Uncreative Labs

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

The other day I won some ebay auctions for old gaming video cards (a TNT2 Ultra, a Geforce 256 DDR, and a 3dfx Voodoo 3 3500) and I got to thinking about how long this type of hardware is going to last. My reasoning is any old ISA video card can last forever unless you crush it. Newer cards run faster, have capacitors with a maximum amount of use hours, and run hot so that the chip itself will fail internally someday. The same speed/heating problems will be killing off CPUs and newer GPUs.

Do you guys think that 20 years from now the video cards and CPUs that are out today will be working for people to collect and use? I kind of think the older stuff will outlast the ones made today.

Joined: 27 Jan 2007 Posts: 274 Location: USA

expect to see disposible PC's, the craftsmanship has gone down a lot. any ISA video card will out last any PCI-e card

Joined: 01 Oct 2004 Posts: 169 Location: behind you!

I guess it depends on how you take care of your hardware. Most video cards with stock cooling will die quick. My x1900gt has an after market cooler that keep the gpu almost at room temperature. As soon as video cards switch over to solid state capacitors you should see a spike in reliability. Now I have managed to kill 3 nice cards with overclocking so they are a bit fragile even with proper cooling Twisted Evil

.

Also older systems were simpler (i.e. Less transistors) and as such were less prone to failure. It's simply part of progress. Anyway who will want an old p4/a64 system in 20 years. Not like anything today is special in any way (unlike computers from the 70's and 80's).

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

I like playing computer games, and using the best equipment of the era to play them. So in 20 years I might want to play the current games (like I play 80's games now on 80's hardware). I also look at the kids today playing C64 and early DOS games and wonder if the kids 20 years from now will get the same chance to play 2007 games if they wanted to.

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

What exactly is a "solid state capacitor"? As far as I was concerned solid state just means no moving parts, and by definition wouldn't that make all capacitors solid state? It sounds like a marketing gimmick to me. I tried to do a google search on solid state capacitors, but didn't get very good results. But, I did learn that they are also called "Conductive Polymer Aluminum Capacitors". Are these really that new? It seems that they've been used on motherboards and graphics adapters for a while now. Though, perhaps I am thinking of something else.

Joined: 01 Oct 2004 Posts: 169 Location: behind you!

Yes they are called "Conductive Polymer Aluminum capacitors" but a lot of people just call em solid state (even though it's not quite the right word). My Motherboard is the first from gigabyte to have these for every cap. Sadly video cards have been slow in adopting these (or advertising that they are).

They provide greater stability even in conditions that would kill a standard cap in just a few years. Now how they work I have no clue. All I know is 50 years down the road my motherboard should still be ok (assuming I still own the system). Next problem is will my cpu hold out .

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

I guess there's really nothing to stop one from replacing the crappy electrolytic capacitors with the more reliable solid state capacitors. At least, that's what I'd do if there was a particular piece of hardware I really liked.

Joined: 28 Feb 2006 Posts: 127 Location: LI, NY

Agreed. Worst case, you can always solder on a new component. Be it a PITA... (at least for a newb at it like me Razz

)

As for craftsmanship. I think the same goes for everything. Just look at what happened to cars over the past 25-30 years. *sigh*

Joined: 27 Jan 2007 Posts: 274 Location: USA

lets face it, companies want more money, so they make things bust. also there forcing people to upgrade there stuff. Take cellphones for example. as soon as the fcc no longer requires class a & b carriers to have analog, most of them are gona switch to digital only, bad news for us because i can only get analog over here (nearsest digital location=20 miles), my 1989 motorola microtac wont work any more, and i wont get mobile service. the reason there switching it off, people buying new phones=more money. as for computers, they make it so it breaks to easy and wont be usible after a few years, then people got to buy computers.

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

Well, electronics being designed to fail is an issue, but it's not 100% of the problem. The fact is that people are just cheap. Do you remember what motherboards used to cost in the early 90s when they were made in the USA? A good $500 or so. Moving the factories to taiwan certainly helped a little bit, but the only way to get the boards below $100 is to use inferior components. The other problem that was already mentioned is the high powered devices generating all the heat that causes components to wear out faster. People demand cheap computers that get 1000fps in 3D games, and companies are only happy to provide a quick and dirty solution.

The good news is that you can still buy good quality parts. Workstation and server grade equipment costs more, but it might be worth the money if you plan to keep your system for a long time. Buying used or dumpster diving is always an option too....