AMD Graphics Chips Could Last 10X To 100X Longer 150
An anonymous reader writes "According to a research report out of UCLA, released this morning, NVidia's high-lead bump packaging could last anywhere from 1/10th to 1/100th as long as AMD's advanced eutectic bump approach. (TG Daily has picked up the claim.) NVidia is currently in the midst of a $200M recall of bad GPUs, and the report suggests that the issue could be much deeper than NVidia's PR department would have us believe." The report lends credence to the strident claims of the Inquirer's Charlie Demerjian, which we discussed a month back.
Sweet! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Sweet! (Score:5, Funny)
I don't know, but they sound terhiphic.
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Hilarious. Just hilarious.
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Re:Sweet! (Score:4, Funny)
Watching grammar nazis making fun of innocent mistakes just makes me sickick!
Re:Sweet! (Score:4, Funny)
Tooshay, my deer frend.
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As opposed to grammar nazis making fun of guilty mistakes?
Re:Sweet! (Score:5, Insightful)
I've had an ATI X1950 Pro for 3 years now and while the card works great, the newer games render it near obsolete. So yes, I can have a card forever but what good is that going to do me if I need to upgrade anyway?
Resale value would suck and why would anyone want to spend 50$ on a 3 year old card when they can get a 1 year old "better" card for 90$. (I pulled the numbers out of thin air but you get the idea).
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Thanks for your meaningless data, though!
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Who are you to come here and ruin his anecdotal evidence contradicting the smart guys with facts?
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Well, I just built a home NAS server, 2TB of disk, Gigabit NIC, S3 Virge PCI 2MB graphics... who could ask for anything more!
So Do nVidias last 3 months, or ATIs 30-300 years? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm skeptical about the report, especially given the lack of any field studies with it. The useful life of a piece of computer equipment is usually 3-5 years; high-end graphics cards are probably shorter, because the main customers are gamers who need cutting-edge performance to kill orcs with.
So does "10-100 times longer" mean that significant fractions of nVidias are failing in 10 days - 3 months due to bad solder joints? Or does it mean that the solder joints in an ATI will last 30-300 years, long after anybody except a few retro gamers are interested in a graphics system that's mounted on a card in a separate box and doesn't interface directly to their optic nerves?
Re:So Do nVidias last 3 months, or ATIs 30-300 yea (Score:5, Informative)
Most companies offer at least a year long warranty; if they have significant failures in that year, like 10-100x higher than normal, that may put too much pressure on their warranty policy.
And let's not forget nVidia's partners in selling cards (you know, all the non-nVidia nVidia cards). Those people may see high failure rates of nVidia parts, and all of a sudden using another chipset just got a heckuva lot more attractive.
So, the moral of the story is, there is no set 'time' that a card will die. It's not like after 10 months all of them will just conk out. But if there are higher failure rates than normal in their warranty period, not to mention harm done to their reputation, it could end up costing them greatly.
Re:So Do nVidias last 3 months, or ATIs 30-300 yea (Score:4, Interesting)
Typical failure models use an exponential distribution, rather than a Gaussian distribution to model time-to-failure.
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Practically speaking, using an exponential distribution means this:
If you can expect a card to last (on average) one year when it's new, then, given that it's N months old, you can still expect it to last one year. An exponential distribution has no history.
It works surprisingly well.
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I can confirm the putting pressure on the warranty part. Dell just ran out of replacement Nvidia cards for the D620. 15 day wait list if yours fails.
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Warranties can be a significant selling point. The reason why I pretty much just by seagate drives is that they're pretty much the only ones that are willing to give me a decent warranty. It's worth it to me to pay a couple dollars more for a drive with a 5 year warranty rather than just get a 3 year.
But really it isn't so much about warranty coverage as it is about what that really means. A company isn't going to set a warranty period that's so long that they're going to have to replace a significant numbe
Re:So Do nVidias last 3 months, or ATIs 30-300 yea (Score:2)
obsolescence has nothing to do with the physical life-span of a video card. when a video card becomes obsolete depends primarily on the user and the application. what these articles are referring to is the physical life of the video card before it is expected to fail.
and not everyone uses their computer primarily for gaming. outside of gaming, technical obsolescence does not occur so quickly. at the moment i'm using a 5-6 year old workstation at work and at home. i do graphic design and web development, and
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why would anyone want to spend 50$ on a 3 year old card when they can get a 1 year old "better" card for 90$
Perhaps someone only has $60, and still wants to eat for the rest of the day.
