Does warranty matter on a 4870X2

Hi all,
I live in India and am basically importing an ATI Radeon 4870X2 from australia as the one I am getting in aus is abot 180USD cheaper. I am getting it for about 500 USD in australia and about 680 USD in India. But the catch is that there is no warranty on the imported card, whereas if i purchase it locally, I get a 5 year warranty.

Does it make sense to import a card to save 180 bucks?? how often does a graphic card give problems??

Thanks in advance.

in that case, can i get the fan repaired/replaced at my own cost without having the warranty in place??

thanks a lot for the help guys. what i wanted to ask was, what are the chances that a card of this caliber might conk off?

Like the previous posters have stated, you never know exactly how long a video card is going to last. I've owned 4 radeon cards in the past and only 1 of them died after about 2 years of service. The other cards still run even today, but I have long since replaced them with newer cards. Honestly, though, a 2 year old video card can be replaced for a fraction of its original cost.

Fans are generally the first thing that will die on you and you can usually get replacements for them. You can probably find an authorized repair location there, but they will charge you without a warranty plan.

So you've stated that you have no warranty, but what I'm curious to know is whether or not you have a return policy on your card. Is the retailer that you are purchasing from offering a 30-day return policy or something similar? More often than not, cards that have problems will either be DoA or begin showing signs of failure shortly after being put in use. I can't imagine that shipping a card across that great of a distance would positively affect your chances of getting a working card either.

While chances of DoA are not great, it is still something to consider. I've purchased 20+ video cards (not all ATI) for multiple computers in my computer-building lifetime and have never had a DoA, but I may just be lucky, also.

If there is no warranty and no return policy then I, personally, would not gamble 500 bucks even if there may only be a small <5% DoA chance. If you get a decent return policy then I would say your chances are good to have a working card or be able to get a replacement if you have problems within the return period, but not guaranteed. The risk is low, but you have to make the decision.

Hope this helps.

You are basically gambling 500USD on a card that can die in a month due to something that cannot be fixed by some tech guy. Also, when you say a card of this "caliber" I assume you mean high end. From personal experience my gaming cards 9800 pro, 6800GT, and 7900GT all high end at one point have actually had a shorter life span than some of my non gaming cards. I have a radeon 7200 and 9600 pro working fine for over 6 years without a problem. If it was me faced with that choice I would definitely pay the extra money for the 5 year warranty.

Well, every so often a bad card gets produced. Usually you'll know pretty soon, so if you don't have at least a 30 day warranty then you're taking your chances.

NO.
If a vendor does not offer a warranty, I would not trust their product.

As mentioned it's a coin flip, and so ask yourself, would you be willing to go to a street corner and bet someone that same amount of money on a coin toss / dice game?

There's nothing inherently better/worse about the X2 with regards to the question, but it all depends on if you can simply lose that $500 and not care.
For a $50 item instead of $75 I wouldn't care about a warranty, it's essentially losing a diner out, for something worth 10 times that much, I start to care because it beomes more of a real dent in disposable income and not a minor , meh, issue.