@One Who Craves Souls I'm currently using 2 580 in Sli, they've never failed me, they're starting to show it's age on gaming thou, that's why I'm waiting for Maxwell. So for me is reliability mostly. I switched from brand to brand before that, but it depends on AMD's offering too, you could try a "cheap" AMD card if you want to at least have the experience yourself.
Sad to know that, but to be fair like he said it could happen with a Nvidia card too. I wouldn't worry about it if I were you.