*shrug*
Generally, your "insightful" rhetorical question is absurd, like this: Why would anyone want to spend $50,000 on a 3-year-old Corvette when they can get a better 1-year-old Corvette C6 Z06 for $90,000?
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No matter what the amount of money you have is, someone out there has three orders of magnitude less.
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Unless you have nothing.
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Right. Then, the universe just sort of ends.
(I thought this exception was obvious enough to leave out.)
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With desktop systems it isn't so bad; by the time the card dies, equivalent performance will be considerably cheaper(or the card will still be under warranty), and swapping it out will take maybe 10 minutes. With laptops, not so much.
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FWIW, I've been using a 9600GT for about a year now with no real problems. There was a thread back either here or on Ars asking people to chime in about their 8xxx/9xxx cards and if they'd had a problem with them, and it was a big thread of people saying they didn't have any issues. So... not sure if on a *practical* level this is really a huge issue for users.
But, I'm not religiously devoted to either Nvidia or ATI (though historically I've had much better luck with Nvidia's driver software than ATI's.
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I've had an ATI X1950 Pro for 3 years now and while the card works great, the newer games render it near obsolete. So yes, I can have a card forever but what good is that going to do me if I need to upgrade anyway?
Resale value would suck and why would anyone want to spend 50$ on a 3 year old card when they can get a 1 year old "better" card for 90$. (I pulled the numbers out of thin air but you get the idea).
Graphics cards have other uses besides games. I've spent over $100 a number of times for Radeon X850
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The point is that if the expected life of the card is 5 years, a 5% will fail at 1 year, for example (this is a guess, assuming a certain variance between parts). If however, the expected life of the card is 50 years, only 0.0001 will fail at 1 year. And I think we can agree that failure at 1 ye
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You may not care whether your current graphics card is obsolete after 3 years today but, with the combination of how powerful GPUs have become and the diminishing returns on further investment in graphics techonogy, in the near future your GPU will be good for much longer than 3 years. I'm not saying that this will happen tomorow, but 3D graphics have come a long way since One Must Fall and Doom, and I suspect that within 5 to 10 years we will have hit a point where even the most insane graphics whore won't
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Bad case of hiccups while typing?
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Re:Sweet! (Score:5, Informative)
"Eutectic" is a materials science word; it means (more or less, and I'm refreshing my memory from Wikipedia) a mixture (alloy) that does not separate/segregate into its original metals when it freezes; it has the lowest melting point, and passes immediately from liquid to solid phase. If, say, you have a solder that has more lead than the eutectic mix, when it freezes, it will segregate into (tiny) bits of lead and a eutectic remainder as it cools.
The advantage of a eutectic mix is that the melting point is lower, and when it is melted, it is all melted, and flows nicely. There are probably some caveats and quid-pro-quos for how it behaves in contact with other metals, which will certainly go ever-so-slightly into solution and change things.
Re:Sweet! (Score:5, Funny)
What I can't believe is that a companies PR department would knowingly release false or misleading information in an effort to keep their stock price up.
It's unheard of.
Re:Sweet! (Score:5, Informative)
There's also hypereutectic which means the opposite, obviously. A lot of pistons are cast with a hypereutectic alloy to keep costs down (forging is expensive) while increasing the melting point.
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I once had an English teacher named Mrs. MacDonald. I do believe that was her posting that. It's almost word-for-word what she wrote on one of my term papers.
RE:Sweet! (Score:1, Offtopic)
Supposed to be Graphics, but totally messed up by a typical fucktarded who should go out and slit his fucking wrists. Oh, that describes all fucktarded shitdot sheeple as they can't fucking spell, have shrinking dicks, and a love of communism.
GO AHEAD FUCKING FLAME AWAY OR
WASTE YOUR GODDAMNED MOD POINTS
FUCKTARDED SHITDOT SHEEPLE!!!!
A few things come to mind.
1. The story was submitted by an anonymous coward, not a subscribed user. Just look at "An anonymous reader writes"
2. The word is not a misspelling as much as it is a thinko [wisegeek.com].
3. You seem to be very critical of what someone wrote, yet you have terrible grammar. First you wrote about a copulating retarded. A copulating retarded what? Second, those who show the constant need for profanity coupled with need to tell someone to slit their wrists shows immaturity, ignorance, and shallo
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2. The word is not a misspelling as much as it is a thinko [wisegeek.com].
