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Video Card Life

S

stelleg151

Senior member
I was told that the only thing on a CPU that decreases the life is an increase in Voltage, so I am wondering if the same is true for a video card. Basically I want to OC without increasing voltage and have the thing last for a while. I am looking at the 6600gt, which supposedly OCs pretty well.
 
I've never had a video card or CPU die because it reached the end of it's life. All chips I've ever used are either of no use anymore, or died because of a known cause (power failure, shorting, etc...)

My parents are still using a PCI Tseng ET6000 video card that I bought about... I dunno, 9 years ago or so? Up until recently my router/fileserver machine was an overclocked Celeron 300A at 450 with an ATi Mach64 based PCI card in it. That card was like 10 years old, and the CPU was about 6 or 7 years old and that machine ran 24x7 for about three years besides the normal use it saw before that.

Longevity of cards and CPUs are a joke. Technology will evolve around them such that they will reach the end of their useful life before they ever die from natural causes, overclocked or not.
 
Awesome Conc, thanks, I think im gonna get some juice out of this 6600gt. Hoping for 9k in 3DMark 03. Wish me luck, course I have to buy my computer first 🙂
 
Heres a simple tip, if you're not ramping up the cooling dont do anything other than a mild overclock.

And yes overclocking will reduce the life of your PC component. several overclocked Celerons have croaked on me, a overclocked Radeon 7000 croaked from overclocking.

The nature of PC boards is all macho, all you hear about are the people bragging about how great an overclocker they are you never hear about the horrible failures.
Remember all those people who bought 5900xt's and insanely clocked them, then when they fried sent them back en masse to the online store.
Hardly anyone posted saying 'oh crap fried my 5900xt from overclocking', only way we found out that so many thousands of people were frying them was because the online vendor refused to swallow the loss and was resending the broken cards out to people.
 
To me what is hilarious is the people who take some pride in OCing results, like it's some "science" they've mastered.

"I added Arctic Silver Secret Goop G-9 to my sinks, and an 80mm exhaust fan to my case and got 427 more points in 3DMark! Do you think I should put this on my resume' and send it to NASA?!"
-Little Joey
Knight of the OCing Clan
Sharky Extreme 3DMark Team

LOL
 
I'm using a 5250 BTU air-conditioner to cool my entire computer and my Sapphire Radeon X800 Pro soft-modded to a Radeon X800 XT PE overclocked some more to 552/592 and my load temps never go over 30 Celsius. As long as you keep the GPU relatively cool overclocking it will do no harm whatsoever.🙂
 
Originally posted by: Rollo
To me what is hilarious is the people who take some pride in OCing results, like it's some "science" they've mastered.

"I added Arctic Silver Secret Goop G-9 to my sinks, and an 80mm exhaust fan to my case and got 427 more points in 3DMark! Do you think I should put this on my resume' and send it to NASA?!"
-Little Joey
Knight of the OCing Clan
Sharky Extreme 3DMark Team

LOL
Click to expand...

I find that stance amusing somewhat. Id feel happy if my overclock was above average.

Overclocking is like playing the Lottery. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose and sometimes you get what you pay for.

If it wasnt for people bragging about overclocks, we wouldnt really have had the idea to do it ourselves and push what we own.
 
Originally posted by: stelleg151
I was told that the only thing on a CPU that decreases the life is an increase in Voltage, so I am wondering if the same is true for a video card. Basically I want to OC without increasing voltage and have the thing last for a while. I am looking at the 6600gt, which supposedly OCs pretty well.
Click to expand...
ANY o/c will decrease the lifespan. . . . .

. . . . Overvoltage decreases its life exponentially. 😉

Re: CPUs, most o/c'ers agree that a ~ +10% voltage increase is around the point of diminishing returns. MOST cpus and gpus will last FAR longer then their USEful lifespan . . . . a mild/moderate voltage increase will usually allow an o/c that will also last longer than the product's usefulness.

