TL;DR: How long should a graphics card last? What can I do to make them last longer?

This is perhaps an odd question to ask, but I've been a console gamer for most of my life and have only been all-in on PC gaming for maybe 1-2 years and I think I may be missing something.

So there has been about three times when I have spent money on a half-decent graphics card, and each time they have failed me. The first one was a genuine hardware failure, probably a memory failure judging from the artifacting. The second one failed for reasons I have been unable to figure out. It didn't appear to be overheating, but I was getting driver errors that suggested it were; reinstalling from scratch did nothing to fix it.

The last, most current one is the one that bugs me the most. I'm getting the same problems; driver crashes just like overheating, except this one has better temperature monitoring and I can see that isn't happening.

I previously thought that the reason why my graphics cards would always crap out on me was because those were cheaper cards from less reputable manufacturers, but this last one is really bugging me because it's relatively high end and from a reputable manufacturer - it's a Gigabyte Radeon RX 5700, complete with the giant AMD reference cooler. I'm getting it RMAed, but since I didn't keep the receipt I am still going to have to pay to fix it even though it should theoretically be under warranty.

I've done a ton of searching to find out how I can possibly solve this myself, but I am frankly astounded by how little information the drivers give out on Windows. I'm seeing that the device is being reported as unavailable but nothing whatsoever as to why.

To make matters worse, it seems like this isn't actually common for other people. Most people seem to be replacing their graphics card because they are obsolete, not because they physically fail.

So basically what I am asking is, how long is a graphics card actually supposed to last for? Do I just have astonishingly bad luck?

Hello hello people ! Hope you are all doing well today :) This week, I have prepared possibly the most complex dish I have in this whole curry thing I started at the beginning of the year ! (side note, it really has been 5 months I've been making a curry dish every friday huh? that's insane hahahah) A Katsu Curry completely by scratch ! The process started on Wednesday, where I had to make a broth with a few spices, beef stock and mushrooms ! It took me a while to find some shiitake mushrooms... they always come in huuuge portions and I only needed a little bit lol. Now I have a bunch of shiitake mushrooms lyin around and I dunno what to do with them ! I guess I'll see :P After making the broth I chilled it for 2 days until friday where I started the curry prep. Curry was quite a simple dish to make, but the fun part was making katsu to go with it. Definitely a combination of flavours that go real well together ! As for the curry, it's a weird tasting thing. It definitely tastes like curry, but almost tastes like it in a branded way, you know? It's like the taste of a generic "Curry" dish. From my understanding that was kind of the point, but still, find it rather odd.. not that it's any bad though ! You can't really go wrong with curry powder :P I found that curry with calrose rice is actually quite phenomenal... calrose has such a distinct texture that it's barely even replaceable with any type of rice. Delish ! Overall, I think everything melded in together quite well and made for a real good sensory experience. I do think I could've salted the curry a little more, but my parents said it was fine so I left it as is hahahah. Definitely recommend this one if you have the patience to make a broth a few days early !

Picture of the dish: https://imgur.com/a/EwrKmqR
Recipe: https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/katsu-curry
Question of the day: What do you think is the best accompanying dish (i.e. crunchy bread, naan, rice...) ever? What do you usually have alongside your dishes?

Have a great day and STAY SAFE ! <3
Tomi, your friendly neighbourhood marshmallow~

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

Could be anything, either simple or complex, general or specific. And it doesn’t need to have remained literally identical, sometimes a product receives minor or external adjustments while maintaining its core.

The cheap bluetooth sleep-mask with built-in headphones I ordered off Amazon stopped working (big surprise) and I'm in the market for something similar but of good quality. Requirements:

• Wireless
• Comfortable to wear while I'm lying on my side

It doesn't have to be part of a sleep mask, and it doesn't even need to have great audio quality. I use it more for audiobooks and white noise than music. I just want something that's going to work with no issues and last for a while.

I've been working on the mobile version of password for a while now, mostly lending to the fact that much of the infrastructure of the game required expansion to accomodate for that. Plus, this sort of gameplay on mobile is a new territory for me, which makes it both worrisome and exciting.

Long story short, you can preview the mobile gameplay of password with the same link:

Play the game.

The gameplay is different from the desktop version. Here, you have to tap the keys in the order of their number: 1, then 2, then 3, and so on until the last key. Tapping keys out of order (4, then 6) results in a foul, which takes away a bit of time. Tapping all keys in the correct order means you win the round and get awarded the score. Other instructions are on screen.

It is NOT the final version. It's playable but contains some visual bugs. I'm gonna work on fixing those in the coming weeks. Right now, I'm looking for feedback:

• How does the mobile gameplay feel?
• How does the sizing of the score looks?
• Are there any problems with swiping or tapping?
• How does the timer bar look on smaller screens? (Think smaller than iPhone X.)
• How does the timer look on devices that have a notch?
• Does it load the correct version at all? (If you're on a mobile device – smartphones and tablets – you should not see keyboard references. If you do, it didn't load the correct version of gameplay.)

Desktop gameplay has only received visual updates. You can still play it with the same link.

Let me know if you encounter issues. You can post here, or you can open an issue in the GitHub repo. If you do, make sure to provide what information you can on the issue, like what sort of a device you're using (maker, model, OS version, browser etc.): this helps figure out the problem easier and quicker.

I know of these issues so far, and am working on resolving them:

• after pressing the last key of the order (8 right now), the red border flashes, as if you've received a foul (you don't)
• score has to fully animate towards the final value before it resizes to fit the screen
• swiping distance may or may not be too short, so it may feel as though it doesn't register

Hi!

My wife and I met through our mutual love of horror films, and really love watching movies together in general-- good or bad. For the past three years we'd go to the local horror film festival around her birthday which, sadly, is not happening this year, so I thought I'd wrangle up some horror films available online for us to watch instead.

Do you have any favorites?

Here's some of mine!:

• Transmission 1 (warning: starts loud): This was a webisode released to help promote the 2007 horror film The Signal in which a sound emitting from electronics affects how people behave.
• Spider: A prankster doesn't know when to stop. (trigger warning & mild spoiler: some eye stuff)
• Lights Out: Something seems off more than the lights (all of this guy's stuff is pretty decent as far as short horrors go).

I know those are higher production value than most of the stuff you'd see at a festival, so don't worry about that. We really enjoyed one last year called Finley that was just a complete delight.

What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.

If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its pages on Anilist, MAL, or any other database you use!