Will running games in a higher resolution kill my GFX card??

[sankukai]

I know this sounds a bit stupid but just bear with me. I purchased a new EVGA GTX 670 (vanilla version) in May through amazon.com and sent it to a friend of mine that lives in Wisconsin, USA. I live in Nicaragua, Central America.

He came on a business trip a few weeks ago, brought me the card and I have been using it ever since. Unfortunately, while browsing through the EVGA forums I learned about a "small" batch of vanilla and SC GTX 670 cards that came out defective and were dying on gamers after a few weeks of use. I unfortunately received what appears to have originally been a SC version of the card that was downclocked in order to make it a regular GTX. Of that whole batch of defective cards, these are the ones that have the worst reputation for kicking the bucket prematurely. I have been using the card for more than two weeks and so far it has not died on me but I'm still afraid that I'm not out of the woods just yet.

The thing is I'm about to purchase a Dell 24-inch full HD monitor that I plan to use for gaming instead of my 32-inch LCD TV. My TV's resolution only goes up to 1366x768 and most HD PC monitors' native resolution as you know is 1920x1080. Could running my games at that resolution strain my card to the breaking point, if in fact it is one of the defective cards, so that it might die on me? I have this theory that it is perhaps the fact that so far I run all my games at 1366x768 that has kept the card alive until now.

Could this happen? Could running my games in a higher resolution (1920x1080) be too much for this card if in fact it turns out that it came from that defective batch?

What do you guys think?

RMAing the card from Nicaragua to the USA would prohibitively expensively for me and my American friend will not be back any time soon, so I just wanted a realistic opinion on what my odds are so I don't make the mistake of selling the GFX card I have used until now (XFX Radeon HD 6870) if the worst does come to pass.

[Perineum]

I've never heard the details of what it was that made the cards defective.... so it's a bit hard to guess if higher resolutions would add to the threat of a failure.

[NyteOwl]

Running in a higher resolution will make the card work a bit harder and use more of the memory but I shouldn't think it significant enough to hurt the card unless it's already teetering on failure. Overclocking it would be more damaging than bumping up the resolution if it was one of the defective units I would expect.

You might try contacting the manufacturer and asking them if there is a way to check the defective lot numbers/serial numbers to see if your card is amongst that batch.

[sankukai]

You are right Perineum, EVGA never gave a clear explanation of what made this batch of 670s go bad in the first place i.e. substandard components, bad manufacturing, etc. I have been reading their forums and most of the people that had their 670s die on them started noticing artifacts and other graphical anomalies as early as the day after installation and as late as a few weeks after, so I don't know if i should just consider myself one of the lucky ones just yet.

And NyteOwl as for checking the card serial numbers to see whether they're part of that defective batch, I already posted such a comment on the EVGA forums but received no clear answer. All they told me was that if the card went bad they would replace it for me free of charge, which would be awesome if I lived in the USA, but I don't so it makes little difference for me in practical terms.

Any other suggestions as to what I could do to clarify this issue??

But thanks anyway dudes. I appreciate your input

[Agent-A.01]

Id stress test it, it should show problems pretty fast if it has any. Best not to wait and see

[Bond007]

Shouldn't really matter. It should just mean lower fps as it processes more pixels.

[b1lk1]

I'd stress it bigtime. No sense in using it lightly to prevent failure. If it can pass major stress testing it should be fine. I would not sell my second card until I did this.