Can a game kill a graphics card?
Well it might be a coincidence that after 3 years warranty the card has expired, but I played Tomb raider on Ultimate settings with my EAH6850 and next day booted up and the card was dead..well on the internet, someone said choosing "Ultra\ultimate" settings in a game is a GPU killer...h'mm can this be true that a game can ruin a GPU as the fans were working and no clogging dust.
And if a game can kill a graphics card what card for about £200 can handle any game at any settings?
Re: Can a game kill a graphics card?
no more so than running 500 applications on a PC could kill your CPU. Technically I supposed it could cause your GPU to overheat but that would be more down to the heatsink and other cooling within your machine.
A GPU killer is simply a term used for when your card can no longer cope with the requirements of the game. Usually this ends up with the frame rate dropping well below a useable level, say to around 4fps, which i believe was the maximum frame rate ever seen in Crysis :)
Re: Can a game kill a graphics card?
The R9 290 and R9 290x cards are hitting that price point.
Re: Can a game kill a graphics card?
I suppose another reason could be if the card was on it's last legs a game on best settings could push it over..oh well time to get another card to replace the temporary 7770 card I've installed but have changed the settings in tomb raider 3 levels down to high.
Re: Can a game kill a graphics card?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
CAT-THE-FIFTH
The R9 290 and R9 290x cards are hitting that price point.
Yes I was looking at another thread that said that card was a good buy, but can't remember whether it was mentioned to wait till the price drops because of the latest cards coming out. I don't mind waiting a few months as other than tomb raider my grandson plays farming simulator 2015 and GTA and will see how the 7770 copes with those.
Re: Can a game kill a graphics card?
+1 on Dareos's & CAT-THE-FIFTH's posts.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
excalibur2
Yes I was looking at another thread that said that card was a good buy, but can't remember whether it was mentioned to wait till the price drops because of the latest cards coming out. I don't mind waiting a few months as other than tomb raider my grandson plays farming simulator 2015 and GTA and will see how the 7770 copes with those.
To me it reads like you can wait but on the flipside there may not be that much of a significant drop in price for you to warrant waiting if you need a new card. I think stock levels have already probably been brought down to low enough levels not requiring flash sales. You may see only a £10-£20 discount near or after launch of new GPUs IMO then ramp up if stock left.
I bought a Sapphire R9 290 Tri-X Jan 15 £225 inc vat & delivery, now 3 months on cheapest I've seen is £201.59 on Scan today only this weekend (if you get free delivery as forum member or £213). I think I've had enough use out of my card to warrant not having waited longer.
The XFX R9 290 4GB Double Dissipation on Scan is a good card IMO, some info I dug up when posting a deal about it on HUK(price 4 weeks ago £217).
Re: Can a game kill a graphics card?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
gupsterg
To me it reads like you can wait but on the flipside there may not be that much of a significant drop in price for you to warrant waiting if you need a new card.
I agree with this in part, but then on the other hand I have to ask the question, how long did it take you to save £200?
If the new R9 3xx cards are released in 3 months time, how much more money would you have been able to save by then. Assuming you are saving at a rate of £50 per month, then it might be possible that in three months from now you could be looking at a budget of £350 instead of £200 meaning that you might be able to get a top tier card at launch, or at least a newer card that supports more of the latest features, uses less power and outperform all current cards at that same price point.
Re: Can a game kill a graphics card?
Well guys I bought the MSI gaming 290 LE from Scan at £203.99...thanks for all your replies.
Re: Can a game kill a graphics card?
Good choice! I'd be happy with the MSI.
When I was reading reviews it was the Asus R9 290 which had cooling transplanted from a nvidia card thus all heatpipes didn't make contact with core plus no contact of heatsink with ram.
Link:- Asus R9 290 heatsink design
Link:- MSI R9 290 heatsink design
Re: Can a game kill a graphics card?
I prefer Asus as a brand, but have got to say that the MSI looks far better, performance wise I only looked at a couple of the benchmarks and both cards seemed to be virtually level in performance on the those games, with no more than a frame or two per second between them.
