Nvidia cards, do they still die?

[SilentDeath]

6 or 7 years ago is a bit too old to be usefull no? the reported fails are all within the last 2 years? mostly within the last year (G80+ are the admitted faults). I have been reading up today on what was affected...


I think the g200 series is maybe a bit too new to tell, most faulty cards were either at the extreme end (laptops, high temperature, etc..) or took over a year to show up. G200 is not that old yet.

Except that my friend plays WAY too much of a mmorpg and leaves his pc on while at work... so his 6 month old card really is feeling a year old.

And it died this week. Loading up a game the screen went off, and after restart there was huge video corruption.

Really I am not buying a new card (but I do very much need one, I think the 40nm parts or dx11 will tempt me sometime this year!) but my friend will be getting his replaced by rma.



So the question is, after having 3 nvidia cards die on him in the last year (the 8800gts was 6 months ago around august, laptop in january I think, and then the 280gtx this week) - should he accept a 4th nvidia card as an rma replacement?
The chances of it dying again in a year, under heavy daily use are quite high, yes?

Would a retailer have the right to say that he can only have a replacement nvidia card?


Note that we (I typically build/fix his computer) have not had anything else die, ever. Most old stuff gets given to freinds to be reused (my athlon 1700+'s are still going 8 years on? mine was running 2.4ghz for most of its life too :O )

[TAKTAK]

I've only ever had 1 graphics card failure, and that was a 6200, my current GTX260SSC (55nm with the smaller cooler ) runs 100% load 24-7 (folding for HEXUS) and i haven't had any problem with it what-so-ever.

Neither is any more likely to fail, but failures do happen...

Some people are just unlucky TBH...

Unless of course, his PSU is being weird and outputting dirty power to the PSU, but that would show up in other areas

[Agent]

3 cards in a year means he is either very unlucky, or there is some other issue here like TAKTAK suggests.

It certainly isn't the norm. NV wouldn't be in business if it was.

[jim]

3 cards in a year means he is either very unlucky, or there is some other issue here like TAKTAK suggests.

It certainly isn't the norm. NV wouldnt be in subiness if it was.

I didn't even know they were in subiness. Heck, I don't even know what subiness is!

[rufeo]

the 6/7 years was just to say that not all has been rosy with nvidia. i think laptop equivalents are a bit unfair to use as a comparison, the airflow in a desktop is on the whole better than a laptop and also temps wise.

i used my 8800gts for about a year, i gamed alot and the computer was on almost 24/7. only times i switched off was when i knew i was going to be away for at least a few days. still it never had anything wrong with it. sold it to a member on hexus last year and hopefully its still going strong. same thing with my current card, approaching almost a year with no probs.

failures are bound to happen, its the luck of the draw. i know some people are really unlucky and some very very lucky (my friend has never had a dead pixel on any of his monitors, thats at least 4 or 5 that i know of). so having loads of the same brand dying might just be coincedence.

not sure if a retailer has the right to say only nvidia cards, but I believe that most places will replace like for like. only time i've had a different type/brand was the ti 4400 being replaced with a radeon 9600. that was from evesham as i bought the desktop from them and the regional repair guy only had radeons on hand at the time.

[SilentDeath]

Well I appologise, it appears I am wrong :O

If somone could please explain this:

computer had been on most of the day running everquest2, then we loaded up crysis, not played for a year or so (old install).
After the intro video at the end of the loading screen, the monitor went off.
Restarting the pc, gave bright flashing random colours/corruption.
Reseating the card, checking everything we could think of did not help.

5 hours later, same problem.

Today before packaging for rma we plugged it back in.
It did turned on, without corruption and it booted to windows, then monitor went off.

It restarted ok and got to windows again and since it has worked perfectly, 3dmark06/vanguard, everquest2 and crysis.


Maybe it has temporarily fixed itself due to the warrenty still being valid? thats my opinion :O

I guess the current nvidia cards have nothing wrong with them.

[Swiftes]

I find I have more trouble with Nvidia cards when I overclocked the memory too much, and pushed it too far.

[Agent]

I find I have more trouble with Nvidia cards when I overclocked the memory too much, and pushed it too far.

Yeah, pushing anything too far tends to break stuff

[rufeo]

I find I have more trouble with Nvidia cards when I overclocked the memory too much, and pushed it too far.

This is a good point.... My computer with the 8800gts 640mb was fine when i had my cpu overclocked to 3.5ghz and the ram to 1167mhz, but after a few months of being totally stable it suddenly crashed all the time with no pattern. sometimes gaming for a few hours was fine, other times just loading up a game would cause the whole comp to crash. even worse sometimes just on the desktop with nothing opened or running it would crash......

unclocked everything and it was fine, then went through the whole overclocking process to find a stable spot again. so that might be a cause if your friends pc is overclocked.

the bright flashing lights/corruption could be due to the ram on the gfx card overheating.....

but since you've already rma'ed, hopefully the new card will be ok. try looking into the potential problems that people have suggested if you have problems again (that is if you haven't already)

[SilentDeath]

I think were gonna cancel the rma, it appears mostly fine but theres a few things like playing video, some flashing/corruption especially when resizing a video window.

I doubt they would accept it as faulty now? its unlikely to show any problem on the tests they run.

Has not been overclocked :O

[DanceswithUnix]

Flashing/corruption sounds to me like faulty video ram.

My 7900GT died like that, the fan only cooled half the ram (common fault on the board designs at the time I think).

If he keeps getting card falling over, could it be that the case temperature is too high? I have a habit of re-using old parts as long as possible, and finally realised my case was designed for a 166MHz Pentium and the airflow really wasn't helpful for reliability in a modern system. Enter one Antec 300 case and the machine is actually quieter now as the fans don't have to work so hard as well as all the components being cooler.

[Rollo]

Yeah, but that's because it's an XFX

I often buy XFX- just bought a GTX260C216, bought one of their 9800GX2s, a 7950GX2, a 6800GT- all still going strong.

XFX offers double lifetime warranty, so whoever you sell it to gets a lifetime warranty as well. I don't think any other vendor offers that good of a warranty.

[Agent]

I often buy XFX- just bought a GTX260C216, bought one of their 9800GX2s, a 7950GX2, a 6800GT- all still going strong.

XFX offers double lifetime warranty, so whoever you sell it to gets a lifetime warranty as well. I don't think any other vendor offers that good of a warranty.

Don't know what it's like over in the US, but XFX are notoriously unreliable here....well certainly for the people that I know who have brought them. I've literally lost count of how many of their cards I've had fail on me. Never again

[Rollo]

Don't know what it's like over in the US, but XFX are notoriously unreliable here....well certainly for the people that I know who have brought them. I've literally lost count of how many of their cards I've had fail on me. Never again

I don't know of any problems with XFX, but even if there were, it wouldn't matter. With double lifetime, you're covered even if you're the second owner.

I only buy XFX if newegg has stock.

[TooNice]

I don't see no double lifetime warranty here in the UK (more like 24 months). There are known to be cheap and cheerful but you are in trouble if they fail you over here (even in DoA scenarios).

[moogle]

I don't see no double lifetime warranty here in the UK (more like 24 months). There are known to be cheap and cheerful but you are in trouble if they fail you over here (even in DoA scenarios).

Doesn't seem to be any lifetime warranty for us.

WARRANTY PERIOD: XFX warranties hardware Product for a period of one (1) year from purchase from an authorised XFX reseller (proof of purchase will be required).

Although XFX says one year only, Scans XFX pages say 24