Quote Originally Posted by JohnZS View Post
Same here Scaniris
I have had to RMA 3 GTX 280 cards
My first one lasted for ~7months before the screen started to get pink dots.
Second one (RMA replacement) was a DOA
Third one lasted for ~9months and then started to run extremely hot (loud fan too) and develop black flashing retangles in DirectX 10 games such as Clearsky, Crysis and (yes it's not a game) 3dmark Vantage.
I have a 285 on the way, but it is delayed because of the snow

Anyway back on topic I agree that stability is key and performance too, but stability more so.

The ATi HD 5970 is not out yet in the UK , perhaps when it is released here the drivers would be much better. The 5870 series stocks are very low here, but they have been out since December.

nVidia really do need to hard launch, and launch well as ATi's launch as been woeful here.

Charlie is semi accurate. The Tesla Fermi does indeed have 448 cores, however Quadro varients have a 448 3GB version coming EARLY Q2 2010 and a 512piper 6GB version coming sometime Q3 2010.

I would assume the same could be said for desktop cards (except perhaps the memory halved) and then perhaps a sneaky refresh of the 448 part @ 480pipes (rather like the GTX 260-216)

As for power consumption, it would not surprise me if it the test/beta cards have 2x 8pin, but the retail cards are 2x 6pin or 1x8pin and 1x6pin.
Remember that this product is still not fit for human consumption, nVidia have 6weeks? or so of tweakage to go.

John
That's pretty horrible luck with your 280s, my 280 I bought a few weeks after release is still going strong overclocked. I guess it's probably around 18-19 months old now. It's always run extremely cool and fan is running on auto mode, so up and down all over the place duty cycle.