Life Expectancy of Geforce 460 Overclock/Overvolt

[Blitz1776]

Just wonder how shortened a lifespan my GPU's will have if I go ahead and Overvolt to 1.087 and try to get up to those 900+ overclocks etc.

 

[RussianSensation]

Considering most GTX460s run at stock voltage of 0.975V - 1.025V, you are looking at a voltage increase of 11% which isn't much. It should easily last long enough before it is too slow.

Get the XFX or EVGA for limited lifetime warranty if you are concerned about failure.

 

[Blitz1776]

Cool, just wanted to make sure upping the voltage wouldn't lower my gpu's to less than two years 😛. Thanks Russian

 

[BD231]

Yeah Russian has it right, GPU's are not like CPU's in that they're made to deal with typically higher temps.

Keep your temps in check , keep an eye out for artifacts (down clock if you find them) and you'll be fine.

 

[Blitz1776]

Guess it doesn't really matter much anyway 😛, seems at least one of my cards is a dud in fullmark, at 830 MHZ stock voltage it craps out within 3 mins, at 825 Core with 1900 MHZ Memory (Bumped it once I found where it dies), I get 88 Celsius at 100% load. So even if I could overclock it more, heat probably limit it. Ah well at least I got 25 MHZ from my original overclock settings though my memory clock went down from 2000 to 1900 (although I could probably get it back up to 1950)

 

[SHAQ]

I depends on the stock VID. 1.087v is a lot to a .95v stock card and not so much to a 1.025v VID card. I haven't seen much benefit to going higher than .05v over stock. I have tested 3 of them so YMMV. I believe my .95v card was getting red artifacts in the Crysis bench when I maxxed the voltage, but it will do 750 core at stock volts so I left it there. About 800 seems to be the limit on stock air cooling anyway. Most of the stress to the GPU is getting that last 5% and I'm sure that will degrade it more than 5% faster than it would otherwise.

 

[tweakboy]

It will go for years just like every video card in history as long as you dont finger it too much. It will go for 10 years. At 90c and up on load 8 years maybe.. gl

 

[mindless1]

With that modest voltage increase you won't have voltage related damage but rather temperature related damage. I can't agree that GPUs are able to withstand higher temperatures, nor that they last longer running at any particular temperature... rather they are more conservatively clocked so they stay stable at higher temperatures... till you o'c the heck out of them.

Generally speaking for long life you want a video card to stay under 70C, but everyone's definition of long life will vary particularly for gaming use. I do suspect it will last longer than two years if kept under 90C, unless the fan craps out early.

On the contrary a more serious problem with GPUs than CPUs is broken solder balls since they are directly soldered to the PCB instead of in a socket. That didn't used to be as much of a problem but these days the huge power state changes cause so much expansion and contraction of materials that do not have the same coefficient of expansion.