Lately it seems like a lot of the blogs that I visit on a regular basis are having trouble with their graphics card failing. And it looks like I’m close to joining them. What I can’t put my finger on is why so many and all at the same time?
It could be that today’s games are pushing the latest wave of video cards to the limit and causing them to burnout faster. Faster/more processing, more heat (from all parts), more electricity; you name it.
But it can’t solely be the games. Some bloggers rarely touch a game with heavy graphical loads, and their card is still failing. Could it be the complexity of today’s video cards? Some of these puppies are huge with loads of memory, giant fans, and their own venting. As with anything, the more complex they are, the more there is to go wrong.
A decent graphics card is not cheap. At $200 a pop, your average gamer is not looking to replace their card every year, but at the rate they’re failing, it’s beginning to become more common. My current card, a GeForce 8600GT, is less than a year old. I do NOT want to replace it already, but if I want to play my MMO’s I have no choice.
April 7, 2009 at 7:55 AM
Having just replaced my 8800 GeForce GT, I opted out of Nvidia all together and settled on an ATI Radeon 4870 HD – 1 gig. It wasn’t too expensive, and since the Nvidia was bought in September, well. I was REALLY reluctant to buy a new one.
So far after a week of heavy playing it’s running great. Who knows after a few months has gone by.
I’ve noticed lots of people who use Nvidia having to replace their cards (at least four fairly steady bloggers) all at once. Are there many others out there who are not running Nvidia who are also having to replace theirs around now?
April 7, 2009 at 8:10 AM
Good point! My 2 previous cards were ATI and they are still running. I wonder if it has to do with the fact that Nvidia licenses out their chipsets?
April 7, 2009 at 12:04 PM
I just replaced my video card. In doing that and *cough cough* cleaning all of the dust out of my computer it was running like a dream.
The video card I had ran just fine, but I noticed that after WotLK dropped it just wasn’t performing as well as I’d have liked. That AND I’m running Vista which also hogs a lot of video memory so it was worth it.