I have been a long time fan of NVIDIA graphics technology and have always bought NVIDIA cards whenever I bought or put together a PC. But after many failures of such cards, that has all changed…
My new HP laptop has an AMD 6770 GPU in it, which is fast enough to play most modern games at reasonable frame rates on the 1920×1080 screen.
And I replaced my NVIDIA GTX570 with an AMD 6970 in my main PC last night. The problem was that the card tended to fail during graphically intensive games. It wasn’t heat, as I monitored that and used utilities to crank the fan up. It wasn’t the power supply, as I had a good one with plenty of power on the 12V rail. I was having so many problems, I built a new machine, replacing everything but the video card. When the failures recurred, I knew that the video card was the problem.
The new AMD card is larger and a bit louder, though it cost less than the 570. It seems to dramatically outperform it, too, so assuming things remain stable (so far, so good), it will be a big win!
Sorry NVIDIA – quality control from your manufacturers has not been good lately and this latest card problem is the straw that broke the camel’s back. I’ve spent a lot of money on NVIDIA cards that have failed in the last 5 years and think it’s time for a change.