So that's what it's called in English... I always called it lapsus cerebri.
Grahiphics :O (Score:5, Funny)
I was going to Google for that word but then I realized that kdawson was involved.
Huh? (Score:2, Interesting)
The report lends credence to the strident claims of the Enquirer's Charlie Demerjian
As in National Enquirer?
As in Real news?
--
Oh Well, Neutral Karma and all . . .
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--
Oh Well, Bad Karma and all . . .
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theinq.com
But yes, /. editors fucked up again.
To Quote from 'Count Zero'... (Score:4, Interesting)
"Silicon doesn't wear out; microchips were effectively immortal. The Wig took notice of the fact. Like every other child of his age, however, he knew that silicon became obsolete, which was worse than wearing out"
Re:To Quote from 'Count Zero'... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:To Quote from 'Count Zero'... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Overclocking of processors, especially when using higher than nominal voltage, causes electromigration between their transistors and significantly shortens the chips' lifetime.
GPUs tend to be overclocked frequently (hell, they sell overclocked GPUs as is) Defining reasonable time span can be difficult depending on the speed of technology. You spent $100 on a card today, that breaks in 3 years, and if you want to buy another of that same card, it will most likely be $20.
But to prove my point, electromigration happens, and IS an issue within ANY time span.
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But to prove my point, electromigration happens, and IS an issue within ANY time span.
You point is valid. On-point, even. But what makes Nvidia's alleged misdeeds significant is that electromigration, along with other factors, makes the interconnects in the 8xxx series GPUs fail in an unreasonably-short time span. Without elaborate external mitigation strategies*, within warranty.
And that's the other factor in the significance in this story: Nvidia is alleged** to have made a point of downplaying, denying
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Yes, electromigration does happen, but the glass in your windows is slowly migrating with gravity, as well. However you
I know this has been said before... (Score:1, Redundant)
I actually started with ATI. Then I installed linux and started actually using it. I realized that the fglrx drivers just weren't worth the hassle, so my next card was nVidia, and I've stuck with them until now mainly for that reason. However, with the open source ATI drivers gaining support, it might be time to switch over.
Writing this I've come to notice that the actual
Down to the drivers (Score:2)
I had an early ATI Radeon card (7xxx something I think), which had terrible driver support, but I lived with it (and subsequent headaches of bad driver errors, the old "uninstall BEFORE you install the new drivers" nightmare). Then I got a 9000 Pro which was OK, until it became obsolete. I switched to an nVidia FX 5700 LE ("Lame Edition") which had good driver support but was woefully underpowered. Then I went back to ATI (what can I say, I was trying to support a "Canadian company") for an x800, which was
Re:Down to the drivers (Score:5, Insightful)
I have an older 9550 ATI in one box and my more powerful machine has an 8800 nVidia in it.
As far as large, clunky drivers go, ATI is king of the hill... their setup that requires .Net to install, the bloated and resource hungry Catalyst Control Center... it's ugly.
nVidia on the otherhand seems to be far more lightweight and fits in better with Windows.
But performance wise I haven't really had anything to complain about though, and I can't think of instances of actually cursing the drivers for not working...
I've never been loyal to either really, when it comes time to do an upgrade I research on the web what card people are saying gives best bang for buck in my pricerange, I don't give a hoot who makes it.
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At least the 9550 is old enough that you can use the 5.9 drivers (the last ones before the .NET based "what were they thinking?" trainwreck of a driver). I have a box with a 9600Pro in it, and I use what is now a really old version of the driver and I have no problems with it. But as always, YMMV.
Re:Down to the drivers (Score:5, Informative)
1] Download full CCC installer.
2] Don't install the CCC, just the drivers.
3] Download a copy of ATI Tray Tools [guru3d.com].
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I'm going to give ATI Tray Tools a whirl.
I'm not sure why in your steps you have 'Download full CCC installer'... why not just download the display driver only? They always give the option. The full CCC doesn't even give temp readings from the card, so I'm keen to give Tray Tools a go, being a media pc in my entertainment unit, I like to keep things quiet, but in doing so you sometimes have to keep an eye on temps.
