When choosing your next graphics card, surely you base yourself solely on the model you want (for example, a Radeon RX 5700), but the choice of the manufacturer will surely depend solely on which one offers it at the lowest price. However, not all assemblers make their graphics cards the same, so in this article we are going to show you a comparison of the reliability of graphics cards from different manufacturers.
The data that we are going to show you below has been extracted from a report by Mindfactory , a German distributor so extremely large that it is taken as a reference to calculate the market shares of AMD, NVIDIA and Intel for both processors and graphics cards in Europe . They are therefore not data that can be extrapolated worldwide, but they do serve to get a fairly accurate idea of the reliability of manufacturers’ graphics cards.
The data, by the way, is based on the managed RMA rate of the graphics cards sold, that is, of users who have suffered a problem with their graphics card and have processed their warranty.
Graphics card reliability: AMD vs NVIDIA
Let’s start by doing a global comparison regardless of the assembler, and just looking to see if the graphics card has an AMD or NVIDIA GPU. In this comparison, the following graphics card models have been taken into account:
- AMD: Radeon RX 5700 XT, RX 5700, RX 5600 XT and RX 5500 XT.
- NVIDIA : GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, RTX 2080 SUPER, RTX 2080, RTX 2070 SUPER, RTX 2070, RTX 2060 SUPER, RTX 2060, and GTX 1660 Ti.
This is the result of the AMD and NVIDIA RMA rate depending on the model:
Graph model | Sales | Returns | RMA percentage |
---|---|---|---|
AMD RX 5700 XT | 32480 | 1139 | 3.51% |
AMD RX 5700 | 12380 | 400 | 3.24% |
AMD RX 5600 XT | 2380 | fifty | 2.09% |
AMD RX 5500 XT | 3210 | 36 | 1.13% |
NVIDIA RTX 2080 Ti | 9530 | 492 | 5.17% |
NVIDIA RTX 2080 SUPER | 9750 | 129 | 1.33% |
NVIDIA RTX 2080 | 10430 | 367 | 3.52% |
NVIDIA RTX 2070 SUPER | 36570 | 458 | 1.25% |
NVIDIA RTX 2070 | 21700 | 998 | 4.60% |
NVIDIA RTX 2060 SUPER | 13900 | 265 | 1.91% |
NVIDIA RTX 2060 | 10710 | 189 | 1.77% |
NVIDIA GTX 1660 Ti | 9620 | 116 | 1.21% |
With these data, we have that globally, AMD graphics cards have an RMA rate of 3.22% on average, while NVIDIA graphics have a guarantee management percentage of 2.47% on average . To highlight that return rate of more than 5% in the RTX 2080 Ti, which on average are the graphics cards that fail the most.
With these data, we can say that NVIDIA graphics cards are on average more reliable than AMD’s , and also the data is more reliable since 122,210 NVIDIA graphics cards by 50,440 AMD have been taken into account in this comparison.
Which graphics card assembler is the most reliable?
Given the comparison between AMD and NVIDIA by graphics card model, it is time to see which of the assemblers is the one that offers the greatest reliability in their graphics cards, following exactly the same criteria as in the previous section. For this comparison, the following assemblers have been taken into account:
- AMD Graphics : AMD (BBA), ASRock, Gigabyte, MSI, PowerColor, Sapphire, and XFX.
- NVIDIA graphics: Gainward, Gigabyte, INNO3D, KFA2, MSI, Palit, PNY and Zotac.
As you may have already noticed, for some unknown reason they have not included ASUS in this comparison, a manufacturer that assembles graphics from both NVIDIA and AMD.
This is the result of the RMA rate by graphics card manufacturer:
Maker | Sales | Returns | RMA percentage |
---|---|---|---|
AMD | 3210 | 81 | 2.54% |
ASRock | 2250 | 48 | 2.15% |
Gigabyte (AMD) | 5990 | 176 | 2.94% |
MSI (AMD) | 8290 | 161 | 1.95% |
PowerColor | 12680 | 684 | 5.40% |
Sapphire | 13360 | 321 | 2.41% |
XFX | 4660 | 153 | 3.29% |
Gainward | 6020 | 196 | 3.27% |
Gigabyte (NVIDIA) | 27480 | 689 | 2.51% |
INNO3D | 120 | 3 | 3.00% |
KFA2 | 26560 | 477 | 1.80% |
MSI (NVIDIA) | 50860 | 1312 | 2.58% |
Palit | 7150 | 232 | 3.25% |
PNY | 460 | 8 | 1.72% |
Zotac | 3560 | 97 | 2.73% |
Here we find (again denoting that ASUS is missing) that the most reliable manufacturer is KFA2 , and it is also the third manufacturer that sells the most NVIDIA graphics. In this case, the worst manufacturer appears to be PowerColor, with a rate of return of more than 5%, followed by XFX, Gainward, and Palit.
If you want to see the full Mindfactory report, which is broken down even by specific model of each manufacturer, you have the link to the source just below these lines.