BetaC wrote on 2020-08-22, 01:28:

As per my post in the "what did you buy" thread, I managed to spend $5 on a RIVA TNT 2 earlier, and while it doesn't appear to be internally damaged, it definitely has a problem. The signal being received by the monitor is dull, and improperly aligned on my CRT, and when I actually get past the BIOS and in to an OS, it has some terrible horizontal blur.
image0.jpg
The card doesn't seem to have any physical damage on either side, and the VGA connector is free of debris, so I am at a loss as to why it is having problems. Have any of you encountered a problem like this before? Is there a solution beyond the trashbin?

Older Nvidia based cards had a reputation for VGA output quality being very hit-or-miss (usually miss) depending on actual card manufacturer implementation . Apparently Nvidia design specs may have been partly to blame too .

See https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=342621

darry wrote on 2020-08-22, 03:36:

BetaC wrote on 2020-08-22, 01:28:

As per my post in the "what did you buy" thread, I managed to spend $5 on a RIVA TNT 2 earlier, and while it doesn't appear to be internally damaged, it definitely has a problem. The signal being received by the monitor is dull, and improperly aligned on my CRT, and when I actually get past the BIOS and in to an OS, it has some terrible horizontal blur.
image0.jpg
The card doesn't seem to have any physical damage on either side, and the VGA connector is free of debris, so I am at a loss as to why it is having problems. Have any of you encountered a problem like this before? Is there a solution beyond the trashbin?

Older Nvidia based cards had a reputation for VGA output quality being very hit-or-miss (usually miss) depending on actual card manufacturer implementation . Apparently Nvidia design specs may have been partly to blame too .

See https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=342621

I haven't found anything online that would make it seem like this was a normal problem with Diamond Viper 770s, but thanks.

BetaC wrote on 2020-08-22, 03:51:

darry wrote on 2020-08-22, 03:36:

BetaC wrote on 2020-08-22, 01:28:

As per my post in the "what did you buy" thread, I managed to spend $5 on a RIVA TNT 2 earlier, and while it doesn't appear to be internally damaged, it definitely has a problem. The signal being received by the monitor is dull, and improperly aligned on my CRT, and when I actually get past the BIOS and in to an OS, it has some terrible horizontal blur.
image0.jpg
The card doesn't seem to have any physical damage on either side, and the VGA connector is free of debris, so I am at a loss as to why it is having problems. Have any of you encountered a problem like this before? Is there a solution beyond the trashbin?

Older Nvidia based cards had a reputation for VGA output quality being very hit-or-miss (usually miss) depending on actual card manufacturer implementation . Apparently Nvidia design specs may have been partly to blame too .

See https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=342621

I haven't found anything online that would make it seem like this was a normal problem with Diamond Viper 770s, but thanks.

Sorry, I somehow missed the fact that it was a V770 and I never had one of those, but the V550 I did own at some point had great VGA, AFAICR .

darry wrote on 2020-08-22, 03:57:

Sorry, I somehow missed the fact that it was a V770 and I never had one of those, but the V550 I did own at some point had great VGA, AFAICR .

That's fine, thanks for trying to help, regardless.

This looks like a faulty main chip when you're unable to find any broken components etc. Only thing that would make me think of such an effect is when ground is poor, but that is pretty much impossible to achieve on a VGA connector...

Bizarre - I posted the same thing recently here Smeared output on ELSA Synergy II PCI (RIVA TNT2).

It's very disconcerting that your card is exhibiting the same issues too. Maybe bad caps? Or worse, failing GPU?

I have a Geforce2 with a similar problem - light/dark banding, white color is grey, RGB colors are overly saturated. After checking the analog output path components against an identical working card, using a multimeter, I couldn't find anything that would indicate a broken discrete component. So the defect is probably inside the chip, and unfortunately not much I can do about it.

Maybe baking?

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2020-08-27, 14:33:

Maybe baking?

What temps would be proper for that? would using a hot-air station work as well?

Hot-air station should be good too.

Didn't some NVIDIA cards have some circuitry that they were forced to add to comply with FCC EM interference rules? I believe I remember reading about certain desoldering hacks you could perform to remove some SMD components around the RAMDAC or the VGA port that would considerably improve video output quality.

Perhaps you can Google for that?

digger wrote on 2020-08-27, 19:11:

Didn't some NVIDIA cards have some circuitry that they were forced to add to comply with FCC EM interference rules? I believe I remember reading about certain desoldering hacks you could perform to remove some SMD components around the RAMDAC or the VGA port that would considerably improve video output quality.

Perhaps you can Google for that?

Yeah they did - filtering caps. I removed them on my ELSA Synergy II which has the same issue but sadly it didn't help at all.