evga 7800 gt - dead within a month or two, hard locks everywhere
evga 7900 gt - dead within a year, artifacting with green dots everywhere and triangles sticking out of everything
evga 8800 gts 320 - worked the entire time (about a year) before I replaced it with...
galaxy 8800 gt 512 (g92) - stock memory clock wouldn't hold, red artifacts and hard locks all over within the first month
second galaxy 8800 gt 512 (g92) - exact same problem as the last one
xfx gtx 260 black - worked for about half a year and then the core clock wouldn't hold. hard locks frequently.
replacement xfx gtx 260 black - seems to have the same problem :(

I'll be picking up a xfx radeon 5850 the moment they are available for MSRP or better in Canada. I've had it with all the nvidia cards biting the dust left and right over the past few years across several different builds.
 
jeremyshaw said:
Many OEM HP nForce4 motherboard chipsets seem to die quickly... There is now an extended warranty (that I got to use) to cover it...

However, this is the only chipset I know of failing, and that was HP's cooling design's fault, not nVidia!
Click to expand...

No, it's nVidia's fault for designing a chipset that ran way too hot. This issue is not limited to HP and it's not an isolated incident by any means, I've had several NF4 boards die on me. I've got one now that works fine for about an hour, then starts going crazy unless I have a fan blowing right on the chipset. Their NF2 chipset for Socket A's was solid though, both in terms of performance, overclocking and reliability, but it's been downhill since then IMO. At least for my Intel builds, I will only use Intel chipsets.
 
Vid cards I own:
S3 PCI - still works, still in use
Geforce 2 GTS AGP - still works decommissioned
Geforce 4 MX 440SE AGP - still works still in use
Geforce FX 5600 AGP - died due to static
Radeon 9600 AIW AGP - died due to poor mounting of aftermarket cooler
Radeon 9600Pro AGP - still works still in use
Radeon X800 AIW AGP - still works decommissioned
Radeon X1900 AIW PCIe - still works decommissioned
Radeon HD4350 PCIe - still works still in use
Radeon HD4850 PCIe - still works still in use

The S3 and Geforce 2 are going on 10 years old, both pulled from old Dell's.

The Geforce 4 MX had a passive cooler, was crowded by a PCI modem in the next slot, and pretty much ran 24/7 in my parent's HP computer since 2002. My parents rarely shut the computer down. That PC had one case fan and sat in a closet with damn near zero airflow too. When I got ahold of the PC, nothing in it was worth salvaging except the video card. The machine had 2 hard drive replacements and one RAM replacement already. Every capacitor on the motherboard had leaked, but the vid card looked like it did 8 years ago. The only saving grace for that video card was that it probably never ran a single 3D application in 8 years. If it had, the heat most likely would have killed it. The card got pulled and is going into a rebuilt machine for a customer.
 
A few integrated cards, voodoo3 3000, like 3 radeon 7000's, a 9700 pro, and my x1800xl All of mine have lasted at least 2 or 3 years, depending on how often I upgraded. The x1800xl has been going strong for 4 years. Some were moved to new machines for the rest of that time. Only two video cards I've had that failed were a pair of powercolor 4850's. The first one had serious issues from the beginning, the RMA worked for a couple weeks then just died in the middle of a game and never came back :( Ideally I'd say 20 years before cap failure, though you should "expect" at least 5 years.
 
Does anybody remember reading the rumors that the manufacturing defect that was causing Nvidia laptop chips to fail prematurely also was causing their desktop chips to fail early?

I remember speculation that all 8xxx and 9xxx Nvidia chips suffered from the problem, regardless of laptop or desktop. I'm too lazy to search it, but supposedly something to do with the type of solder if i remember correctly.


In my experience, the older cards pretty much lasted indefnitely. I have a lot of pre-Radeon ATI cards, and can't recall any failed ones. Same goes for Nvidia Geforce 2 and Geforce 4 cards. Some of these cards have been running for years, 24/7. I haven't owned many newer cards, but my X1650 XT crashed from day 1. My 4850 is stable, though I can't imagine it lasting more than a few years with the 90+ degree temperatures while gaming.
 
Cards today have much shorter realistic life expectancies because of the insane amount of heat they generate, power they use, and being prone to electron creepage due to the smaller process on the GPU and memory.

That's why you see S3 Virge and ATI Rage cards that you can't kill 15 years after they were made and yet today's cards will seemingly die if you breathe on them or look at them funny. And you'll probably see it continue to get worse as processes get smaller.

