The Serpent Rider wrote on 2022-11-30, 03:35:

Problem is not as apparent in Radeon X1xxx series, which were made on the same TSMC 90nm node.

Radeon GPUs are usually smaller than the nVidia ones. However, that doesn't mean that they were completely immune.

Xbox 360 was just poorly designed, so any chip will die in such conditions.

Doubt that the Xbox 360's RROD was caused by a poor design. Has a similar problem related to soldering, not a coincidence.

Anyway, I'm not going to further derail this thread about bumpgate. This shouldn't be a reason to put anything into a list of worst products in general.

As I was a professional hardware reviewer through most of the timeframe of these cards, I'll jump on the dog pile. They might be using the term GPU in the sense that unless it has hardware T&L, it isn't a true GPU therefore it can't be on the list. Still doesn't excuse the bad FX cards being left off the list. Then again, I agree that this writer probably wasn't born when the GF 256 first came out. So it's probably more like "five biggest Nvidia problems I can remember since I started reading GPU reviews."

The 480, ok, yeah, it was hot, loud, a power hog, not a great card.

The 970 was arguably one of the best gaming values for 2015 and 2016. The internet did what the internet does and memed the 3.5GB to death, and I'm pretty certain 98% of the people complaining about it had no idea what it actually meant. On a whim I paired a 970 with cheap AMD 860K. It was perfectly capable of gaming on three 1080p displays and 1440p. The biggest problem was not the card, but Nvidia's response.

The 1060 3GB was . . . odd. The 3GB VRAM was a big limitation for 1440p and 4K gaming. For 1080p, it was pretty good. But the 1050 Ti was such a kickass 1080p card for about $150 ( at the time ). Not many people wanted to spend $100 extra on the cut down 1060 only for slightly better 1080p performance.

The 2080 certainly fell victim to the real-time ray tracing hype. But worse, the crypto rush just hosed everything at the time.

I mean, if they want to talk about a disappointing or overhyped current Nvidia card, surely some of the Titans qualify. IIRC, one of them had double-precision disabled in software just so it wouldn't undercut their Quadro cards.

It's worth remembering the context of the 970: It cost £260 which in 2022 sounds unimaginable. If Nvidia released the 4070 for £330 (thanks inflation) but it had 12GB fast RAM and 4GB slow RAM I think lots of people would take it!

Where is the entire FX line?

gerwin wrote on 2022-11-30, 19:48:

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-11-29, 09:33:

Overheating destroying the BGA solder balls over time, this actually affected a great many MACs too that used 8000 series GPUs.

IMO this is by far the worst nVidia episode. Geforce 6600 was also affected, as well as those Geforce 7300-something mobiles in laptops. They just died after around two years, depending on how hot they ran in general use. You could put them in the oven, then maybe use them for a few months again.
After all that, I switched to Intel and ATI/AMD graphics for years.

Yeah, I have a PNY 6600GT that lies dead at this very moment. Pretty common problem.

Didn't have the Geforce 8 CPU a memory-leak issue?
I vaguely remember a software fix that didn't really fix the problem, but delayed it.

The more I look at the topic, the less "good" GPUs I see. They're all buggy somehow. 🙁
Only very old designs come to mind, when it I think of error-free chips.
Say, Geforce 2 and 3 TI ? Rage 128? Radeon 9600 ?

No wait!, it also is buggy..
http://glodonordi.free.fr/RallyMasters/RallyMastersen.html

Gmlb256 wrote on 2022-11-30, 21:02:

Xbox 360 was just poorly designed, so any chip will die in such conditions.

Doubt that the Xbox 360's RROD was caused by a poor design. Has a similar problem related to soldering, not a coincidence.

I believe the Xbox's RROD mostly happened due to problems with the die substrate of the GPU, not the actual BGA solder balls.

Jasper revisions of the console are very reliable (and less power-hungry) and people have successfully transplanted Jasper chips onto older motherboard revisions, reviving their consoles.

Those Nvidia chips dying have also been problems with the substrate. Heating the chips up fixed the problems temporarily, but there's no permanent fix for it, sadly.

Back in the day I had a Dell Latitude D620 with a GeForce Go 7300 that quickly died after a few weeks - a replacement motherboard didn't have that problem and it seems like Nvidia quietly fixed it without any official announcement. If I remember correctly, the only way to distinguish the non-faulty chips was the lettering on it, the Nvidia logo was slightly different:

The 1060 3GB earned it's place on that list just by existing. Nvidia made a huge mistake by putting that in circulation, as the full-version of the card, which packs 6GB of GDDR5, is a wonderful gaming and creative workhorse that is still beloved by myself and many others.

RetroGamer4Ever wrote on 2022-12-01, 22:32:

The 1060 3GB earned it's place on that list just by existing. Nvidia made a huge mistake by putting that in circulation, as the full-version of the card, which packs 6GB of GDDR5, is a wonderful gaming and creative workhorse that is still beloved by myself and many others.

I dunno i had the 3gb card, it was the $200 option to the 1060 6gb at 250-280. Also because it didnt have at least 4gb of ram the crypto miners ignored it during the big bubbles in 2017 and 2019, meaning it remained affordable at MSRP while the 1060 started going for $400-500. I enjoyed mine, it was a good card at 1080p, and a real upgrade from the GTX 960

schmatzler wrote on 2022-12-01, 20:47:

I believe the Xbox's RROD mostly happened due to problems with the die substrate of the GPU, not the actual BGA solder balls. […]
Show full quote

Gmlb256 wrote on 2022-11-30, 21:02:

Xbox 360 was just poorly designed, so any chip will die in such conditions.

Doubt that the Xbox 360's RROD was caused by a poor design. Has a similar problem related to soldering, not a coincidence.

I believe the Xbox's RROD mostly happened due to problems with the die substrate of the GPU, not the actual BGA solder balls.

Jasper revisions of the console are very reliable (and less power-hungry) and people have successfully transplanted Jasper chips onto older motherboard revisions, reviving their consoles.

Those Nvidia chips dying have also been problems with the substrate. Heating the chips up fixed the problems temporarily, but there's no permanent fix for it, sadly.

Back in the day I had a Dell Latitude D620 with a GeForce Go 7300 that quickly died after a few weeks - a replacement motherboard didn't have that problem and it seems like Nvidia quietly fixed it without any official announcement. If I remember correctly, the only way to distinguish the non-faulty chips was the lettering on it, the Nvidia logo was slightly different.

It's all that transition to leadfree solder, ATI was also affected but it was less common, but plenty of R580 series cards died, plenty of R600 ect cards died as well. It was more obvious on the geforce 8 because most people bought a geforce 8, because the HD2900XT was a terrible card, it could almost compete with the 8800GTS 640 while requiring power beyond the 8800 Ultra. People noticed it because alot more 8800GTS 320 and 640 sold compared to what ATI had on offer, and honestly the 7900GS and GT where more popular than the x1900GT/x1900XT from my experince.

candle_86 wrote on 2022-12-02, 01:58:

It's all that transition to leadfree solder

That's a common myth, but it's not universally true for all of the BGA chip failures mentioned here.

On the Xbox 360, it's definitely not the cause of the problem. It's the substrate on the chip itself, which is not soldered to the board at all.

This video explains it very well in the first few minutes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ljtw8rVW7j8

(Edit: Linked another video that explains it even better)