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i've been a fan of ATI for a long time, there was a time where i tried out nvidia, but i picked the wrong company, and it tainted my feelings about nvidia's approach to letting other people make the cards while they make the chips. since then i've been using ati in everything except systems where price was more of a factor. but given the news against nvidia, i probably won't be building any nvidia systems ever again.
then again i haven't had many people have me build them systems lately, and it's not just
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Give it another 6 months, the 'almost latest' radeon and mesa in 8.10 can just about support kde4 composition (and id guess compiz) with a few problems, but the advances made in the last year mean im fairly confident that by 9.04 composting will be fully supported and by the time i leave university ill be able to game on the opensource drivers.
Try worms instead.... (Score:2)
but the advances made in the last year mean im fairly confident that by 9.04 composting will be fully supported and by the time i leave university ill be able to game on the opensource drivers.
I don't know what kind of advances they are making, but lots of them so called green folk would love to have an open source system that also composts.......... now that is what I call an eco-system....
Maybe they found a use for all those old floppy drives.
More data please! (Score:4, Interesting)
What does 1/10th and 1/100th actually mean in standard solar days?
Can someone please provide a plot of the various solders and their performance vs. temperature and time?
I would like to see the plots for ====>
90Pb10Sn
60Pb40Sn
97Sn2.5Ag0.5Cu
99.3Sn0.7Cu
96Sn4Ag
99.25Sn0.75Cu
What is the risk associated with Tin? Especially Tin whiskers.
What kind of solders does the slashdot community use?
Re:More data please! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:More data please! (Score:4, Informative)
I have an old (circa 1980) roll of rosin-core eutectic solder, that I don't use any more because of the lead.
I also have a recently purchased some mgchemicals 4900-112G [mgchemicals.com], it is 96.3Sn, 0.7Cu, 3Ag, with a "no clean" flux. It works ok with my old soldering ironing, flows nicely, no idea how it does with tin whiskers. I'm not getting a lot of trouble with cold joints, and I do push my luck (lots of free-hand work, for instance, in-place soldering of LEDs for under-cabinet lights).
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I've been doing occasional hand soldering for years, work as an electronics designer. I was worried about lead, got my blood levels checked a few times, no problem, have now given up. Unless you chew on the stuff as you work, my statistical sample of 1 suggests you're probably ok. (Wash your hands before lunch). I'd be more worried about the fumes from the fluxes...
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Flux fumes really aren't that bad, unless you're working with excessive amounts of it.
In any case, you're correct in that all you need to do with the lead solder is to make sure you wash your hands before you eat.
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Not using lead costs me roughly nothing, and I don't have to take special precautions installing electronics and working in a kitchen above and beyond gathering up stray bits of solder. The way I see it, unless I have a specific reason to worry about "tin whiskers", the old ways are not better.
I do miss the smell of rosin flux :-)
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I never said the old way was better, but just merely agreeing with the AC that you needn't worry about lead based solder if you took one careful precaution.
Even then, the amount of lead you could potentially ingest wouldn't harm most people. I work with electronics every day and I see people not washing their hands and handling their food with dirty hands. I've seen these people do this for years, and not a single one of them has had lead poisoning. There probably are some people out there that are more sen
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50/50.
Paste flux.
lots of hot water to wash with...
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I use 70/30 and 60/40 both at home and at work. I have some 70/30 circuits I soldered up in 1974 that are still working.
High-tin solders are harder to work with: it doesn't flow as easily and doesn't seem to be willing to bead up on a pad, so if you try and self-locate a small package -- a BGA or LLP -- using solder, it won't: it'll just bridge all over the place. Thankfully, at work we provide engineering samples, not commercial stuff, so we don't have to worry about RoHS and can keep using leaded solder
Old (Score:5, Insightful)
Nvidia has already switched away from high-lead solder.
The Inquirer reported on this whole fiasco.
People shit on The Inquirer a lot, but there are 3 awesome things about that site:
Their writers do not sign NDAs.
They have writers all over the world - not someone they send out, but people who live there.
Their writers intimately know people in the industry - from the people up top to the people at the factory floor.
And if you already own a card? (Score:2)
Nvidia has already switched away from high-lead solder.
So, should I plan on buying a new card soon, when my solder snaps, or do I have a good one? How do I find out? Is this why my 7600 gave up the ghost so quickly? Have I already been a victim of this problem?