One good thing we saw around 6 or 7 years ago was the shift towards using solid chemical capacitors instead of liquid electrolytic capacitors... no more bursting and leaking electrolytic caps.... but then again with that came the hell of surface mount caps and the knack they have for 'falling off' at the most unexpected of times.

In short OP it's definitely not your imagination. The big two (AMD/ATI and Nvidia) count on the hardcore enthusiast buyer to upgrade their cards every cycle or every other cycle. They know they have us by the balls when they come out with a new GPU that promises to provide the best gaming experience yet, and they know if that experience is good enough despite hardware failures we will keep coming back for more. I'm guilty of it, hell we all are... but I just figure it's the price I have to pay to keep up with things if I'm going to stay in the enthusiast community. *shrug*

My GT280 is still running strong and I purchased it launch day (knock on wood). I hope it doesn't die on me any time soon since I'm living on a really tight budget and couldn't afford anything nearly as nice for a looooong ass time. And let us be thankful for those board partners and vendors who offer extended and/or lifetime warranties on these cards... finding the right board partner with a good lifetime warranty can make for a very enjoyable experience even WITH a hardware failure.
 
RamonGTP said:
No, it's nVidia's fault for designing a chipset that ran way too hot. This issue is not limited to HP and it's not an isolated incident by any means, I've had several NF4 boards die on me. I've got one now that works fine for about an hour, then starts going crazy unless I have a fan blowing right on the chipset. Their NF2 chipset for Socket A's was solid though, both in terms of performance, overclocking and reliability, but it's been downhill since then IMO. At least for my Intel builds, I will only use Intel chipsets.
Click to expand...

nah, HP 'fixed' it by adding a far better heatsink, not the cheap-o 5cent heatsink they originally used! While it is true (and that sucks...) the nforce4 chipset ran hot, it was aggrevated by horrible OEM cooling designs.

nVidia stuff has ran hotter, faster, so far, have they not? the 5-series come to mind!

But you're right... nVidia did make the nforce4 run far too hot. Not until the mcp430 (last revision, for AMD, and it was a single chip solution, not dual chip [for some reason, I though all AMD nForce4 were single chip!?]), did the overheating issue get resolved, to an extent.

I think most new boards have active (!) cooling for the chipset!
 
Is there any way you can turn of or put your GPU in sleep mode longer life? For example I kept my PC on, overnight for downloading, but turned off my display, so no data is recieved, on display, can it automatically go to sleep mode or hibernation??
 
maverick786us said:
Is there any way you can turn of or put your GPU in sleep mode longer life? For example I kept my PC on, overnight for downloading, but turned off my display, so no data is recieved, on display, can it automatically go to sleep mode or hibernation??
Click to expand...

Most modern GPUs 'downclock' in order to keep cool while idling (desktop, office, web, etc).
 
jimbowdang said:
I would like to hear some input from our hardcore folders.

For myself I ran an Asus 4850 for almost a year non stop folding/gaming, then I replaced it with a EVGA GTX 275 which has been running non stop for about half a year. Not a huge amount of overall time, but if you take into account the time they have sat at 100% utilization I'll bet a year worth of folding would put about 5 times as much stress as moderate gaming for that same year.
Click to expand...

For some reason my 4350 maxes out at 21% !? Oh well, it's passively cooled, anyways.
 
jamesrb said:
Does anybody remember reading the rumors that the manufacturing defect that was causing Nvidia laptop chips to fail prematurely also was causing their desktop chips to fail early?

I remember speculation that all 8xxx and 9xxx Nvidia chips suffered from the problem, regardless of laptop or desktop. I'm too lazy to search it, but supposedly something to do with the type of solder if i remember correctly.
Click to expand...

These? http://www.engadget.com/tag/nvidia,defective
 
Really the only times I've ever had a videocard die (and this includes pretty much all the customer PC's I've worked on as well) is when the fan fails and the card cooks itself to death.

If you keep your fan dusted and are open to the possibility of replacing the heatsink entirely 5-years or so down the road (many just seem to die out no matter what) the hardware itself should last basically forever.
 
Im one of those guys that is always upgrading to the newest and best gpu no matter who makes it and have never seen one die within the few months (sometimes nearly a year 9700pro/8800gtx ^_^).. and I push em hard and have never had 1 die =o I got SLI with my 6800ultras the week those came out and had 1 built wrong but it didnt "die"
 
I've never had a problem with my video cards. I make sure I keep them free of dust. Granted, I never OC them. (Geforce 4 TI 4400, Radeon X800 AGP, 7800GT)

I'm most impressed with my FX5900. It has been running for 5 years without a hitch. Maybe I'm lucky?
 
tyguy said:
...snip...

