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Why do video cards die so much?

E

Eagle156

2[H]4U
Joined
Jan 21, 2006
Messages
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I've had lots of video cards over the years and there has been maybe 2 that didn't die or start artifcating. I keep my cards around longer than most other people and I've kept them in different systems and different cases, some ran hot or not, but most of them had problems sooner or later. I've never had a motherboard, hard drive, cpu, RAM, or anything else go bad and yet most of my video cards end up dead, so why is this?
 
Bad luck?

I have never had one die on me and in the past, I didn't dust my system as often as I should have either.
 
Bad luck and heat. Over the years i noticed stuff in a hot case dies in a few years while stuff in a good ventilated case lasts many years.
 
i have had only 1 video card die and it was promptly repaired by ATi.....worked fine ever since (Radeon 8500)
 
I think you should try the baking trick if it's out of warranty, I revived my 7900gt and 8800gt that way :D The only real failure I had was a powercolor ati fan dying out and fried the card.
 
Four main reasons.

1. Fans degrade over time.
2. The card is hot to begin with.
3. Dust collects inside the heatsink.
4. Poor quality hardware such as capacitors, voltage regulators, mosfets, PCB, or PWM eventually cause problems.

But at least 80% of the time that video cards die it's because of heat. If you have multiple systems with high end and low end video cards in them you will notice the low end cards tend to last MUCH longer, so long as you get them from a reputable brand. That's the other thing, the board manufacturer brand is very important.
 
I've only ever had one video card half-die on me... (a cap went bad, and the card now lost any directx capability... so it was fine for 2d desktop mostly...)

I have had multiple motherboards die on me, though...
 
Eagle156 said:
I've had lots of video cards over the years and there has been maybe 2 that didn't die or start artifcating. I keep my cards around longer than most other people and I've kept them in different systems and different cases, some ran hot or not, but most of them had problems sooner or later. I've never had a motherboard, hard drive, cpu, RAM, or anything else go bad and yet most of my video cards end up dead, so why is this?
Click to expand...

It's not something that happens often. I had two video cards die on me (EVGA GTX 280 FTW edition), and the ONLY video cards that have died. It had the memory corruption issue, also that was my first "factor overclocked" videocard. I learned my lesson and stick with stock and do it myself :p

Howuch stess are you adding to your overclocking? Are they close to their thermal cap?
 
You can buy new caps online. I bought some dead video cards online before for dirt cheap and revived them by installing new caps that costed only a few dollars ;)
 
Most high end cards are made in Taiwan, not China. Just want to clear that up.
 
I've only had two cards die on me. A GeForce 5200 and a Radeon x1950pro AGP. The former due to a weird driver anomaly and the latter to overheating. The only part that I've never had go bad on me is the CPU. I honestly don't think I've ever had a bad CPU... Is that weird?
 
Never had a card die on me. Had one where the fan started to fail after several years, but I upgraded before it actually died.
 
never had a card die either. I just stuck an MX440 in someones old comp and it works fine. I have a 6600 AGP sitting here that works just fine but has had the fan replaced under warranty. I think the low end card fans themselves can be a problem and when they crap out the card usually is not worth the hassle of sending it in for repair.
 
NaturalViolence said:
Four main reasons.

1. Fans degrade over time.
2. The card is hot to begin with.
3. Dust collects inside the heatsink.
4. Poor quality hardware such as capacitors, voltage regulators, mosfets, PCB, or PWM eventually cause problems.

But at least 80% of the time that video cards die it's because of heat. If you have multiple systems with high end and low end video cards in them you will notice the low end cards tend to last MUCH longer, so long as you get them from a reputable brand. That's the other thing, the board manufacturer brand is very important.
Click to expand...

Don't they all just stick their logos on OEM ones?
 
hedron said:
I've only had two cards die on me. A GeForce 5200 and a Radeon x1950pro AGP. The former due to a weird driver anomaly and the latter to overheating. The only part that I've never had go bad on me is the CPU. I honestly don't think I've ever had a bad CPU... Is that weird?
Click to expand...

Silicon rarely goes bad. As I was mentioning in a previous thread, silicon doesn't usually "die". Capacitors die, fans die, heat kills what it can, but a silicon chip is pretty resilient.

graphics cards have memory chips, voltage regulation, and often the highest heat producer in your computer on them. They are frequently the most stressed part of your system. If you summed up all the problems you have with both motherboards and RAM, it would probably be roughly equal to all the problems you've had with a video card.

Anyways, to the OP, if you have one computer which has been through multiple graphics cards you need to start thinking environmental. What PSU is driving these cards?
 
I have heard the nvidia drivers are killing its video cards, be careful if you are nvidia owner.
 
Had lots of video cards over the years, but none that actually died. That said, I have had probably four or five cards where the fan started failing( two of them actually within the first couple of weeks). Also had a 9800GX2 where the internal crossfire bridge somehow got a little loose, which made it look like it had failed until I opened it up and found the problem.
 
Its true, seems like every page on the video card forum has at least 1 'video card dead? / RMA experience' thread.
Some people say they've had multiple video cards die within months...
Luckily my video cards haven't experienced that but I do get the impression that video cards have a higher fail rate than other components.
 
I've probably built over 30 systems with graphics cards for myself, friends, family, and referrals since I started about eight years ago. Out of all of them, I had one go bad and had to be RMA'd. Most of them were overclocked as well. While I'm not saying everyone's a noob, as there is always a fraction of parts that will be bad just through manufacturing that escape QA, as well as plain shoddy parts (solder on the 8800 series anyone?), I think maintenance and upkeep goes a long way. I usually show people I build for how to use a can of compressed air and tell them to bring their PC's outside every 6 months to a year and blow everything out of them.
 
I clean out my case every 3 months now after pulling out an incredibly dense dust monster from my 8800gt cooler which probably attributed to it dying in the first place.
 
I've only ever had to replace caps on a video card once, a 7600 gs that the fan died on.
 
fullvietFX said:
The only videocard that has ever died on me was my old Geforce 4 Ti-4200.
Click to expand...

Same here...

Well, I did have a 7600GS blow a cap like a day after it got to the person that bought it so technically not on my watch although I did still make it right.
 
Because GPUs are the most stressed components in a system. They take up the most power, produce the most heat, and are stressed far more often than CPUs.

Chinese made crap.
Click to expand...
Technically everything made in Taiwan, which means each and every GPU IC chip, is Chinese made.
 
25 video cards since 1995 ( all alive in a special ) video card Zoo ..none ever died ...sheeze
 
I've never had a video card die on me (still have working PCI kicking around) but the fan on my XFX 4870 did fizzle out like a bad fart. Of course the XFX warranty made me rest easy (mostly ;) ).
 
Must be bad luck.

Especially considering I was pretty heavy into modding cards (soldering different resistors on GPU's to change function and making voltage dividers for overclocking for a few dozen cards and numerous people)... The only card I ever had die on me ever was a TNT2 Ultra, and it happenned less than two days after I bought it new, so it was replaced with no issues.
 
I'd check case airflow, dust, and if the PSU is working as it should under load.
 
I've had one of almost everthing die... GPU, memory, motherboards, hard drives... you name it I've probably killed one :p Must be the luck of the draw!
 
djBon2112 said:
I've had one of almost everthing die... GPU, memory, motherboards, hard drives... you name it I've probably killed one :p Must be the luck of the draw!
Click to expand...

Have you ever killed an Intel CPU?
 
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