Video Card life expectancy?

T4rd said:
Damn, you were determined to stay green, eh? I would have switched after the second card, hah.
Click to expand...

I would have to but at the time there was a few issues preventing me from going ATi:
1) Back then FSAA didn't work in windowed games with ati drivers. Frame rate would just drop to 1fps
2) This monitor has no 1:1 option to get rid of scaling and ati's drivers didn't have display scaling like nvidia
3) Prices at NCIX. The nvidia cards were always far better value for the money in the sales at NCIX. :(

I'm hoping the 5850 drops down to MSRP at NCIX or Newegg.ca so I can grab one. After all this I've had it and the first two issues are long since dead.
 
5900 ultra, bought 6 years ago, and still goin strong in my parent's PC. They don't game tho :)
 
The day you bought your card it was dead for a week already:eek:
 
I have more problems losing drives than all other hardware combined.

Here's my list.

ATI Rage 2 Pro... Got a bunch (30) of them from an office cleanout, 2 are dead.
Voodoo3 3000 AGP... Still works and is sitting in a machine in the closet.
GeForce 2 PCI... Still works afaik, in a machine given to family.
GeForce 4 440MX PCI... Worked for 3 years until it got "lost". I have no idea where it went.
GeForce FX5200 PCI... Still works and was still used up until a several months ago.
GeForce FX5200 PCI #2.. Worked fine till a lightning strike killed it. Refuses to show video.
GeForce FX5200 AGP... Worked until the machine it was in was stolen by my friends roommate.
GeForce 6600GT... Bought 1 week after the 66xx series was released. Survived 3 builds, watercooling mishap, getting dropped, SMD fell off (that I re-soldiered) only to die by a power supply 2 years ago.
GeForce 7300GT... Had 9 months until it started blowing caps and died. replaced with 2nd hand
GeForce 6600.. Still works but has a couple bulging caps.
ATI HD4870... Had 3 days so far.... Hope it lasts longer than 3 years.

Maybe ATI will treat me better.

For clarity though, only a few cards were in the same machine as I've always kept multiple machines around.
 
JaguarSKX said:
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.
Click to expand...


Now that is funny, the EXACT same thing is happening with my x1900xtx also.
One day loaded a game, ran fine, switch to a different level and pc froze and rebooted, then started getting artifacting in bios screen on bootup and it would go into windows but then would crash just in windows after about 20-30 min.... now waiting for 5870 when i get paid on the 9th. Using my laptop for now.
 
Looks like my geforce 480 has finallly bit the dust. I was playing tf2 when all of a sudden the colors got all screwy and then the game crashed. Rebooted comp and im getting artifacts and bright colors in desktop. Funny I googled life expectancy of videocards and discovered my old thread here. So this 480 lasted me a little over three years
 
I had a lot of video cards starting from a 12MB Voodoo 2.
The only one that died was an X1950 XTX. Seems like the thermistor died and the card would unknowingly run at extremely high temperatures because the automated fan profile wouldn't ramp because it didn't know it was getting hot. When I got graphical corruption the first time the damage was already done. I ran a manual fan profile for a while until a new card arrived. It minimized the corruption but it still persisted
 
Yes I know this thread is three years old. If you read my post you would see that I did a search on google and found this old thread I created and decided to respond to it. This is sort of chronicling the life cycle of my videocards which seem to die like clockwork every 2-3 years. I was actuallying telling my gf the other day that it was getting close to upgrade time but my card was still kicking and runs everything just fine.
 
I have an old laptop with a 9200 64mb mobility radeon ~ 2003 still going strong running #Crunchbang Linux. Also have a 8800M GTX ~ 2007 that I use as an HTPC running Ubuntu. Those are the longest lasting GPU's I have ever had. Hope this 780 lasts half as long.
 
