DVCS (was Re: Moving to D)

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Wednesday 12 January 2011 13:11:13 retard wrote:
> Wed, 12 Jan 2011 14:22:59 -0500, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> > "Andrej Mitrovic" <andrej.mitrovich at gmail.com> wrote in message
> > news:mailman.571.1294806486.4748.digitalmars-d at puremagic.com...
> > 
> >> Notice the smiley face -> :D
> >> 
> >> Yeah I didn't check the price, it's only 30$. But there's no telling if
> >> that would work either. Also, dirt cheap video cards are almost
> >> certainly going to cause problems. Even if the drivers worked
> >> perfectly, a year down the road things will start breaking down. Cheap
> >> hardware is cheap for a reason.
> > 
> > Rediculous. All of the video cards I'm using are ultra-cheap ones that
> > are about 10 years old and they all work fine.
> 
> There's no reason why they would break. Few months ago I was
> reconfiguring an old server at work which still used two 16-bit 10
> megabit ISA network cards. I fetched a kernel upgrade (2.6.27.something).
> It's a modern kernel which is still maintained and had up-to-date drivers
> for the 20 year old device! Those devices have no moving parts and are
> stored inside EMP & UPS protected strong server cases. How the heck could
> they break?
> 
> Same thing, can't imagine how a video card could break. The old ones
> didn't even have massive cooling solutions, the chips didn't even need a
> heatsink. The only problem is driver support, but on Linux it mainly gets
> better over the years.

It depends on a number of factors, including the quality of the card and the 
conditions that it's being used in. I've had video cards die before. I _think_ 
that it was due to overheating, but I really don't know. It doesn't really 
matter. The older the part, the more likely it is to break. The cheaper the 
part, the more likely it is to break. Sure, the lack of moving parts makes it 
less likely for a video card to die, but it definitely happens. Computer parts 
don't last forever, and the lower their quality, the less likely it is that 
they'll last. By no means does that mean that a cheap video card isn't 
necessarily going to last for years and function just fine, but it is a risk that 
a cheap card will be too cheap to last.

- Jonathan M Davis