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Your 7600 did not use the affected solder/soldering method.
Good to know.
This defect affects primarily G84/G86 cards (mainly marketed as GeForce 8600). The G92-based 8800GT and 8800GTS 512 are not *supposed* to be affected, and the G80 based 8800GTX and 8800GTS 320/640 are believed unaffected as well.
So long as you don't pick up old stock that's currently sitting in warehouses, you should be fine then?
I would be happier if they'd publish SKUs of potentially defective cards.
Re:And if you already own a card? (Score:4, Informative)
That's the whole point of this fiasco.
NVidia began to update their manufacturing process in the middle of the life cycle of several chips.
They switched to eutectic pads and a new underfill material (which has a lower glassification temperature).
They stuck with high-lead solder because the bumps are laid out very early on and changing them would be a major undertaking.
Basically, this causes shit to break down faster because the parts are now much more susceptible to thermal stress.
NVidia knew there were problems.
Laptop parts started failing at very high rates.
OEMs knew about the failures in November of 2007, or earlier.
NVidia blamed OEM designs creating thermal issues.
NVidia offered to foot half of the bill (replacements, handling customers, fixes, etc.) with DELL and HP.
DELL and HP jumped at the chance to have the massive bill cut in half (this kind of offer is unheard of).
NVidia's "fix" was to crank up the fans with a BIOS update.
OEMs found desktop parts were failing at alarming rates as well.
OEMs were forbidden from speaking out about the real issue (lumped in there with that "we'll pay half" deal).
OEMs find out that their designs do meet NVidia's recommended thermal and electrical constraints.
NVidia continues to sell existing bad cards that are on shelves, and makes no mention of any of this to customers or retailers.
NVidia switches away from high-lead solder, completing the updates to it's manufacturing process, and may now be pumping out good parts.
But these new parts have not had any power distribution / control changes to accommodate the new solder material.
These new parts will likely have higher-than-normal failure rates as well.
NVidia does NOT designate the new parts in any way on the box.
NVidia does not designate the new parts in any (official) way on the actual hardware.
News comes out (last week) that NVidia based chipsets (motherboard chipsets, e.g. nForce) are bad too.
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Great, so my first new computer in 9 years, which I built in January using an nForce board and a 8800GT is screwed....
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Yup.
The 8800 Ultra, GT, GTS, and GTS2 (GTS G92) are not safe. The 8800 GTX is safe, though.
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My 8800GTS 640 just recently gave it up after barely a year, though I'm fairly sure it was the memory that was bad, judging by the funky graphical corruption (it was applying the wrong texture to everything, like replacing an armour texture with a skin texture and such. Never seen anything like it.) before it went completely dead. Yay for eVGA's warranty, though I wish they would cross-ship so I didn't have to wait so long for stuff to ship to/from California.
Re:Old (Score:4, Funny)
Isn't screwing one's sources against the journalistic ethic?
Try the veal!
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Isn't screwing one's sources against the journalistic ethic?
I can be intimate without screwing, you insensitive clod!
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Ahhh, I've always loved The Inquirer and I used to love The Register when Mike Magee was there.
Dang, I looked it up, looks like Mike Magee's new site is itexaminer.com. I guess I have to check it out. :) I just like Mike's approach.
Whatever. (Score:2, Informative)
I have tried three different ATI cards - all three ATI cards up and died on me within one year of usage, and I don't even play any graphics-heavy FPS games. After my most recent ATI card croaked (A Radeon X550, I think) I switched to Nvidia. So far my current Nvidia card has outlasted any ATI cards I've ever owned.
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Maybe the make/brand matters?
I have a 4-year-old Sapphire 9800 Pro still going strong in this computer - (well, as strong as it gets, (woefully underpowered now)).
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"I HAVE BEEN A LOYAL USER OF BRAND X, BUT ALL OF BRAND X'S CHIPS SPONTANEOUSLY COMBUSTED WITHIN 24 HOURS. I BOUGHT A BRAND Y CHIP AND I HAVE BEEN RUNNING IT FOR AT LEAST 100 YEARS WITHOUT ANY PROBLEMS"
Do you realize how many people spout this exact same thing on both sides? It's a completely meaningless, stupid metric because 1. graphics cards don't usually just die and 2. changes between generations are so massive that even if one had a known failure due to heat or something it would be accounted for in th
Study does not relate to AMD vs NVidia (Score:5, Insightful)
This study does NOT specifically address or study AMD or NVidia's Chips.
