RIP GTX 480

So... my 3 years old GeForce GTX 480 died, RIP~!

It took me a bit to find the problem, I've started by the usual, opened the case, 'undust',check the fans and all was clean and running. I then looked on forums and a lot of people who have the 400 and 500 series have the same issues as me, it 'hangs' in graphic-demanding games and also sometimes out of nowhere when simply browsing the web. Some of them said that re-installing the recent drivers from Nvidia was fixing everything or simply doing a 'rollback' on a previous version because the latest ones had issues only with those 2 series. I tried all that and nothing worked, I finally lost my temper and tought that anyways my pc needed cleaning with all those games installed... So yes, I went the harsh way.... format!
Guess what, it didn't fix anything, I started to get scared it was the motherboard...

A friend of mine suggested he would come to my place after work with a graphic card of his to see if my card would be the problem. Well, as soon as he put the card in with the appropriate drivers the pc was working like a charm, no more 'hangs' no BSOD! I then played Fallout 3 and FFXIV ARR to test the card out and all was fine. So yes, the problem was that my 3 years old GTX 480 died. But to make sure it was the actual case, he took my card to his place and well.... he got a BSOD on startup.

So sadly, I had to replace my GTX 480 and my budget not being as high as I would have liked lately.... I couldn't afford a GTX 700 serie, so I compared all the card that were online and that I could afford (knowing which ones would run my precious FFXI ARR) I picked the FTX 650Ti. I hope that the card will last a while, I do have a 3 years warranty on it. Now time to test that new one a little!