Who Has Better Video Cards (quality Built Wise)

[GTSticky]

Well said well said indeed

my 9800xt is my love anyways, it still runnin on me

 

I wonder what the average life expentancy of a video card is?

anyone know?

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I've got 10-year old video cards. As long as you don't shock, break or overclock the living daylights out of a card you can generally expect it to last far past obsolescence.

 

It's only if you get unlucky that you really have to worry about it. You should also consider choosing a card with a lifetime replacement warranty like the BFG or PNY cards. That way it just simply isn't an issue.

[oralpain]

I've had about 15 NVIDIA cards and 10 ATI cards. I have gotten DOA built by ATI cards, and DOA build by whoever NVIDIA card. I have gotten defective cards and cards that would OC worth crap, from both companies. I've used pritty much every version of NVIDIA drivers since 6.xx and every version of ATI drivers since the CAT 2.9s and have had some kind of problem with nearly all of them.

 

PNY's lifetime warranty is for the life-time of the product line, as in till they stop making it. It's not a real life-time warranty.

 

As for life expectancy I have an ISA video card that is 17 years old and it still works fine. I've had more modern video cards last several years, but I overclock/voltmod most of my cards sooner or later so most of them end up dead faster than they otherwise would.

Edited January 3, 2005 by oralpain

[CoolMaster]

As far as I know, ATi contracts card manufacturing to Sapphire. And as far as ATi's drivers go, I think they're not too bad. OpenGL performance has certainly improved. However, the frequency of ATi's driver releases doesn't actually mean the support is any better. ATi routinely drops driver builds just because they're commited to a monthly schedule, but every monthly driver build is not some gigantic leap forward. So, get your weekly Nvidia beta's (which aren't usually that different build to build), or get your monthly Catalyst (not that different build to build either).

 

Drivers for both companies seem to have the "fix one thing, break another" problem.

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Maybe, but I think they also build their own, sapphire just takes their references design and desides whether to change it, because u can get ATI ati card, or ATI sapphire cards

 

like my 9800xt the only difference between the ATI and Sapphirre version, is the sticker on the Fan

 

Edit: I dont mod my cards at ALL, so Im guessing they will last quite a while?

Edited January 3, 2005 by CoolMaster