Good price, more than enough performance for non-gamers but possible reliability problems. (PNY GeForce 9 9400GT)

Member Name: aprogrammer

Product:	PNY GeForce 9 9400GT
Date:	16/06/09 (76 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Reasonable price. More than adequate performance for business apps with occasional 3d.

Disadvantages: Possible reliability issues?

I bought two of these cards to drive 4 displays for a work PC. In terms of performance they have been fine. 2d performance in Aero under Vista is unsurprisingly faultless. I haven't had much call to test the 3d performance - plenty of detail available on google earth, but I'm sure the latest and greatest would be more appropriate for serious gamers or 3d graphics design.

One area that has concerned me is reliability. Of the two cards I bought three months ago, one now suffers intermittent fan failures. When the fan fails, within minutes the GPU temperature shoots up to >100C, until the machine reboots. The machine has been running 24/7, typically under low load, but I am surprised that this has caused problems in such a short space of time.

I have ordered a replacement card of the same type. Hopefully my failure is unlucky rather than typical. If I experience further problems, then I will be tempted by a pair of NVS 295 cards - with no fans, there is one less thing to go wrong. On the downside, performance is lower, albeit probably still fine for my intended uses.

Summary: Good price, more than enough performance for non-gamers but possible reliability problems.

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