[SOLVED] how long do gpus last?

[Pc6777]

How long do graphics cards normally last? im not talking about "useful" life in running new games, but durability. can they last 10 plus years used a few hours per day, without ever messign with it or repasting?

 

[Flayed]

I think I would be annoyed if a graphics card I had bought didn't last for 5 years or more, and mildly annoyed up to 7 years after that I don't really care I've got my money's worth out of it.

I was kind of surprised to see AMD's new cards are being sold with only a 2-year warranty now down from 3 for the last generation. In the UK at least I don't know if it the same everywhere.

 

[revodo]

I think I would be annoyed if a graphics card I had bought didn't last for 5 years or more, and mildly annoyed up to 7 years after that I don't really care I've got my money's worth out of it.

I was kind of surprised to see AMD's new cards are being sold with only a 2-year warranty now down from 3 for the last generation. In the UK at least I don't know if it the same everywhere.

I think I would be annoyed if a graphics card I had bought didn't last for 5 years or more, and mildly annoyed up to 7 years after that I don't really care I've got my money's worth out of it.

I was kind of surprised to see AMD's new cards are being sold with only a 2-year warranty now down from 3 for the last generation. In the UK at least I don't know if it the same everywhere.

I remember when the Xbox 360 originally shipped with a 6 month warranty, lol. That's when you know the hardware is going to fail quickly.

 

[hotaru.hino]

One thing I'm curious about when people report failure is how the product was being used. I've had more than a fair share of incidences where the product I'm using seems to last longer or have a longer actual useful life than what most people report.

Like for example, someone complained their Moto X, a phone I had, that its OLED screen had burn-in within like a month. When asked what they do, they reported they run the thing at 100% brightness all the time. I've used the phone for about two years (yay pressure to upgrade) leaving it mostly on auto brightness with the occasional override to lower it and I saw no visible signs of burn-in. Similar story with my Zune HD when I had it (though that lasted me 5 or so years) or my Galaxy S10+ (which I'm almost at 2.5 years) left on auto-brightness most of the time.

Another thing that has me curious is useful battery life. Supposedly after two years of regular use, the battery capacity should wear down quite a bit (like >=25%). But, using my Galaxy S10+ again for example, for all practical purposes I barely noticed a change in capacity. I'm still leaving the office with around 70% battery life left.

One thing I am concerned about in recent CPUs and GPUs is that they're asked to be pushed to their limits pretty much out of the box. Without sufficient cooling, this can and will degrade the chips over time (https://www.anandtech.com/show/2468/6), and often times, there's not enough practical performance improvement to justify being pushed this hard. For example, I noticed in a lot of games I play, if I let my RTX 2070 Super run on defaults, it will push hard. But if set the power limiter to around 80% of its TDP, I don't lose much performance and the GPU runs anywhere from 5-10C cooler with the fans spinning around 65%. But recently I undervolted the GPU, so now I can get away with the fans spinning at 55% and the temperatures remain about the same. Granted I don't have a control so I don't know how much this will get me, but I'd like to think it helps.

So I dunno. Much like how I don't really have issues with Windows Updates (despite being called a shill, a liar, or some adjective denying what I experience because their reality is law), I rarely have issues with the electronics I use. And like how I joke around, maybe I'm the real Tech Jesus for being able to perform such miracles.

 

[BFG-9000]

I have some Cirrus Logic 5434 cards from 1994 and Matrox Millennium and Mystique cards from 1995 and 1996 that still work fine. I expect they'll work for hundreds of years because they have no electrolytic caps to fail or heatsinks that need repasting. They do have some solid tantalum caps that need to either be powered on occasionally, or else reformed at gradually increasing voltage after decades of unpowered storage.

In comparison the ATI Mach64CT from 1995 and S3 Virge/DX from 1996 have a few tiny electrolytics that future archaeologists would need to replace before using. I do have older but these examples are all "modern" in that they can generate a 640x480 or 800x600 signal that any VGA display can understand.

If things are actually thermal cycled in use though, eventually some solder joint will crack and require repair--that's just basic maintenance and probably what's done in the Hubble Telescope's 15MHz i386 from 1986. NASA had to famously scrounge eBay for 8086 chips from 1981 to keep the Shuttle flying

 

[Pc6777]

I have some Cirrus Logic 5434 cards from 1994 and Matrox Millennium and Mystique cards from 1995 and 1996 that still work fine. I expect they'll work for hundreds of years because they have no electrolytic caps to fail or heatsinks that need repasting. They do have some solid tantalum caps that need to either be powered on occasionally, or else reformed at gradually increasing voltage after decades of unpowered storage.

