Reliability of 6800 series and modern cards in general

[CrystalBay]

9700Pro bought 10/02 Dead. BFG 6800GT a real hot card, stock cooling , alive and thriving bought 08/04....

 

[Avalon]

My 3+ year old modded Radeon 9500 still works. A friend of mine in Canada is using it now.
My modded Geforce 6800 that I sold still works.
My Geforce 7600GT still works.
My two modded 6200's that I used for that whacky SLI experiement both still work.
My X1900 and X1800GTO still work.

You guys are doing something wrong

 

[Raduque]

My 9700Pro is going strong in my HTPC, 24/7 365. Of my 3 6800s, 1 has died (i'm 90% sure it was my generic "500w" PSU that did it in, though. Said PSU has been tried, convicted and sentenced to the trashcan), the other two are still alive.

Hell, I've had to replace more mobos due to premature death, then I have vidcards.......(K7S5A to MSI K7N2G to MSI K7N2-Delta2 Plat to ECS KT600)

 

[n7]

Leadtek 6800GT is the only card i've ever had die on me.

 

[BobDaMenkey]

Originally posted by: n7
Leadtek 6800GT is the only card i've ever had die on me.

my new one is DOA, Again. I'm fscking sick of leadtek. This is the 3rd time I've had their card come DOA. It "works" but it produces mass artifacts and random letters during POST and horrible artifacts in my desktop.

 

[akshayt]

Does the life really matter?
Most cards come with 3yrs warranty, when are you gonna use that?

 

[ebeattie]

Ill say this, I dont care what card you have gotten, if it isnt BFG, XFX, or EVGA i dont trust it. I laugh at Albatron. If ally ou can afford is a midrange card from Albatron, I can understand, but if you get a flagship card? well, ya get what ya pay for. I will gladly pay a premium for a BFG or an EVGA card cause I know that in the end, my azz is covered. Never had a card go bad.

 

[Deanodarlo]

Well, seems about a 33% failure rate so far! That's pretty damn high although we'd need many more voters for a clearer conclusion. For instance, many of the voters may have overclocked their cards, or be gaming junkies and run them flat out most the time. That would certainly warp the results considerably!

It's not that surprising considering the heat and power requirements of modern cards, but I find the "last a few years and chuck away" mentality a little disturbing considering the price.

It could be that the most expensive part in your PC might be the least reliable! This becomes an issue if you have a few systems like myself and intend to keep one of them long term for playing older games (or home LAN) or want to sell the card on in the future.

Older models seem to go on forever, but of course they were much simpler devices. The only way to kill the older pentium I/II rigs is to chuck them on a skip! Now we're heading towards 1000W PSU's and even more powerful cards I'll have to keep an eye out on reliability and my electricity bill.

 

[imported_RedStar]

There was an article on |H| not so long ago (but too long ago to find it about the premature death of nvidia 7900GT OC cards.

It turns out that most manufacturers were too aggressive in their overclocks. The result is a high number of failure parts. So..some underclocking may be warranted.

 

[BobDaMenkey]

Originally posted by: akshayt
Does the life really matter?
Most cards come with 3yrs warranty, when are you gonna use that?

4 times so far in the past 20 months. Gotta send another one that came DOA as a replacement back, so you can make that 5.