In the past I've always went with Nvidia for my video adapter, this round I thought I'd try ATI.

I bought four of the Radeon X1600 XT video cards since they seemed to be reasonably priced and speedy at the time.. Within 1 year, two have been replaced because of a failing fan, and now the 3rd one is getting noisy after 18 months.

Now, has anyone else had this experience? Is this a flaw in ATI cards in general or just mine?

The problems you are experiencing are relatively rare. A graphics cards fan is built to have a long life expectancy. I have an old Sapphire ATI Radeon 9100 in an old PC that is still running perfectly fine.

Regarding the increased noise. After 18 months quite a large amount of dust can accumulate on the fins of the graphics cards heatsink and fan. This increase dust can raise the temps of your graphics card and hence increase the RPM of the graphics cards fan. Dust build up on the fan can also increase the noise level.

I've bought 3 ATI-base cards in the past 3 years. One was manufactured by Radeon using a custom heat-pipe/fan assembly, and the other 2 directly by ATI, with ATI-branded fans (meaning built to or acceptable to ATI specs).

The Radeon fan failed within 6 months. The ATI cards have kept going for over 2 years now. I set the temp profile to where they typically run the fan at about 48%, keeping the GPU temp around 46degC. I've set my profiles using ATI Tool to optimize the fan RPM/temperature curve. This ensures the fan spins at the lowest speed possible at each point in the temp curve, reducing the wear on the fan.

BTW, I replaced the Radeon fan and the Radeon card was DOA. I could have damaged it, but given my level of expertise I doubt it. I suspect it was permanently damaged when the fan failed. GPU temps can spike unbelievably fast when the fan fails.

john albrich said:

I knew I shouldhn't have said anything!!!

Update: ATi video card fan has just failed on one of the 2 ATi cards I bought. It started intermittently sounding scratchy like the old soft-shoe on sandy floor routine, and within hours it died completely.

I noticed that in my case, everytime a video card fan died (what I would say was prematurely) the card was installed so the fan "faced" down (the main component side of the card facing down). I have to wonder if the cards had been installed the other way if the fans would have lasted a different amount of time.