damn i'm worried now, i bought a 7950gt (BFG OC edition 512mb) and waiting for it to arrive. i hope it works fine. it is meant to run a lot cooler than the 7800 or 7900...

It's got it miss, I've got a few from this generation I'll list what I have if it has an asterisk it works still

7600gs agp
7800gs
7800gt
7800gtx*
7900gs
7900gtx*
7900gtx*
7900gtx
7900gtx
8400gs rev 1
8500gt
8800gt
8800gts 512 xfx*
8800gts 512 evga
9800gt*
9800gtx

I remember reading some articles that said that failure (at least on laptops) was caused by a defective design. It seems that heat generation was not evenly distributed, so some points were overheating while others were fine. The heatsink was unable to remove heat from that points fast enough, so it was removed via the solders (that, added to brittle solders, caused them to fail).

is due to the ridiculous RoHS specification requiring lead-free solder

No. Nvidia Bumpgate is not lead-free problem. The main problem is compound between chip PCB and crystal itself, which held much smaller BGA in place.

I don't think that 110nm chips like 7800 are affected by Bumpgate. They are manufactured on the same process like GeForce 6600, which work reasonably fine to this day. But I have passively cooled ASUS GeForce 7800GT which died after prolonged use. It's most likely not Bumpgate, but thermal stress under 80-90 Celcius is real. BGA chips had failures before and after Bumpgate too, take Radeon 9700 for example.

It's worth noting that Quadro variations of G71 and G80 are easier to find in working conditions. Did Nvidia applied some manufacturing fixes to their professional line? Who knows.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2020-04-23, 10:21:

No. Nvidia Bumpgate is not lead-free problem. The main problem is compound between chip PCB and crystal itself, which held much […]
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is due to the ridiculous RoHS specification requiring lead-free solder

No. Nvidia Bumpgate is not lead-free problem. The main problem is compound between chip PCB and crystal itself, which held much smaller BGA in place.

I don't think that 110nm chips like 7800 are affected by Bumpgate. They are manufactured on the same process like GeForce 6600, which work reasonably fine to this days. But I have passively cooled ASUS GeForce 7800GT which died after prolonged use. It's most likely not Bumpgate, but thermal stress under 80-90 Celcius is real. BGA chips had failures before and after Bumpgate too, take Radeon 9700 for example.

It's worth noting that Quadro variations of G71 and G80 are easier to find in working conditions. Did Nvidia applied some manufacturing fixes to their professional line? Who knows.

Likely better manufacturing.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2020-04-23, 10:21:

It's worth noting that Quadro variations of G71 and G80 are easier to find in working conditions. Did Nvidia applied some manufacturing fixes to their professional line? Who knows.

I would guess better cooling and less extreme clocks on the pro products so less thermal stress and hence a longer life .

So I pulled out the 7950GT and it doesn't even POST now. Before it DID atleast post.

So its gone down hill just sitting in storage. The only thing I can think of is two years of temperature changes due to the weather in my area have damaged the solder.

Bumpgate is one thing, but if solder is an issue, why aren't ATI cards of the sames gens dying in large numbers (or are they and I do not know about it ) ? Weather changes relatively slowly and not extremely enough to cause issues, IMHO . 50 degree temp. variations in 5 minutes do not occur in most inhabited areas, especially ondoors .

darry wrote on 2020-04-25, 23:02:

Bumpgate is one thing, but if solder is an issue, why aren't ATI cards of the sames gens dying in large numbers (or are they and I do not know about it ) ? Weather changes relatively slowly and not extremely enough to cause issues, IMHO . 50 degree temp. variations in 5 minutes do not occur in most inhabited areas, especially ondoors .

Ati's dying too. But can't say which exact models except ATI FireGL X1 (Radeon 9700 based), had here 4 cards total - 2 dead, one working, after about year in storage died too. Broken image. Also have Quadro FX1000, which died after testing. Guess that everything after 2002 is quite high chance that it will be dead or die soon.

Just bought a 7800GT.

It worked for about 60 seconds, then it started HEAVILY artifacting and now the card just won't post. Fucking excellent.

At this rate I'm never going to have a complete 7000 series set.

To add insult to injury it seems to have offed the testrigs motherboard with it, since now that system wont even boot on its IGP. (I tested the card in other systems, its def dead)

My feeling is that somewhere between 2002 and 2007-ish, manufacturing was affected by something that got progressively worse and culminated with the G86 issues . Hopefully, those issues are behind us and newer chips are more durable. At the very least, GPUs past the 9800 series do not seem to be massively dying, yet, AFAIK . Time will tell .