Does overclocking reduce the life of a graphics card?

[Cool Barn]

Hi all,

How badly does overclocking reduce the life of graphics cards?

I would love to be able to buy a Ti 4600, but after going through my budget I think a 4400 will be the max that I can go. I've heard that you can get a 4400 to 4600 speeds quite easily without any additional cooling, but was wondering how long my card would last if I did such a thing? Anyone with some real-world experience in this matter?

Thanks very much in advance :-)

[Pakman]

It should last longer than you will need it to. I've never seen a card die due to overclocking. You can plug-in a $5 case fan and lay it on the back of the card to insure that it's cool enough. From what I've read, a 4400 should be able to match a 4600 or close to it. I've only tested 4600's and 4200's myself, so I can't tell you for sure what one can do. Gainward and possibly Abit should have some new 4200 cards with damn fast memory on them. I reccomend that you look for one of them. They should scream and save you a little $.

[Spectral]

Yes, it will shorten the lifespan of the card... But are you really planning on keeping the card for 10 years?

Ive never had anything fail from overclocking.. And I always push my hardware to its max... Im not saying that hardware NEVER fails due to overclocking, Ive just never seen it happen.

[JonathanM]

After having burnt a TNT2, a Ti 500 (during overclock testing ;) ) I can admit that pushing card too high will definitly destroy them. In some cases even a 20MHz overclock is too high.

And BTW, system overclocking kills video cards too ;) my gf2 mx @ 88MHz for the past year can admit to that :D