Should my graphics card "crap out" after 3 years?

Hi,

Looking for some advice, I purchased my first gaming laptop at the end of 2011 after being a dedicated "desktop guy." My buddy convinced me to buy a laptop instead and so I purchased the one below from Malibal. Here we are in 2015, and I started seeing lines (non drug related) on my screen and then other more serious display issues until finally my pc won't boot up unless in safe mode. It's not a virus, and I reached out to Malibal support and they said it is definitely the graphics card and they gave me some recommendations for replacement. I consider myself a gamer, but by no means hard core...I'm not overclocking anything or playing any real video-intensive games. My question is simply, should the card just flat out fail if I'm not really abusing/pushing the limits of this laptop in any way? I hate the idea of having to shell out an additional $600 or so for a new card when I would rather just use my older card and set the graphics settings on newer games to medium, etc. Any help/ advice will be welcome. I've heard about "baking" the card to fix it but I'm not really comfortable going that route.

Here are the specs:

SKU P170HM
PRODUCT Satori P170HM
Promotions: $125 Off Configurations Over $1500 $-125.00
Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-2630QM, 6MB L3 Cache,
2.0-2.9GHz
Display: 17.3" 1920 x 1080 FHD LED AUO B173HW01 $200.00
V.4 90% NTSC Glossy Display
Memory: (8GB) 8192MB, PC3-10660/1333MHz DDR3 - 2
SO-DIMM
Graphics Card: AMD® Radeon HD 6990M 2GB GDDR5 $245.00
Hard Drive: 500GB 7200rpm 2.5" SATA 300
Optical Drive Bay: 8X Multi DVD+/-R/RW RAM
Dual-Layer Drive
Operating System: Microsoft® Windows® 7 Home $80.00
Premium; 64-bit
Wireless: Intel® 6230 Advanced-N 802.11A/B/G/N $25.00
LAN and Bluetooth Card
Cooling: IC Diamond 7 Thermal Compound, CPU & GPU $40.00
Keyboard: English: US & Canada
Power Cord: US & Canada
Branding: MALIBAL

Thanks guys,

Al

 

Video cards can and will fail. Fact of life. Either spend the money for a replacement or build a desktop or new laptop and leave it behind. Baking it will only give it limited life, to stretch out its usefulness until you can get it replaced. Gaming laptops usually have a life of 3-4 years if used regularly anyhow.

 

AMD cards also have a higher failure rate than nvidia

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

If you can access to the windows in Safe Mode, a clean windows reinstallation may help. I had a similar problem several years ago with my desktop PC because the update process failed and it screwed the graphics drivers.

 

Nice blanket statement

 

the truth has been spoken

 

The problem with baking is that you are melding the solder back together. The reason for failure is the solder develops cold joints, essentially oxidation. You are not just incorporating the oxidation back into the soldered connection creating an even faster failure rate than you had before. So it will fail again, the other side of the coin is not much better. Replace with what you had and you could be looking at another failure. Admittedly this could be the same three year period, more or less.

 

Which also happens to be impossible to prove.

Oh wait, Easter was yesterday.

 

I think this could be drivers problems. From my experience, if the graphic card is dying, you can't even have chance to access to safe mode or it shows the same symptoms.

 

Good points. It may be worth the while to uninstall graphics drivers. And then go into device manager and uninstall/remove driver from there as well so it uses generic vga. Then go back and do a clean driver install. Failing that, go with a clean Windows installation, and if it still persists, likely an issue. Replacing these video cards are really quite simple, and you should be able to find a reasonable cost replacement and likely something faster for under $300.

 

Those were 2 of the most retarded comments I've heard from you or any member on this forum...

Sure AMD cards of that generation had a high failure rate, however this blanket statement is truly inaccurate... If you got a NVIDIA GTX580M or any of the 4/5 series, they had high failure rates too.. So are NVIDIA GPU's having high failure rates? OP, it's just your bad luck that you had a 6990M... Now you can bake the GPU but this is a temporary fix.. Your best is either to get a replacement (a GTX680M or AMD 7970M however for the P170HM, you need particular vBIOS's or the machine won't boot, it's one of the worst Clevo machines IMO)... or get a new laptop... Sell this for parts...

 

Also cough cough Nvidia 8600M and etc. cough cough.

 

I was going to say the same thing, lol.

 

It's not normal that a graphics card craps out after 3 years. I always buy laptops for at least 5 years and neither the motherboard, nor the GPU or CPU failed after that time. And I've stressed them all with games to the point of automatic shutdowns. The only thing that failed was the low quality chassis, breaking display hinges etc. It always ended up with destroyed broken shells, but fully intact processing hardware (which would certainly live 10 years).

Edit: maybe you got a cooling or overheating issue, which can produce such artifacts on the screen.

 

TBH, they have both had their issues. agreed though, a while back, NVidia did have the upper hand in quality control but those days are long gone.

Edit; I also find the higher up the ladder you go the easier it is to find cards that have short term lives. These cards tend to live on the bleeding edge of performance, power consumption and heat. The harder hardware is pushed here, even at stock, the shorter of a life span normally and the more likely quality control issues will rear their ugly heads.

 

Interesting, and definitely an aspect for consideration.