In comparison the ATI Mach64CT from 1995 and S3 Virge/DX from 1996 have a few tiny electrolytics that future archaeologists would need to replace before using. I do have older but these examples are all "modern" in that they can generate a 640x480 or 800x600 signal that any VGA display can understand.

If things are actually thermal cycled in use though, eventually some solder joint will crack and require repair--that's just basic maintenance and probably what's done in the Hubble Telescope's 15MHz i386 from 1986. NASA had to famously scrounge eBay for 8086 chips from 1981 to keep the Shuttle flying

how long can modern caps in vidioe cards last with occaional use so they wont require reforming?

 

[BFG-9000]

With occasional use they will never require reforming, especially given your scenario of a few hours use per day.--electrolytics tend to require reforming after they've been stored flat for ~30 years.

Of course the other problem with electrolytics is the liquid electrolyte in them dries up because it's just held in with a simple rubber plug, and no seal is perfect. You have to look up the datasheet for your particular capacitors, as there will be a chart showing expected lifespan in hours vs temperature. Given how hot some modern high-powered cards run today, that rated lifespan may be surprisingly short!

Better brands of graphics cards nowadays will use polymer caps which last much longer than aluminum electrolytics and don't have the fire problems of tantalums. Just be aware that like laptops and smartphones, these products aren't engineered to last very long because they are supposed to go obsolete long before they wear out. The power circuitry in reference nVidia cards in particular is sized to be barely adequate even at stock speeds, so you see a lot of pictures of blown mosfets and that's why many people prefer waiting for non-reference designs even though the reference cooler tends to be pretty quiet (unlike AMD)

The component with the shortest lifespan is the capacitor, and as they start to dry out other components will begin to see some serious ripple--if those were marginal already from the factory then it's unsurprising when bits blow up. The trick is to have enough spare dead cards around that you can scavenge parts from them to keep one reference card going.

So I guess the moral is to buy as high quality as you can afford, and don't overclock the card to within an inch of its life. Just common sense really. BTW that Matrox Millennium was $450 in 1995, equivalent to ~$800 in today's money

 

[Pc6777]

With occasional use they will never require reforming, especially given your scenario of a few hours use per day.--electrolytics tend to require reforming after they've been stored flat for ~30 years.

Of course the other problem with electrolytics is the liquid electrolyte in them dries up because it's just held in with a simple rubber plug, and no seal is perfect. You have to look up the datasheet for your particular capacitors, as there will be a chart showing expected lifespan in hours vs temperature. Given how hot some modern high-powered cards run today, that rated lifespan may be surprisingly short!

Better brands of graphics cards nowadays will use polymer caps which last much longer than aluminum electrolytics and don't have the fire problems of tantalums. Just be aware that like laptops and smartphones, these products aren't engineered to last very long because they are supposed to go obsolete long before they wear out. The power circuitry in reference nVidia cards in particular is sized to be barely adequate even at stock speeds, so you see a lot of pictures of blown mosfets and that's why many people prefer waiting for non-reference designs even though the reference cooler tends to be pretty quiet (unlike AMD)

The component with the shortest lifespan is the capacitor, and as they start to dry out other components will begin to see some serious ripple--if those were marginal already from the factory then it's unsurprising when bits blow up. The trick is to have enough spare dead cards around that you can scavenge parts from them to keep one reference card going.

So I guess the moral is to buy as high quality as you can afford, and don't overclock the card to within an inch of its life. Just common sense really. BTW that Matrox Millennium was $450 in 1995, equivalent to ~$800 in today's money

All of my cards are aftermarket, gigabyte, power color and evga, is it just about brand ussuly or also the pitucluar model of the brand? And caps can go over 10 years in storage fine and power up without reforming? After windows 10 is no longer supported and new cards won't work on it, I will have to use my old cards if I want to do anything graphic intensive on windows 10,and I might want to use 10 occasionally for many years after support ends, offline if course probably as a vm, and I will just use 2 cards in my future system, a card for windows 11 and a card in the other pci e alit for windows 10. I'm hoping my cards will all last at least 8-10 years in use so I won't have to worry about my cards dying and not being able to use 10 anymore. And could a cards bios chip get corrupted if it's unpowered too long? That would for sure turn it into a paperweight, and is the only killer of cards heavy use or also age? I'm not worried about fans or cooling because I could always strap a case fan on it and set it to full power and still use the card, seems the fans don't die often tho even in cheaper cards so not too worried about that.

 

[BFG-9000]

The economy brands like Evga and XFX were known for using electrolytics, but now do use polymer caps in high-end cards. For lower models you really have to look at the box or specs--if it has polymer caps they will brag about them.

The trouble with Windows after Win2k, is changing the GPU can cause the Windows installation to become unactivated (3 out of 10 hardware changes are allowed and it counts as one), and there's no guarantee the activation servers will continue to work after the OS goes unsupported--this is a problem with XP right now as it will refuse to show the desktop after online reactivation fails and the script-readers at telephone support will only tell you it's unsupported.
I don't think you'd have to worry about Win10 though because it has always worked perfectly fine without activation. Worst case if your card breaks is you'll have to buy another vintage card with Win10 drivers and live with a nag message watermark on the wallpaper and be unable to customize your desktop space.

Just watch some of those unboxing videos on youtube where people open and fire up ancient unused new-in-box vintage computers, and you will see no BIOS erasure issues at all. While they may not operate properly or stable for awhile as the capacitors reform, they don't burst into flames either.

 

[Pc6777]

The economy brands like Evga and XFX were known for using electrolytics, but now do use polymer caps in high-end cards. For lower models you really have to look at the box or specs--if it has polymer caps they will brag about them.

The trouble with Windows after Win2k, is changing the GPU can cause the Windows installation to become unactivated (3 out of 10 hardware changes are allowed and it counts as one), and there's no guarantee the activation servers will continue to work after the OS goes unsupported--this is a problem with XP right now as it will refuse to show the desktop after online reactivation fails and the script-readers at telephone support will only tell you it's unsupported.
I don't think you'd have to worry about Win10 though because it has always worked perfectly fine without activation. Worst case if your card breaks is you'll have to buy another vintage card with Win10 drivers and live with a nag message watermark on the wallpaper and be unable to customize your desktop space.

Just watch some of those unboxing videos on youtube where people open and fire up ancient unused new-in-box vintage computers, and you will see no BIOS erasure issues at all. While they may not operate properly or stable for awhile as the capacitors reform, they don't burst into flames either.

One of my windows installs is completely offline, and if it dosn't touch the internet ever(this install has never seen wifi in its life, disabled network and my pcie wifi device, I use dual boot for windows online and offline and separate the system drives so they can't see each other with gpedit and device Manager) it gives you the benefit of the doubt if it can't connect to activation servers and doesn't give you the watermark or anything, and I would just use it offline after it's not supported anymore anyway, and use Linux or windows 11 for everything online. Will the cheaper non polymer caps still have an ok shelf life/usable life? only one of my cards is high end(my rtx 2060) and I have a gtx 1050 for a media center that's evga, and I'm getting a gigabyte triple fan windforce vfx 970 (high end for it's time)for my media center pc, and I have a power color red devil triple fan RX 570. I've always gotten cards that cost less, maybe I will only but the best models in the future, like the really high end cards that cost more than reference, beacuase I don't get rid of old cards.

 

[JWNoctis]

The data retention time for modern EEPROM, which - I think - most video BIOS is stored on, is on the scale of decades for typical operating temperature, independent of power cycle and status. No need to worry about that.

(As an aside, maybe they really should've used one of those for storing the savefile of old Pokémon cartridges - Certainly would've saved a lot of broken hearts decades later. Alas, EEPROM was still expensive back then.)

Other than that, circumstances will change, and keeping old cards for purposes other than exhibition in a private museum might not work too well - There's still 4 years of support left in Windows 10 at this time. Why not just wait and see? In 4 years you'd probably be able to get a used 3070 for less than $100.

 

[Pc6777]

The data retention time for modern EEPROM, which - I think - most video BIOS is stored on, is on the scale of decades for typical operating temperature, independent of power cycle and status. No need to worry about that.

(As an aside, maybe they really should've used one of those for storing the savefile of old Pokémon cartridges - Certainly would've saved a lot of broken hearts decades later. Alas, EEPROM was still expensive back then.)

Other than that, circumstances will change, and keeping old cards for purposes other than exhibition in a private museum might not work too well - There's still 4 years of support left in Windows 10 at this time. Why not just wait and see? In 4 years you'd probably be able to get a used 3070 for less than $100.

Yea, right before support ends I will stock up on used cards for cheap, and maybe even after support ends I will buy some used cards made right before support ended that have working windows 10 drivers. hopefully Nvidia and amd will keeping making drivers after support ends because windows 10 was a big deal, and the restrictions and compatibility nonsense will make it so less people will switch right away Which could lead to extended win 10 driver support. And in 4 years I will be able to get current high end cards very cheap, and use windows 10 as long as I want for offline programs/media, and only use Microsofts abomination of an operating system that destroys compatibility and is proprietary(win 11) for games/programs that need it and web browsing