> The fix back then was to bake your GPU in the oven for a while
Oh that brings back bad memories! We were running a LAN centre, and our 7900GT graphics cards were failing left and right. We bought 23 8800GTS cards to replace/upgrade the lot. After a year or so they all started failing too. Reflowing, i.e. baking in a cheap little electric oven in the staff room, would give them an extra 6 months or so of life. After each subsequent baking, it would last less time than the previous. Having to replace so many graphics cards, after a much shorter that expected lifespan, was a lot of money for a tiny business. (Having said that, looking at how much it would cost now, I shouldn't complain.)
I read at the time that it was because of microscopic cracks in the solder, but hadn't realised before now that it was due to the removal of lead. We had no further problems after switching to AMD, but I never knew whether it was really an NVidia problem, or just those models, etc.
The GeForce FX 5900XTs, from the 2004 PCs (before the article's 2006 date of the start of the problem), were still working fine 10 years later, albeit in old PCs used for just web access and the occasional game of Bejeweled.
Oh that brings back bad memories! We were running a LAN centre, and our 7900GT graphics cards were failing left and right. We bought 23 8800GTS cards to replace/upgrade the lot. After a year or so they all started failing too. Reflowing, i.e. baking in a cheap little electric oven in the staff room, would give them an extra 6 months or so of life. After each subsequent baking, it would last less time than the previous. Having to replace so many graphics cards, after a much shorter that expected lifespan, was a lot of money for a tiny business. (Having said that, looking at how much it would cost now, I shouldn't complain.)
I read at the time that it was because of microscopic cracks in the solder, but hadn't realised before now that it was due to the removal of lead. We had no further problems after switching to AMD, but I never knew whether it was really an NVidia problem, or just those models, etc.
The GeForce FX 5900XTs, from the 2004 PCs (before the article's 2006 date of the start of the problem), were still working fine 10 years later, albeit in old PCs used for just web access and the occasional game of Bejeweled.