Gfx Lifespan...

[bsodmike]

Hi all,

This might be a bit of a random topic for some but I've had a chance to reflect over the past few years when I was really into gaming on PCs.

It all started ages go with my first gfx purchase, a Matrox Millenium card, followed by a Voodoo 3, TNT2 Ultra, couple nVidias (GF2 etc) and ATi 9600 pro something.... And today all these cards have given up the ghost at some point, but not the Matrox. It's STILL to this very day running albeit not so great when you want to move a window across the screen etc.

Also work demands that I get a new gfx but I feel silly shelling out anything over 50quid considering it'll most probably be dead in a couple months to a year max. Has anyone else had a similar exp, or is it just me?

[Spud1]

I tend to find that almost nothing really 'breaks' of it's own accord in any of my computers, things just get replaced (or broken by me doing stupid things like giving my computer a drink of coffee etc).

So to this end I still have my old Voodoo3 running in my sisters PC with no problems, an old diamond stealth graphics card (with an S3 Virge Chip) running in an old pc running slackware...my old GF2MX I sold to a friend who still has it working...the ones in between I dont know about but have been sold on In fact the *only* card to ever die on me has been my one and only sapphire card (radeon X800), and thats currently away on it's second RMA.

Certainly seems that the older cards were more reliable, but I'm sure there are plenty of other factors

[Syd]

I too have found GPU's to be genrally very reliable, I have a GeeForce 256 that still works fine, and most of the cards I have upgraded from have been sold on and are probably still in use. Only fasilure was a Saphire 9800PRO which was RMA'D.

However I have had a few MoBos fail on me.

[Spud1]

Oh yeah Motherboards I have had loads fail...usually ASUS ones (particularly the asus A7N8X Nforce 2 board, the first 2 I owned had fauly bios chips that managed to wipe themselves [one day I would turn on the system, and it would power - but nothing, no post, no beeps, just nothing..RMA revealed a bios chip with nothing on it..])

The cheap ones I used to buy were just as bad, the terrible ALI chipset based ones (urgh) or various other budget ones...good job I have learnt my lesson from those boards

[Mike Fishcake]

Oh yeah Motherboards I have had loads fail...usually ASUS ones

That is surprising, at work we've used hundreds of Asus boards over the years and have had far, far less failures with Asus than any other brand. Weird.

Anyway - the graphics cards i've had seem to have been pretty reliable, but then again I always go for low end stuff because I don't do any 3D things.

[Lee H]

I think theres is a lot of contributing factors here that can be attributed to cards failing.

Overclocking : This is becoming more and more popular as people become more educated. Who overclocked their very FIRST PC system apart from Rys as he's a superhuman and tweaks everything?

I know for certain that I didn't even touch FSB's, multipliers, voltages etc on my 486 until I read loads on the web and left it until it was struggling to run the software that was coming out.

The same applies to graphics cards. Years ago we all probably didn't clock our cards as games progressed at a very slow pace. Nowadays - this is not true. Each and every week we hear rumours of a new engine that's better than all the rest, has better 3d features and supporting features like HDR and other lighting effects.

Also, we never had 3DMark back in the old days. Now - people increase their clock and core speeds all the time so they can get extra 3D marks to make their "e-penis" bigger and get 127 fps in Quake 4 as opposed to 112 fps

I'll admit it now - I used to do it and clock the hell out of my graphics just to get a few extra points on 3dmark and wind my friends up all the time. Now however, I've got to the point that I think " Hey it runs fine, it's got AA on and HDR and has 89 FPS - that will do me instead of tweaking and getting 94 FPS "

Also, I feel heat is playing a part. As the parts get smaller and smaller in nm, they are getting warmer and warmer. Look at the geforce cards for example which throttle after 120 Degree's

My first graphics card never even had a fan - it was a small metal block and rarely got warm at all. Now - I'm luckly to see them both at 40 degree's idle.

Anyway - that's my 2p's worth for today

[Syd]

Oh yeah Motherboards I have had loads fail...usually ASUS ones (particularly the asus A7N8X Nforce 2 board, the first 2 I owned had fauly bios chips that managed to wipe themselves [one day I would turn on the system, and it would power - but nothing, no post, no beeps, just nothing..RMA revealed a bios chip with nothing on it..])

The cheap ones I used to buy were just as bad, the terrible ALI chipset based ones (urgh) or various other budget ones...good job I have learnt my lesson from those boards

LOL I has 2 'delux' Asus Nforce2 boards fail on me, 1 lost a IDE port 1 just died.

[schmunk]

Who overclocked their very FIRST PC system apart from Rys as he's a superhuman and tweaks everything?

I did - my P120 really flew when OC'd to 133MHz