It does not specifically address or test the exact chemical makeup of chips belonging to AMD or NVidia.
The conclusions being drawn as to the relative life spans of those manufacturer's chips appear to strictly belong to the bloggers who want a big headline, and not to the authors of the study. The study authors specifically note that in order to determine the life span of real chips, the real chips in question should be studied. Quote:
"For life-time prediction, the real microstructure of these two kinds of flip chip solder joint should be studied and actual failure rate should be measured. "
The study states that they are ignoring various factors that would come into play in the real world in order to simplify the study, and that they are making a number of assumptions about various testing conditions and about the makeup of the materials themselves.
From reading the study linked, it's not even clear to me that they actually tested anything, and it appears from their wording to be only a theoretical exercise.
In no way should the results of this study be used to state that brand X's chips will have a longer lifespan than brand Z's chips.
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Mod. Parent. Up.
I can see the spam now (Score:1)
Fans? (Score:4, Insightful)
The chips on my cards have always outlasted the fans on my cards. I have owned both nVidia and ATI cards.
Just because the chip - or at least, one aspect of the chip *could* last longer doesn't mean the card will.
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Fans can be replaced. I have replaced the fans on video cards on a number of occasions.
Unacceptable life span (Score:1, Troll)
Solid state devices should last decades.
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Idiot.
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Sure, and operating within proper parameters means it wont be.
I have Z80's that are nearly 30 years old and don't miss a beat. They should last another 30 without question.
Why should my video card going up in smoke in a few months be acceptable?
It's obvious (Score:3, Funny)
From TFA:
"£GDl/h' = 13.5/10. Clearly the strain in the eutectic SnPb layer (in the composite solder joint) is about one order of magnitude higher than that in the homogeneous eutectic SnPb solder joint."
What fucking dipshits! I can't believe those morons at NVidia didn't realize this. Any judge is going to take one look at this in a class-action lawsuit, and NVidia is HISTORY, man!
Not Good News! (Score:5, Funny)
I have one a bad nvidia, what do I do? (Score:2, Funny)
Hi, I have a laptop under warrenty with an nvidia 6200M GS. It might be crashing when it gets hot. Yesterday it locked up while I was playing war3 demo in wine, which I have done since ubuntu 5.10 without problem on another computer. When it is hot, sometimes I will see what looks like a mesh of fabric on the LCD. This fabric is grey with a black background.
What do I say to Acer? Do I act dumb or say I know about the GPU's with low temperature soldier balls and they all will fail, and mine is going. ? Do I
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Neat reply. I got it from the source.ca. :-)
Sensationalist crap, On my /.? (Score:3, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
They better (Score:2, Funny)
So how can they sell these in Europe? (Score:4, Interesting)
With the lead content, they're not RoHS-compliant.
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In the RoHS directive there is an exception for high-lead solder used in flip-chip style packages.
TFA mention a mixed scenario where you mix high-lead and eutectic solder. Not sure if that is excempt and also not sure that this combination have been used by nVidia.
What recall? (Score:3, Interesting)
"NVidia is currently in the midst of a $200M recall of bad GPUs"
Last I checked, they reserved $200M on their financial sheets in case they needed to deal with the chips. I've heard nothing about an official recall? Only thing I can find is a lot of angry resellers who are demanding a recall.
Correct me if I'm wrong?
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Anyone familiar with Nvidia's hiring practices could've predicted a disaster of this magnitude. They have absolutely moronic screening quizzes (yes, quizzes)... canned technical questions with only one "right" answer. Throw original thinking out the window, they just want to hire drones to do their dirty work. You know what Nvidia, you get what you deserve. Maybe they had a majority of good employees at one time, but the way they treat their people, I imagine there's been alot of brain drain. It's a clear sign of a failing company when they rely on marketing & sales to hide shoddy engineering. You had agood run Nvidia, but the last stop is coming up. Get off while you can, the train derails up ahead.
So you didn't get the job then?
Re: (Score:2)
Last time I checked, one tenth and one-one hundredth are NOT the same as ten times (10X) and one hundred times (100X).
Has Slashdot been failing their math courses?
wir nat gud at spelings or maeths but wir gud at teknoliji.