First post, by Kizmo
Hello again!
This time around i have another V5 5500 on the healing bench. The card belongs to a member of this forum.
Basic info:
- Non modified Rev 2500 V5 5500 AGP
- Suddenly stopped working, heavy artifacting during POST/boot and crashes in windows
- Judging from dust and fan motor wear the card has seen high number of hours
First step of troubleshoothing is cleaning. The card was dirty and nothing beats ultrasonic bath and alcohol. Then I checked voltages. Every rail was present and at correct level and there was no excessive noise or ripple which may indicate failing capacitors or vrm.
I kind of hoped this would be memory related issue and worked on that first. I resoldered and later replaced primary VSA-100 memory chips with known good ones but nothing changed.
Then I noticed this
The primary VSA-100 heatsink is literally floating on huge blob of adhesive. Someone at 3DFX did not do very good job of pushing the heatsink nice and flat on the chip when adhesive was still soft. This leads me to believe that the GPU itself is toast and needs to be replaced.
Luckily i have 25 brand new chips so i will give it a go tomorrow. This kind of failure is not entirely unheard of, i have replaced several failed VSA-100 chips, one V5 5500 needed both chips replaced before 3D was stable.
3DFX - Gone but never forgotten