Re: Can a game kill a graphics card?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
KeyboardDemon
I prefer Asus as a brand, but have got to say that the MSI looks far better, performance wise I only looked at a couple of the benchmarks and both cards seemed to be virtually level in performance on the those games, with no more than a frame or two per second between them.
The Eah 6850 card that died was Asus..can anyone remember how long was the warranty for this card? The reason I chose the MSI gaming card over the XFX was:- it had a good review but am not sure if it's the same card as it has "LE" in the name i.e. R9-290-GAMING-4G LE.
Edit: h'mm looks like warranty is 3 years, amazing how things just outside warranty break down....the throw away society :surprised: ?
Re: Can a game kill a graphics card?
I think the standard Asus warranty on graphics cards is 3 years.
Re: Can a game kill a graphics card?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
KeyboardDemon
I prefer Asus as a brand, but have got to say that the MSI looks far better
Only thing that I'm disappointed with on the Sapphire vs Asus / MSI is no backplate. Even if it don't make huge difference to cooling results it just makes it easier to handle card when installing/removing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
excalibur2
The reason I chose the MSI gaming card over the XFX was:- it had a good review but am not sure if it's the same card as it has "LE" in the name i.e. R9-290-GAMING-4G LE.
The difference between LE & no LE is GPU clocking profiles, RAM is same (5000MHz or 1250MHz x 4). Cooling solution / PCB would be same as well.
profile |
LE |
non LE |
OC Mode |
967MHz |
1007MHz |
Gaming mode |
957MHz |
977MHz |
Silent mode |
947MHz |
947MHz |
Re: Can a game kill a graphics card?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
gupsterg
Only thing that I'm disappointed with on the Sapphire vs Asus / MSI is no backplate. Even if it don't make huge difference to cooling results it just makes it easier to handle card when installing/removing.
The difference between LE & no LE is GPU clocking profiles, RAM is same (5000MHz or 1250MHz x 4). Cooling solution / PCB would be same as well.
profile |
LE |
non LE |
OC Mode |
967MHz |
1007MHz |
Gaming mode |
957MHz |
977MHz |
Silent mode |
947MHz |
947MHz |
Thanks...I tried to find the difference between LE and non LE and gave up.....so I'm guessing the "toughest" games some of you guys play would mean the LE is a bit slower (or whatever the correct term should be).
Re: Can a game kill a graphics card?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
excalibur2
Thanks...
No worries :) .
Quote:
Originally Posted by
excalibur2
I tried to find the difference between LE and non LE and gave up.....so I'm guessing the "toughest" games some of you guys play would mean the LE is a bit slower (or whatever the correct term should be).
That kind of clock difference is only going to make perhaps a frame or 3 at most depending on a game / setting IMO.
View the benchmarks here. Compare the the Asus and Sapphire near the bottom first. Those are the results with the cards factory OC results.
The reviewed Sapphire R9 290 Vapor X is a high pre OC'd card (GPU 1030MHz RAM 5600MHz), see how much FPS difference between it and the Asus R9 290 (GPU 1000MHz RAM 5040MHz).
Then you'll also note near the top end of each chart the Sapphire (OC) results, that's where the reviewer took GPU to 1180MHz and RAM 6600MHz.
Your card should stay cool due to upgraded cooling vs a stock AMD cooler R9 290 but if it starts getting too hot it will throttle and it's GPU won't stay at highest freq. I used MSI afterburner to monitor my R9 290 whilst playing Crysis 3, luckily I had a second monitor handy and could real time view temps/freq. , etc. This meddling / info also allowed me to overclock my card.
Sapphire warranty does cover overclocking as long as you use there own utility (but I think they wouldn't know what I used anyway) dunno what MSI terms are.
Re: Can a game kill a graphics card?
Here's a Factbyte
The initial release of StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty had a design flaw (I hesitate to say 'bug') whereby if you idled on the menu screens, they ran essentially without a frame limit, which would essentially immolate cards!
Blew up my 8800GTS whilst I was on the Armoury screen, looking at the nice animations...