AMD Radeon reliability goes down the drain.

[CougTek]

Two of the last three Radon HD 68xx I've bought for customers needed replacement from the get-go. No DOA, but stability issues. One had its driver constantly fail in Windows 7 and the other one refused to play nice with Adobe Flash (needed to disable hardware acceleration) and sometimes drops lines at random moments just showing the desktop. None of them overheated and both were powered by a 700W decent power supply (two completely different systems). One was from Sapphire (Radeon HD 6870) and the second one was from Power Color. I don't think the card manufacturer is responsible. The instability seems to come from the GPU manufacturer which ships plain defective chips.

 

[MaxBurn]

I have had two out of the last five high end video cards die on me, both were over $300 new. Small sample size but makes me think whats going on? Further the company for both wasn't around still and I had to do a credit card claim to get them replaced.

Definitely something shady going on with high end GPU companies but I wouldn't say it was any specific problem.

Now my 6950 has some odd fan behavior, something that has changed over driver revisions but never fixed. Will go to dustbuster mode after booting into windows for 30 seconds or so, does it every say 8th boot or so. Also I strongly suspect that the video card is the main source of annoying audible noise from this computer, has a wining/screeching sound on some web pages with active content.

I don't know that I would blame the manufacturers either, most abide by a reference design don't they?

 

[Clocker]

I have a used HD 4890 I just bought so I can play some on the cheap titles I bought on Steam during the holidays. Definitely runs hotter and noisier than my G94 9600gt. Cards like the 4890 that need 2 power connections are ridiculous IMO but for $50 shipped I could not pass it up...

 

[Mercutio]

I also think high end video cards have a lower standard of reliability. I haven't personally experienced any issues lately with high end ATI hardware but then I don't really see all that many systems with $200+ cards, either.

Of course, I wouldn't be me if I didn't mention that I've probably replaced five times as many cards with nvidia GPUs than every other graphics platform put together.

 

[Clocker]

I think they just push the higher end ones too close to the limit. Especially with some manufacturers overclocking the cards 'out of the box'. That being said, I don't know what the 68XX cards are all about.

 

[sechs]

I don't think the card manufacturer is responsible.

You'd be surprised what a crappy cooler can do.

That said, I think the problem is probably in the drivers somewhere. Still AMD, but not the hardware....