24/7 and GFX cards

[Shintai]

Ok, this might be an odd question here. But since we crunch 24/7 its the best place to ask i guess.

My home machine runs 24/7, it doesnt crunch..I have a farm for that :p:

However..the issue:
My machine is from around end of july last year. It got excellent airflow and its not hot in any way at all.
But now i´m having a second bad GFX card...first I had a 7900GT that went bad with artifacts and all. I got it RMAed and took the x1900GT instead due to better image quality. I´m not that big of a gamer but I do play once a while and with relatively lower requirements.
Now this x1900GT is going bad. Again its bad silicon and not heat or constant heavy load. This time its not artifacts but lockups and such. However declocking the card to about half speed fixes this. And I think I might skip the RMA part and hold out for a 8700GTS or whatever it will be around that.

But what makes me wonder. A friend of mine also runs 24/7. He is also on his second card..first a 7900GT and then a 7950GT going bad. And a third friend also 24/7 is starting to have troubles with a x1950Pro.

So i´m alittle curious if other 24/7 users on their main rigs got issues with GFX cards. Or if this is just statistics playing a number on us. Because from my view of it, it seems like either ATI and nVidia is more or less speculating in inferiour quality products (Maybe due to harsh competition). Or perhaps TSMCs quality is to blame.

But its buggering me. Because all 5 issues is due to bad silicon. And none of them are overclocked. Its results you would expect after this time with overclocks/overvolt and such.

So I wonder if they just cant last longer due to poor quality.

[SparkyJJO]

Well I had my X1900XT first, it wasn't quite DOA because it seemed to function but was bent badly across the vregs and made arcing noises. Not related to this 24/7 running thing directly, but I sent that one back and got a replacement which I ran in my PC 24/7.

9 months later it had issues going from 2D to 3D or vise versa. Would make the screen get ugly half the time and it was getting worse. Ran fine in 2D or 3D but just had trouble switching between the two. So I RMA'd the card and they gave me a X1950XT in exchange. I've had it for a few months now and so far so good. Wasn't a driver issue because I tried different drivers and no change, then when I got the X1950XT I didn't reload windows and it worked fine.

Now I did fold on the X1900XT and it got pretty darn hot on its old stock cooler, I cranked the fan up in atitool but I couldn't stand it at full blast so it was 55% or so and was staying around 80C 24/7. Maybe that is why it acted up.

Now I've been folding on the X1950XT from the beginning but it stayed in the low 60's due to an accelero (stock from factory) and now it is mid 40's on water. I've since stopped crunching on it atm (running a SMP client for now).

[ShootStraight]

Hmmm...

While the majority of my herd are macs with OB video, those with GFX cards (1950xtx's and one 7800GTX) have shown no issues as you describe, even those that have folded 24/7 - No OC. Ive got one in my DX3.06 running for almost 5 years in my attic (+110F)

Makes me wonder if it isnt a power problem - either line in or PSU? Though I'll admit I'm no authority on HW or SW for that matter.

Good luck.

-SS

[sierra_bound]

I have not had any problems with graphics cards on any of my crunchers which all run 24/7. Most are not high-end cards and they are not overclocked. I use GeForce 6600, 6600GT, 7600GT and 7800GTO. I have also used PCI VGA cards. The 6600 has been running almost non-stop for a year.

[Shintai]

Power issue or even MB issue along with OC is out of the question. 3 different mothers, 2 different chipsets 3 different PSUs.

And SparkyJJO seems to confirm my fear.

[SparkyJJO]

All my dedicated 24/7 crunchers are on either onboard or some cheap PCI adapter. Many of them have some sort of junky PSU too lol. No troubles with those.

[Shintai]

Ye, I have a feeling you need to be in the performance segment or higher. Something like x1900/7900 or better.

[sierra_bound]

My main system also crunches 24/7. I have seen no deterioration in video quality. I don't do anything graphics-intensive like gaming however.