A simple o/c will USUALLY not damage anything - unless the cpu/gpu was "marginal" or defective from the manufacturing . . . . but it will VOID your warranty.

Be aware. 😉

 
This is a pretty interesting read. I'm wondering though...

Does overclocking a mobile barton seriously decrease the chip's life? To clarify, in my case, I have my cpu at 11.5x200 at a voltage of 1.6. Which is .05 less than the stock voltage athlon cpu's usually are. Many other people have their's at a similar setting. Does the FSB increase really make that much of a difference? Or could my chip actually last just as long as a normal Athlon xp because of the voltage? Because, technically, I'm running this thing at around a 3300+ xp at a lower voltage than a 3200+ or similar would run at stock. I think at least, I haven't checked what the stock voltages are for awhile.

I'm not worried here. I'm just interested. I hope I'm still not using this chip in a primary pc a few years from now, lol.
 
Originally posted by: Super56K
This is a pretty interesting read. I'm wondering though...

Does overclocking a mobile barton seriously decrease the chip's life? To clarify, in my case, I have my cpu at 11.5x200 at a voltage of 1.6. Which is .05 less than the stock voltage athlon cpu's usually are. Many other people have their's at a similar setting. Does the FSB increase really make that much of a difference? Or could my chip actually last just as long as a normal Athlon xp because of the voltage? Because, technically, I'm running this thing at around a 3300+ xp at a lower voltage than a 3200+ or similar would run at stock. I think at least, I haven't checked what the stock voltages are for awhile.

I'm not worried here. I'm just interested. I hope I'm still not using this chip in a primary pc a few years from now, lol.
Click to expand...

letsee, my memory is not what it used to be . . . .

this topic was beaten to death a couple of years ago in General and CPUs . . . . the conclusion: simply raising the FSB does decrease the CPU's life - HOWEVER, the expected life of a P3/P4 (or Athlon) is ~6-9 years. By then, they are useless antiques. Losing a year or two is no big deal. 😉

OTOH, raising the voltage DOES decrease CPU life exponentially with ~ +10% considered "safe" for its useful life.

(of course, some o/c'ers consider +15% "safe" whereas others consider +5% ok; some will only raise the FSB w/zero voltage increase)

 
The lifespan of electronic components is pretty much inverse exponential to the temperature.

Note that if you overclock a chip then you can get local high temperature points in parts of the chip even though the overall temperature as observed on the outside of the chip looks fine.

So if you make good for the overclocking with first-class cooling then you might not suffer much or at all, but if the local hot spot applies then you can cool from the outside all you want and still burn it out, and have no way to tell.

Also watch out for the overall case temperature. Overclocking your CPU and GPU may lead to higher temperature in your case and hence limit the lifespan of your harddrive and/or power supply even though you don't do anything to these parts. If they are in the same case they suffer along with the parts you mess with.
 
OK so it sounds as though the key factors in reducing the life of parts in order of most damaging are
1. Increase in voltage.
2. Increase in heat.
3. Increase in clock speeds

From this I assume that by keeping the voltage stock and the temps down, a medium overclock PROBABLY wouldnt effect the life of the card much at all.

If anyone has comments please rember, this isnt just the GPU, as most of you seem to be assuming, it is also the ram, and I am interested in how that will be effected as well.
 
Increase in voltage and clock speed don't lead to reduced life directly, only because they cause more heat.

If you manage to get rid of the heat, and if you are sure there are no hot spots hidden below where you can measure, then increase in voltage and clockspeed will not affect the lifespan. That's very theoretical, of course, in practice you cannot be sure you don't have something you cannot observe.

As I wrote above, first thing is to make sure you don't heat up your harddrive and power supply along with your other stuff due to raised case temperature, everything else is far secondary.
 
There are people who actually think running something at max stress, like folding or running 3dgames with minimal airflow increases life of the componants.
 
Would a mobile barton running at 2.2ghz on 1.5v theoretically last as long as an XP 3200+ at 1.65v, you think?
 
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