[SOLVED] Does furmark still damage GPUs?

Hallahawk665

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I was wondering if furmark still damages GPUs like it did in the past, so for example if you ran furmark for 1 hour on stock settings on a 20 or 30 series card at temperatures under 75 celcius would it shorten its lifespan by alot or damage it?
 
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I am mainly worried about those little solder balls inside the GPU chip that contract and expand when the GPU temperature changes, and because of that contraction and expansion they can crack and cause artifacts and errors. As far as I know, this is one of the main ways in which GPUs fail.
Regular use will cause thermal cycles like this anyway. Also the specific point about solder joints failing was mostly a growing pain issue going to lead free solder. This has basically been a non-issue for the past 10 years.

Hallahawk665

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Generally no, long as temps are reasonable. But in saying that, furmark does push your graphics card much further than any game would. Brief runs to determine if an overclock may be stable but beyond that, i wouldn't run it too much. Just like a car, you wouldn't high rev it all day long, it wouldn't last very long.
Well I ran it multiple times and in total I ran it for about 40 minutes with the temperatures never going above 73 celcius. I also did some other benchmarks but from what I heard furmark is the one that pushes your GPU to its limits so that's why I was asking. Did the 40 minutes reduce its lifespan or anything?
 

Hallahawk665

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Can't see how furmark is any different than some games that'll push a gpu to its limits and yet p will happily game for an hour or more like that at temps hitting 80°C +
Is there any way thermal cycling could have damaged it? Because I ran it about 12-15 times in total but for short amounts of time (1-4 minutes) each time I ran it to avoid overheating but I didn't realise thermal cycling was a problem.
 

COLGeek

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Is there any way thermal cycling could have damaged it? Because I ran it about 12-15 times in total but for short amounts of time (1-4 minutes) each time I ran it to avoid overheating but I didn't realise thermal cycling was a problem.
GPUs are designed to handle this. There is nothing to worry about from the info provided in this thread.
 
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Karadjgne

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Testing a gpu like that is like taking it to the gym and giving it the weight training of its life. Doesn't mean it's now going to develop brittle bones as a result.

But on the flip side, if something was going to break, that would have been when it would happen. Since it didn't, game on!
 
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It doesn't outright damage them and video card manufacturers started adding smarts to try and detect "power viruses" that FurMark is considered to be. But it does stress the VRM and possibly VRAM a lot more than running a game.

Note that temperature readings can be misleading. 75C doesn't mean the same thing depending on how hard the cooling system is working.
 

Hallahawk665

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It doesn't outright damage them and video card manufacturers started adding smarts to try and detect "power viruses" that FurMark is considered to be. But it does stress the VRM and possibly VRAM a lot more than running a game.

Note that temperature readings can be misleading. 75C doesn't mean the same thing depending on how hard the cooling system is working.
I am mainly worried about those little solder balls inside the GPU chip that contract and expand when the GPU temperature changes, and because of that contraction and expansion they can crack and cause artifacts and errors. As far as I know, this is one of the main ways in which GPUs fail.
 
I am mainly worried about those little solder balls inside the GPU chip that contract and expand when the GPU temperature changes, and because of that contraction and expansion they can crack and cause artifacts and errors. As far as I know, this is one of the main ways in which GPUs fail.
Regular use will cause thermal cycles like this anyway. Also the specific point about solder joints failing was mostly a growing pain issue going to lead free solder. This has basically been a non-issue for the past 10 years.
 
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Andrewbandrew05

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Also if you think about it, who cares if you lose a day or a week ot even a month of your cards life span? By the time you push up against that point your computer will be at tortoise speed anyway. In my experience you don't need to worry about it in the short term, maybe if you were ocing with a large power increase, but def not at stock settings. As I understand it, short term damage comes primarily from high temps and the temps you described should be fine, provided they aren't increasing with your cooling system at max power.
 
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Hallahawk665

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Also if you think about it, who cares if you lose a day or a week ot even a month of your cards life span? By the time you push up against that point your computer will be at tortoise speed anyway. In my experience you don't need to worry about it in the short term, maybe if you were ocing with a large power increase, but def not at stock settings. As I understand it, short term damage comes primarily from high temps and the temps you described should be fine, provided they aren't increasing with your cooling system at max power.
During some of the furmark runs my fans got up to 3000 rpm when in games they usually only go up to about 2700-2800 rpm so they were working a bit harder than usual but the temperature stayed at 73c
 

COLGeek

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During some of the furmark runs my fans got up to 3000 rpm when in games they usually only go up to about 2700-2800 rpm so they were working a bit harder than usual but the temperature stayed at 73c
Still no cause for concern, based on this information. I think you are overthinking this. All should be fine per the previous discussion.

Good luck.
 
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Andrewbandrew05

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During some of the furmark runs my fans got up to 3000 rpm when in games they usually only go up to about 2700-2800 rpm so they were working a bit harder than usual but the temperature stayed at 73c
I mainly look at percentage of rpm. If your fans are at a really high percentage then that probably means the thermal load is too high for them, leading to thermal throttling. However, you really should not be worried about short-term damage to your GPU. Maybe a while ago there were problems with furmark, but I've run it for hours on end without any problems. (And that was with an overclock)
 

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