I also have an old ATI Rage PCI card that I bought on Ebay for less than $10. I first used it for benching a few years ago and then crunching. Probably one of the best computer purchases I ever made.:) The circuit board looks like something Fisher-Price made for kids. But it still works.

[STEvil]

Is your X1900GT a rev 2 with the digital PWM? They are exceedingly weak and will likely deteriorate over time.

I have an X1900GT rev 3 (rev 2.1 core, rev 1 pcb) that was having problems when a friend owned it, but it was due to the motherboard having a bad bios flash. I put an AC Accelero X2 heatsink on it but that nearly killed the card because the base of the heatsink bent when I tightened it down.. so i'm back to stock cooling and its working fine now.

That AC Accelero X2 heatsink was on another friends X1900XTX btw, which was having stability problems and after removing it and going back to the stock heatsink still is now...

[Movieman]

Leadtek 7800GTX on my DX3600 and thats been crunching solid since Nov 2005..Did have an issue 2 weeks ago with it but solved now.
Would have helped if I looked at the underside of the card and seen it was FULL of dust!:rofl:
Took it apart, cleaned and fine now.

[[XC] mysticmerlin]

If you OC and run 24/7 it will go down hill. I run 24/7 and keep the card stock. WCG is for CPU's not GFX but that is not what you ask. My 7950Gx2 is over a year old. I game / crunch / work lol right on it and only time it is off is when there is a bad lightening storm. I got it used so I don't know how old it is. Just my :2cents: of course but my input.

[STEvil]

I've run overclocked volt modded gpu's for years without issue.. my old 9700pro ran 1.85v for nearly 2 years straight before I sold it, not its in a friends system running volt modded still at 1.75v... its really old now :p

edit - memory is volt modded as well, 3.2v when I had it, 3.0v for friend.

[linflas]

Good to hear some positive's here, was getting me a bit concerned. 2 8800GTX's are a bit spendy still. I need them to last me till the end of '08.

[Shintai]

To clarify, I only want x1900/7900 or higher input. Also atleast 6 months running 24/7 unless you got problems too. Older cards dont seem to have problems.

And ofcourse only non overclocked/overvolted cards.

[fallwind]

I havn't had any problems with my BFG 8800GTX OC running 24/7. I use Rivatuner to drop the core down to 300MHz for 2D apps which knocks about 5c off the temp. Probably saves some power too.

[STEvil]

well, the X1800 mobility in the laptop is dead.. but thats because it was running 80-110c since the time I got it.

[WindForce]

I have two 7800GTX running 24/7 for over a year, never had any problem with them. I also have a 8800GTS 640MB 24/7 as well, but this one is on only for a few months...still, no problem ( yet :D )

[linflas]

well, the X1800 mobility in the laptop is dead.. but thats because it was running 80-110c since the time I got it.

ROFL, nice one! Gues you could have put that under the covers on a cold winter night to keep the bed nice and toasty before you climbed in, speaking of which maybe I should do that with the wifes, macbook, as that little pretty POS get's awful toasty.

[Rinsewand]

my main rig's got a 6 month (roughly) old 8800gts in it, works perfectly, has probably spent a grand total of 10 hours off in all that time. Never had a graphics problem other than me dropping them!

RwD

[Metroid]

I do confirm that I started getting artifacts in games after started crunching 24/7 with my 7900GT, Shintai your case is odd when you talk about X1900 as for 7900GT the most of them are bugged as reported in various sites and forums. It may be another problem regarding to another issue. ATI GFX cards are quite good for crunching.

Regards,

Metroid.

[Bigchrome]

My X1900XTX died after around 3 months sitting on the desktop while the cpu folded... Got a crazy blue artifact going on all over the screem But it came back to life for me after I cleaned it for some reason!

[FlawleZ]

Leadtek 7800GTX on my DX3600 and thats been crunching solid since Nov 2005..Did have an issue 2 weeks ago with it but solved now.
Would have helped if I looked at the underside of the card and seen it was FULL of dust!:rofl:
Took it apart, cleaned and fine now.

Still rocking my Leadtek 7800GTX as well. Running it on water saves on the dust build up though...:up: