Since so many components on the Mobo can die and a few even leave the board semi-functional, There isn't a definitive answer, other than that either the entire board will fail or just some of the features. For instance, I had a FIC 503+ a few years back that had a partially fried FSB that would work great as long as you didn't go past 87mhz, any more and it would just roll over and play dead. Anyways, you'll probably upgrade before you have a "hard" failure