Serious reliability problems with Nvidia Graphics cards

[Ares202]

Ok so this was brought to my attention yesterday when my friends pc was not responding i quickly realized it was his MSI 8800gt that he has owned for about six months and I began to look back on my own history of graphics cards and how unreliable Nvidia graphics cards have been in the last 6-7 years

TI 4600 (faulty) - always had problems with this card since i had it out of the box, would run a game then after about 2 munites with BSOD then restart the pc, changed to radeon 9200SE

9200 SE - ran fine for around 1 1/2 years traded this in for an fx-5200 (bad move)

FX 5200 (faulty)- worked for about 8 months then randomly died when playing battlefield 2

9500 pro - still working to this day on a 24/7 server, ran for about 1 year as my desktop gave it to my brother used for about 3 years as desktop

7800gt - ran fine for just over a year, exchanged for 7900gs

7900gs (faulty)- ran fine for 8 months then the vram capacitor started to overheat had serious artifact's had to replace

x1950gt - good card worked well for 8 months, sold on eBay no complaints

8800gt - still working 1 year 3 months old

4870 - still working 6 months old

So thats 3/5 Nvidia graphics cards that have failed me, and 0/4 ati in the last six years, i would call that a serious reliability issue from the low to high end and enough of an issue to make me think twice about buying a Nvidia graphics card again, some of these cards were not under warranty so i had to fork out of my own pocket to replace them

Is this just me being terribly unlucky or is this a common issue with graphics cards?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Many of the companies that produced NV-chipset boards, utilized some sort of cost-cutting on their products. Oftentimes, the 2D output was significantly less sharp than on ATI cards as well.

Contrast that to ATI cards of the day, in which, I believe, ATI produced for their vendors, in order to ensure quality. So there was no cost-cutting allowed.

Things have changed since then, now some vendors (Sapphire, for one) are allowed to produce their own ATI-based cards, so there is some cost-cutting at work again in ATI products, whereas on the NV side, many of the vendors just resell cards that NV produced (reference heatsink designs, etc.) There are still many NV vendors that produce their own cards, and do their own cost-cutting as well. Asus, for one.

 

[Skunkwourk]

The only cards that died on me were a 9500 Pro and a 6800GT.

 

[DaveSimmons]

My geforce 2, geforce 3, fx5900, 7900gtx all lasted many years. My 6800 needed an RMA but it was a custom passive cooling version that overheated so it's not nvidia's fault. The replacement with a better heatpipe is still working AFAIK (sold it).

So my anecdote contradicts yours

 

[spittledip]

My 9500 pro died on me after about 1.5 years and I used my old mx 4000 (that the 9500 had replaced) and it is still working fine to this very day. My x800 and 2900 pro have not given me any problems.

 

[Emo]

I must have been lucky with nVidia cards since I still have overclocked eVGA 8800GTS, 6800GT and even an old Geforce3 Ti 200 running in various computers around the house. I have tried several ATI products over the years and they are not bad but I didn't like the driver issues. With that said, I am still on the fence whether to get a 1gb 4870 or GTX260.

 

[chizow]

No significant premature hardware failures here. I had a 6800GS that I sold after a few years that arrived DOA and my 9700pro died after 3.5 years after the fan crapped out. Normally I don't keep parts more than 1.5 years or so.

 

[Arkaign]

You're doing it wrong

I've never had a video card die, and I've had dozens. Of course, I don't overclock them.

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: Arkaign
You're doing it wrong

I've never had a video card die, and I've had dozens. Of course, I don't overclock them.

Every ATi card I've ever owned exploded and and burned up my case, usually after drinking my best whisky and having it's way with my cat.




LOL- I've owned and used literally dozens and dozens of ATi, NVIDIA, S3, 3DFX, Tseng, and probably more types of cards and never had one fail.

Haven't really had significant driver issues with any for years either.

If the OP isn't OCing, I'd say he's hit some lottery-esque odds for product failure. NVIDIA would be out of business instead of leading the market if this was common.

 

[videogames101]

As much as I am usually a crazy ATI fanboy on here, I would disagree that Nvidia has anymore hardware failures or driver issues then any other company...

(which isn't many)


Except with that nvidia notebook gpu crap, but thats an extreme example.

 

[Wreckage]

Never had a video card problem (ATI, NVIDIA, 3DFX, S3, Cardex, Cirrius Logic, etc.) I did blow through 2 PSUs recently a few hard drives and I lost a motherboard once. Although I have bought, sold and used 1000's of parts.

 

[Cookie Monster]

Even my Geforce MX 440 is still going strong for 6 years now.

