What happened to gtx275?

[mj_outlaw]

The card since brand new in 2009 was working ok. The problems started few months ago. Multiple "nvidia driver stopped working" issues under win7. I presume it started after updating the drivers to newest. I tried to get back to the older versions and that seemed to fix the problems. The pressure to have the newest were stronger. One evening while playing Homeworld 2 - so not the heaviest load - the card stopped responding and since then not working. I found some liquid on the card:

What I found interesting is that month or two ago nvidia driver archive minimised to max one year range. Before I could download very old drivers. Is it possible that nvidia is pushing "old GPUs burning policy" with new drivers causing overload and subsequently damage to the older cards so we buy the newer products. Everything is possible, so watch out there using the newest drivers with older cards (eventually they do not provide better performance) - which easily could do damage to your card..

Any ideas on what could happen?
btw. I bought an gtx680.

 

[Brantyn Gerik]

that liquid is called thermal paste and is entirely normal...what it looks like however, is that the thermal paste on the gpu has all dried up and was no longer providing efficient thermal transfer to the heatsinc on the card....basically the card got old and died due to thermal failure.

Very doubtful that newer drivers would have caused the burn, unless you somehow installed drivers that were not made for that specific card

 

[Brantyn Gerik]

also you can always go into the legacy drivers to find drivers for older cards. (they stop making drivers for older cards primarily because they simply cannot get any more performance out of them through software tweaks) so if you have the lastest drivers for an old card, don't expect any new drivers to be available unless they are directly needed for a newer game.

 

[Brantyn Gerik]

It is possible for them to be trying to burn old cards, but really not likely...chances are the card's lifespan was just up, as well as judging by the looks of the thermal paste application, it was probably always running pretty hot due to poor application.

always check temps of cards when you get them, and see about replacing thermal paste. Almost always provides an improvement in temps, which will only help for the longevity of the card. (typically do a thermal paste replacement as soon as your warranty is up)

 

[mj_outlaw]

that liquid is called thermal paste and is entirely normal...what it looks like however, is that the thermal paste on the gpu has all dried up and was no longer providing efficient thermal transfer to the heatsinc on the card....basically the card got old and died due to thermal failure.

Very doubtful that newer drivers would have caused the burn, unless you somehow installed drivers that were not made for that specific card

Thanks for the reply. I didn't mean the thermal paste on the core. I'm about the dark, sticky liquid around the black blocks around the main core. That doesn't look normal to me. I belive that the temperatures the card had were about max 92oC while playing battlefields bc2 and 3. So it would be strange to get the card overheat while playing game from 2003...

 

[coozie7]

Looks like something leeching out of the thermal pads used to help conduct heat away from the memory chips, I can see nothing around the GPU itself.
Odd.