AMD Graphics Chips Could Last 10X To 100X Longer

An anonymous reader writes "According to a research report out of UCLA, released this morning, NVidia's high-lead bump packaging could last anywhere from 1/10th to 1/100th as long as AMD's advanced eutectic bump approach. (TG Daily has picked up the claim.) NVidia is currently in the midst of a $200M recall of bad GPUs, and the report suggests that the issue could be much deeper than NVidia's PR department would have us believe." The report lends credence to the strident claims of the Inquirer's Charlie Demerjian, which we discussed a month back.

Comments

Re:Sweet!

[dr2chase]

"Eutectic" is a materials science word; it means (more or less, and I'm refreshing my memory from Wikipedia) a mixture (alloy) that does not separate/segregate into its original metals when it freezes; it has the lowest melting point, and passes immediately from liquid to solid phase. If, say, you have a solder that has more lead than the eutectic mix, when it freezes, it will segregate into (tiny) bits of lead and a eutectic remainder as it cools.

The advantage of a eutectic mix is that the melting point is lower, and when it is melted, it is all melted, and flows nicely. There are probably some caveats and quid-pro-quos for how it behaves in contact with other metals, which will certainly go ever-so-slightly into solution and change things.

Re:So Do nVidias last 3 months, or ATIs 30-300 yea

[omega_dk]

It could just mean that if failures occur along a normal distribution, which they probably do, each point is approximately 10-100x higher than the ATI cards, which would be a Big Deal.

Most companies offer at least a year long warranty; if they have significant failures in that year, like 10-100x higher than normal, that may put too much pressure on their warranty policy.

And let's not forget nVidia's partners in selling cards (you know, all the non-nVidia nVidia cards). Those people may see high failure rates of nVidia parts, and all of a sudden using another chipset just got a heckuva lot more attractive.

So, the moral of the story is, there is no set 'time' that a card will die. It's not like after 10 months all of them will just conk out. But if there are higher failure rates than normal in their warranty period, not to mention harm done to their reputation, it could end up costing them greatly.

Re:Sweet!

[John Courtland]

Solder is actually hypoeutectic, meaning it melts at a lower temperature than any of its component metals alone (and still remains the same alloy, which you mentioned).

There's also hypereutectic which means the opposite, obviously. A lot of pistons are cast with a hypereutectic alloy to keep costs down (forging is expensive) while increasing the melting point.

Re:Down to the drivers

[minvaren]

How to fix bloated ATI drivers :

1] Download full CCC installer.
2] Don't install the CCC, just the drivers.
3] Download a copy of ATI Tray Tools.