 

[SickBeast]

They only video card I've ever known to blow up was an old ATI 9600 non-pro. My friend overclocked it too high, and it overheated, probably due to the fact that it used a passive heatsink.

I don't think NV or AMD have quality problems with their products. They seem quite durable.

 

[Flipped Gazelle]

I dislike both companies equally - they've both screwed customers repeatedly over the years - but, so far, I've not had a video card go bad.

 

[MalVeauX]

Heya,

I've been using nVidia since the Riva TNT series. I overclock the hell out of them and abuse them. Never had one die on me. I still have a few just collecting dust (old Geforce 2's, etc). There's nothing wrong with nVidia at all. Sounds to me like you just had a series of bad luck events, OR perhaps your various power supplies/motherboards were faulty and handled power badly and shorted your boards prematurely.

Very best,

 

[zerocool84]

I've only had to RMA one Nvidia card. It was a BFG 6800nu AGP that I unlocked. It died about 2 weeks after and got another one that worked fine.

 

[MagickMan]

WTF do you people do with your cards?

I've owned countless cards in the last 20 years and not had one go tits up.

 

[kylebisme]

i had a Radeon 9800XT which seemed to work fine until it came up agaisnt Doom 3 which caused nasty artifacts, and returned a HD4870 which had a defective video decoder, but the 3 other Radeons I've owned over the years were solid. Never had an issue with the three Geforce cards I've owned.

 

[BFG10K]

The only video cards I've ever had that failed were the 8800 GTS 640 MB and the 8800 Ultra, both after about one year of use and both using the G80 core.

 

[AnonymouseUser]

I've owned only Nvidia cards since my first card which was a Diamond Stealth PCI card. Have not had a single video card die on me, not even the Stealth, and I've owned quite a few (GF2MX, GF2GTS (fan died), GF3Ti200, GF4Ti4200, GF6800 (x2), GF8800GS). In the same time I've had quite a few motherboards and hard drives croak, and even some RAM go bad.

 

[apoppin]

i lost a few ATi cards
... 9800xt .. x850xt .. ASUS HD4870/1GB




i had a 8800GTX fry on me also .. but it was that stupid Peltier cooler that almost took my PS and MB with it

it happens to the best of HW

 

[SlowSpyder]

I've had only one card (well two since they sent me a bad RMA replacement) fail on me. It was my BFG GeForce 6800 nonGT/nonUltra.

I also had a Radeon 7200 crap out on me, but so did most of the rest of the computer as I learned the hard way the value of a good surge protector during a lightning storm. Can't really blame the card on that one.

That's been it for me in about ~10 years of PC gaming with probably a 66.6/33.3 ratio of GeForce to Radeon cards. I wouldn't be afraid to buy either brand... well, except maybe a GeForce on a laptop.

 

[JAG87]

I had a radeon 8500 die on me, a 9800 pro die (infamous fan), and an X850 pro vivo flashed to xt pe artifact after a while (okok, that card was abused, doesn't count). All the cards were sapphire (hint hint), all the RMAs were stressful and took forever.

But I've never had an nvidia card die yet. Appearently I sold a BFG 7900GTX which artifacted... I offered the buyer money back or help to get it RMA. Turns out he didn't need help to RMA, BFG support kicks so much ass they overnighted him a new card with no invoice and without asking questions.

So between the two, in the remote chance that you do have problems, I'd much rather deal with nvidia partners (the almighty EVGA) than deal with $APPHIRE, who charges fees to get your RMA processed.

 

[zagood]

Originally posted by: apoppin
i had a 8800GTX fry on me also .. but it was that stupid Peltier cooler that almost took my PS and MB with it

lol...I remember way back when you were digging for info on the 6800nu vs. 6800le. How far you've come.

I've had a 9500 and 9800pro die on me, a 9000pro that still works, and all my nV cards have been fine and put up with upping the voltage, overclocking, heatsink switches, sitting in the back of my truck...

-z

 

[Leyawiin]

Since 2003 (the year I started playing games and needing a dedicated graphics card) I've owned four Nvidia boards (one by BFG, three by EVGA). I've also owned three ATI boards (one Tyan, the other two ATI branded). The only card that ever failed was an ATI X800 XL.

I think you've been unlucky. We don't know how you use your cards either. OC them, flash the BIOS, whatever. You also mentioned your friends six year old MSI Nvidia failed. Six years is a heck of a long time to use a card and about that time MSI got in a lot of hot water (lawsuits) for using bad capacitors on their cards. Wasn't Nvidia's fault.