PNY To Offer Lifetime Warranty on Certain Video Cards… But Whose Lifetime?

Tech Connect has a story detailing the fact that PNY, memory and video card retailer, will offer a lifetime warranty on some of their video card lineup. This is certainly an investment, and anything that makes the purchase more secure over time is welcome.

XFX offers a double lifetime warranty on their line of video cards, and I know I have chosen them as my video card supplier many times because of that fact.

Pressured by the likes of EVGA and BFG, long-time Nvidia board partner PNY has decided to extend the warranty period of its XLR8 GeForce GTX cards from one year to lifetime.

According to PNY, as of September 1st, those who have purchased an XLR8 GeForce GTX 260, 275, 285 or 295 will get the standard 1-year warranty out of the box, but will be able to register their card on PNY.com and get the mentioned lifetime warranty.

“Consumers who purchase our XLR8 GTX series graphics cards are typically gamers seeking stunning graphics performance. Purchasing a high-end graphics card is definitely an investment and with our new lifetime warranty, we’re giving users the peace of mind to play with confidence,” said Nicholas Mauro, senior marketing manager, PC components for PNY.

The only thing I’d want to know is, whose lifetime are we speaking of? You’re probably thinking that I’m just being flip, and that there is nothing to get excited about… and you’d be dead wrong.

When you are a low volume buyer of parts, doing it mainly in the stead of a customer, whose machine you’re repairing, you tend to be picky, because you don’t want problems, for yourself, or the person whose machine you hope to work on the next time they have a problem. That is one of the reasons I buy Kingston memory. Did you know that when you buy Kingston memory, you don’t need a sales slip to obtain warranty performance? All that is needed is the sticker on the memory stick and a call to Kingston – forever. Viking also does this, no receipt needed, just a non-physically damaged SIMM or DIMM with a valid sticker. No troubles.

On the other hand, I had a customer who owned an older machine, with PC-133 DRAM. Now before you laugh, you must remember that they were on a budget, and it fit their needs. The memory had been purchased and PNY was the brand. The customer still had all the sales slips, tucked away neatly in a folder. When I tried to get a replacement from PNY, I was told that, since that memory was so old, and they (not PNY, they don’t manufacturer anything – they stick their name on things) were not manufacturing PC-133 memory anymore, it’s lifetime was effectively over. So the lifetime warranty was over.

I had this same problem with a PNY video card, from long ago, also sold with a lifetime warranty. Again, since the card was no longer being manufactured, it’s ‘lifetime warranty’ was void. Not much of a lifetime if you ask me.

So, before buying anything PNY that you have expectations of keeping for a while, I’d ask them whose lifetime they are using as the standard. By the way, XFX will replace video cards that have been registered, for the first owner, and the one he sells that video card to, later on. Nice.

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The Romans would never have found time to conquer the world if they had been obliged first to learn Latin. Heinrich Heine