Since this doesn't technically count as a necro ;)

It depends on the component really, but life expectancy of hardware varies by what component it is, and which manufacturer as well :p
My collective experience (myself plus people I know work/with) goes roughly as follows:

CPUs: At least 10-20 years (either brand)
Motherboards: 6-36 months (Asus), 2-8 years (other brands, Gigabyte, MSI etc)
RAM: 3-10 years
Graphics cards (reference design): 2-6 years (nvidia), 5-15 years (AMD)
Graphics cards (non-reference): 6-36 months (typical), 3-10 years (certain models)
Power supplies (cheap brands): Nil at rated ouput, 6-18 months at low load
Power supplies (decent brands): 3-10 years
Hard disks (Seagate [up to 2012]/WD): 4-10 years
Hard disks (Samsung/Maxtor): 2-4 years
SSDs (OCZ): 4-18 months
SSDs (Corsair, Kingston, etc.): 12-36 months
SSDs (Samsung, Intel): 3+ years
Optical drives: 2-5 years
Monitors: 3-10 years

Generally speaking unless you get quite lucky, even if you pay close attention to what hardware you buy, you're looking at an average of probably 4 years ish before components break. If you buy stuff solely based on reviews (as a new product) and specification, then the average is more like 2-3.
This of course doesn't consider infant mortality rates of hardware, which for certain items can be quite significant. It also doesn't account for 'lemon products' that are produced by reputable brands, but just happen to suck as products for reliability. The WD Velociraptor is one example, with a typical lifetime usually measured in months, versus fairly solid scores for the rest of the range (both desktop/laptop disks).
Generally speaking, CPUs are bombproof unless you start messing with them, overvolting etc. I've only ever seen one, possibly two defective CPUs in my time. Motherboards are probably the weakest point, there's precious few boards that have worked as-new beyond the 3 year mark, even if what lets them down is some USBs stop working, or the onboard NIC starts dropping packets like mad, there's so much on a motherboard to go wrong, it's rare they work as intended for that long. That said, I single Asus out because the faults are typically more serious (No POST, or system instability at stock with no peripheral devices connected). That plus the fact that the life expectancy is so dramatically short.

Graphics cards (which I suppose is what you actually asked for!) are a mixed bag. Generally, reference cards are more reliable than non-reference, simply because the quality of manufacture is much higher. Even from the better brands, you can clearly tell how cheap they are by how easily the coolers bend etc, and it's no surprise that the DOA rates are far higher, and the lifetimes much shorter.
This said, nvidia's reference designs can sometimes be quite poor as well (The G80, G92 and GTX460 being a case in point), so you don't always know how you'll fare there either. Generally most Geforces tend not to last beyond obsolescence in my experience. With AMD, the non-reference cards are typically similarly short lived, but proper reference designs will last for ages. What you think of the software (or the fan noise!) is another matter, but from a hardware standpoint, the AMD reference design is as good as they come for longevity.

This comes from far more people's experiences than mine, but to give you a summary:

1999 ATI Rage Pro onboard IGP: Survived, retired at 3 years
2002 Sparkle Geforce 4 MX440 PCI: Survived, retired at 2 years
2004 Sapphire Radeon 9200 AGP: Survived, but upgraded at 6 months
2004 Sapphire Radeon X800 Pro AGP: Survived, retired at 2 years
2006 Sapphire Radeon X1900XT: Survived, used for 6 years, still used periodically
2007 Sapphire Radeon X1600 Pro (non-ref): Survived, still in use at 6 years
2007 Powercolor Radeon HD3870: Destroyed by application of defective Arctic Accelero S2
2007 Sapphire Radeon HD3870 Low Profile (non-ref): Failed after 3 days
2008 AMD Review Sample HD4870: Survived, passed to another user who passed it on again after 2 years
2008 AMD Review Sample HD4870X2: Survived, retired at 2 1/2 years
2008 Sapphire Radeon HD4870X2: Survived, sold after 2 years, retired by new owner after further year, cooler degraded
2009 XFX Radeon HD4830 (non-ref): Survived, still in use at 4 years
2010 Sapphire Radeon HD5970 4GB (non-ref): DOA
2010 Sapphire Radeon HD5970 4GB (non-ref): DOA
2011 XFX Radeon HD6970: Survived, still in use at 3 years
2011 XFX Radeon HD6970: Survived, still in use at 3 years
2012 MSI Radeon HD7770 (non-ref): Survived, still in use at 1 year

Not too many failures in there, but the alarm bells should be ringing about non-reference cards.
Allegedly, Sapphire were refusing to accept the HD5970s back from the retailer because "we hand test these, they definitely work", but the retailer confirmed diagnosis (separate issue for each card) and refunded me on them.
 
I've never had a desktop video card die. Even after failing fans and heatsinks falling completely off. I did had a card in a laptop go bad when the fan died though, oven trick revived it.

Funny thread revival OP.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top