How often are video cards defective?

[Naer]

Ordered a radeon 7970 months ago from amazon, and it didn't work. Black screen. updated drivers and made sure it was properly seated, still nothing. Returned it for a not so full refund. Was I a special case or these things happen often?

 

[ShintaiDK]

It happens. Not that often tho. But someone has to lose in the statistics game.

 

[tg2708]

Ordered a radeon 7970 months ago from amazon, and it didn't work. Black screen. updated drivers and made sure it was properly seated, still nothing. Returned it for a not so full refund. Was I a special case or these things happen often?

Not at all my 7970 is giving me graphical glitches when I use the bios switch 2, not all the time but continuous use while its doing that will lead to the game crashing but never when doing other things. Slight screen glitches but not very often on stock clocks too. I set up an RMA but will have to do another one because I have games to play .

 

[Abwx]

Set apart the infamous bumpgate GFX i never had or saw
GC fail set apart a GF MX but it was due to faulty electrolytics
capacitors that were used in a lot of gear at the time , once
replaced everything was ok.

 

[frozentundra123456]

I have not had good luck with video cards either. I have not bought a lot, maybe 5 or six since I started gaming, and at least 2, maybe 3 (dont remember exactly) have failed within a year due to fan issues. I havent taken the trouble to RMA them or try to replace the fan, since I generally buy low/midrange cards in the 100.00 price range, so I just replace the card. As far as the actual card itself, I have never had a failure, but the fans have been a source of problems which recurred quite often.

 

[SiliconWars]

I've had so many defective cards I was sure I must have been adding whole numbers to the failure rate.

6600 GT never worked properly, random crashes but I stuck with it.
x1950 Pro had a memory fault (as did my best friends, same issue).
8800 GT fan broke.
HD 4870 fan fault, apparently that was an Asus issue (said the shop).
5850 grey screen of death
I bought two 4770's and I still had one sitting around, I decided to change the TIM then it no longer worked.

Still got an old 5770 working great and my old 6850 is going great too, it's had a TIM change and brought temps down by nearly 20 degrees...

Can't recall the rest, think I might have had a bad 440 MX aeons ago.

 

[Silverforce11]

XFX 7900 series card with their infamous DD cooler is simply horrible and causes VRM temps to overheat, thereby increasing the odds of failure.

Besides these and special circumstances, generally PC hardware seem to have a 1-2% defective RMA rates across the board.