I was wondering what other peoples experiences were with videocard life? Before i had this 8800 gtx, I was a 6800 gt owner from leadtek. I must have rmad that card 4 times. It did have its own custom cooling solution, that was completely different from the reference 8800 gt design board. That could have what lead to its short life.

However im finding this very unacceptable having to continually rma my videocards. Sure a lot of these companies give great warranty service. I have never once had a cpu or motherboard die on me though. Other peoples experiences would be greatly appreciated.

...snip...
Click to expand...

My 8800 GTX started dying not too long ago and I was surprised how my card was short lived. From my experience, video cards are suppose to last at least 5 years if not more but it only lasted 2 and a half years. Heck, when I sent my card to EVGA for a RMA, I was using my trusty 3DFX Voodoo 3 2000 PCI as a temporary replacement. That card is at least 10+ years old and it still works.

As for EVGA's quality control when it comes to shipping back RMA products, it's really a crap shot. I've been reading a lot of threads that people had to RMA their product 3 to 4 times before they were satisfied. Even the video card EVGA sent back to me is questionable and I just wondering how long it’s going to last.
 
Ankle said:
si 1mb something or other - still going the last time the box from 95 was powered up
riva tnt2 - worked for the month I owned it before replacing it with...
gf2 gts - still going to this day
ati radeon 9800 pro - went for a couple years before the fan stopped and it went poof with lots of smoke
evga 7800 gt - dead within a month or two, hard locks everywhere
evga 7900 gt - dead within a year, artifacting with green dots everywhere and triangles sticking out of everything
evga 8800 gts 320 - worked the entire time (about a year) before I replaced it with...
galaxy 8800 gt 512 (g92) - stock memory clock wouldn't hold, red artifacts and hard locks all over within the first month
second galaxy 8800 gt 512 (g92) - exact same problem as the last one
xfx gtx 260 black - worked for about half a year and then the core clock wouldn't hold. hard locks frequently.
replacement xfx gtx 260 black - seems to have the same problem :(

I'll be picking up a xfx radeon 5850 the moment they are available for MSRP or better in Canada. I've had it with all the nvidia cards biting the dust left and right over the past few years across several different builds.
Click to expand...

Damn, you were determined to stay green, eh? I would have switched after the second card, hah.

RamonGTP said:
No, it's nVidia's fault for designing a chipset that ran way too hot. This issue is not limited to HP and it's not an isolated incident by any means, I've had several NF4 boards die on me. I've got one now that works fine for about an hour, then starts going crazy unless I have a fan blowing right on the chipset. Their NF2 chipset for Socket A's was solid though, both in terms of performance, overclocking and reliability, but it's been downhill since then IMO. At least for my Intel builds, I will only use Intel chipsets.
Click to expand...

I guess I lucked out, I've had my Gigabyte NF4 mobo since the NF4s launched (Dec. 04) and it's still running strong with my FX-55 OC'd to 2.8 (small 200 MHz OC from 2.6).

I have yet to have a card die on me, but I've only owned 3 so far;

Sapphire X850 XT PE - Ran great for 1.5 years before I sold it for..
Sapphire X1900 XTX - Still runs great to this day with a 10% OC & stock cooler
Reference GTX 280 - Had since March, it's been Folding 24/7 for a month now

I've been pretty lucky with hardware, the only thing I've ever had die on me is a Thermaltake Pure Power 560W PSU in the last 5 years.
 
My XL800XT PE died a few months ago. Revived by toasting lightly in the oven. Other than that, no video card I've owned has died on me. And that goes all the way back to a VLB Tseng Labs ET3000. But I'm also paranoid, especially with more modern GPUs. I always add an aftermarket cooler and/or fan (a fan let me overclock my Voodoo 1 to 60 MHz instead of 50! Woot!), it's just cheap insurance. My current 8800 GT has a Thermalright HR-03 and silent 90mm fan on it and runs F@H 24/7. It never gets above 40 C and will probably continue on for several more years.
 
Its a crapshoot really, I've had my Viper 770 for over ten years now, and its still running's , as is my Annihilator 2. Actually come to think of it I have never had a video card "die" on me. I guess its all how you take care of them and where or not you get a good batch.
 
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