Vid cards - life expectancy?

[Shinji Ikari]

Not really talking about the "upgrade to the next best thing after three months" kind, more the "grill it till it pops" kind. How long does a video card usually last after vigourous usage, and does o/c'ing it (even with a decent cooling system) make any significant difference at all?

What are the signs of a geriatric graphics system starting to strain with age?

 

[Shinji Ikari]

*bump*

?

 

[Mem]

How long do you want to keep your card for?My TNT1 is still going strong since it came out,overclocking cards can shorten life but not always,how long they last? well that depends on several things like cooling&heatsink used,usage and how much overclocked, no two cards will give you the same life.Normal cards can last a long time in general.So to answer your question noone really knows.

 

[Eli]

LOL ... I have a Orchid Technologys ProDesigner VGA card from 1988.

Full length, 16bit ISA.. 1mb of 100ns DRAM Still works beautifully, I've got it in a P100 @ 133..

 

[Goi]

Ever since my S3 Virge I've been overclocking all my video cards, and they never died on me before they got obsolete, and I don't change video cards that often either.
My overclocked video cards timeline includes S3 Virge->Diamond Stealth S220->Herc TNT->Voodoo3->Voodoo3+Savage4
Not a single problem before they all got obsolete. Currently I'm running my V3 3000 at 175MHz, though it doesn 183MHz and more

 

[Livin4Real]

Most will hold up longer than you want them too. As long as you cool em right overclocking isn't a problem either.

 

[LXi]

The life expectancy for video cards last different times for different people. Im not a big gamer so I usually skip one or two cycles, meaning I upgrade my video card about once every year or a year and a half. Gaming enthusiats who seeks the highest performance for the game they play(usually Quake3, Unreal Tournament, or Half-Life CounterStrike/TFC) will appreciate the power of the new video cards, so they upgrade every cycle, in another words dishing out $300 every 3 months for a new video card.

As far as I've seen overclocking a video card doesnt match the benefit of overclocking a processor. Most of the video cards on the market are very overclockable, but as usual, the results aren't that great. Even though it doesnt make that big of a difference, it's still nice to gain some speed for free.

Nice nickname by the way.