I bought a Radeon on eBay that had photos with the generic "elixer" branded memory, but the one I received are Micron. The odd things is that the chips have had their information crossed out from the laser etching. It seems to work fine.
Has anyone ever seen this before?
Not me.
Usually laser crossed chips are rejects that didn't meet quality standards, the other thing to note is that the ICs on that card look to have been replaced, I suspect that perhaps the original ram died and they replaced it with el cheapo reject ICs from China. (This is not an accusation against the seller, it might be they got it like this themselves)
You can even see the dodgy soldering on the lower IC just below the C294 cap which itself looks like it got a bit too much heat and moved slightly. (It looks like two of the legs on that lower IC are shorted by a bit of solder)
ICs get rejected for a myriad of reasons and they may or may not be perfectly ok to use but they come with exactly zero guarantee of fitness for purpose or longevity which is why they are so cheap and China has a metric ton of them laying around . .usually you find them in $2 2tb USB drives.
As the TrashPanda said, it's likely a refurb card from China/Taiwan/Vietnam. Much of the PC scrap goes there to be recycled and certain components do get refurbed and put back out on the market to meet the high demand for parts in developing countries and the overall Asian market.
What's the memory speed supposed to be? Seeing several for 7000 class cards, 133/266 143/286 166/333... since the 5 and 6ns timing has been crossed, then if first two speeds, meh, only needs 7ns, if 3rd speed, hmmmm needs 6.02 ns, whereas we might think micron would reject at Tmax Vmin 5.99ns, but most of them would fall over that and near next speed grade. So basically, pencil in another 0.2V on the memory regulator, clock them to 200/400 and don't worry about it 🤣
Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.
TrashPanda wrote on 2022-02-18, 21:34:You can even see the dodgy soldering on the lower IC just below the C294 cap which itself looks like it got a bit too much heat and moved slightly. (It looks like two of the legs on that lower IC are shorted by a bit of solder)
Everything on the board appears to be wave soldered, including the memory chips. But you're right that this one C294 has some flux and bits of solder leftover from some manual rework. It looks like they used an iron instead of hot air.
Kahenraz wrote on 2022-02-19, 02:23:TrashPanda wrote on 2022-02-18, 21:34:You can even see the dodgy soldering on the lower IC just below the C294 cap which itself looks like it got a bit too much heat and moved slightly. (It looks like two of the legs on that lower IC are shorted by a bit of solder)
Everything on the board appears to be wave soldered, including the memory chips. But you're right that this one C294 has some flux and bits of solder leftover from some manual rework. It looks like they used an iron instead of hot air.
IMG_20220218_211900_resize_90.jpg
Hmm why would they ever use reject ICs with wave soldering?, usually rejects would be used when dead ICs need replacing, its a very odd card.
I personally would keep it due to it being an oddity with the rejected memory ICs, its pretty cool just for that aspect.
A thought just occurred to me, is it possible this GPU is much like the "New" X99 boards coming out of China, the ones where they are supposed to be new but are actually using recycled parts and chipsets ? would be a cool GPU to have if it was as I dont think I have ever seen that before and certainly not with such a cheap GPU. (It looks like a PCI Radeon 7000 64mb)
Looks like a radeon 7000
Here is a pic of mine if it helps.
It's a Radeon 7000 64mb PCI and is branded as VisonTek.
Kahenraz wrote on 2022-02-19, 16:03:It's a Radeon 7000 64mb PCI and is branded as VisonTek.
Same as mine. 😀
I've seen that on the scam graphics cards on Amazon and AliExpress. They do that to the GPU dies and the ram chips. Some times they relabel them afterwards and sometimes they don't.
This is very interesting. With the odd memory chips I couldn't help but take a look under the heatsink, and I was not disappointed. It has an ATI Mobility Radeon M6-P, not a genuine Radeon 7000 as described. I like this card even more now.
The thermal paste was extremely fresh, suggesting that these are probably new production runs from China using salvaged chips similar to the Rage XL PCI cards.
Another indicator is the "RoHS Compliant" silkscreen on the board. The Radeon 7000 series was released around 2001, years before this was even passed into law.
Yeah their branching out with the gpus I guess the supply of 450Gts gpus is starting to dry up
Although listed as a Radeon 7000, reference ATI drivers don't recognize this card. But they will work I'd you install them manually through Device Manager.
The specs don't quite line up with the Radeon 7000 either, being closer to the LE / 7100. It has 64MB of DDR but has a 128-bit bus. The core and memory clocks are 148.5 Mhz and 285.8 Mhz.
HWiNFO recognizes it as an ATI Mobility Radeon M6 / Piglet (M6-C).
Overall it's not a bad PCI card but isn't as fast as a GeForce 5200, if you prefer NVIDIA.
I think nVidia "faster thans" start in the top half of the GF2s... the full spec 7500 could put up a better fight, but from GF3 launch, those were really taking on the 8000 series rather than the 7000s. But DX7 stuffs, it'll work well enough.
Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.
Kahenraz wrote on 2022-02-21, 01:13:This is very interesting. With the odd memory chips I couldn't help but take a look under the heatsink, and I was not disappoint […]
This is very interesting. With the odd memory chips I couldn't help but take a look under the heatsink, and I was not disappointed. It has an ATI Mobility Radeon M6-P, not a genuine Radeon 7000 as described. I like this card even more now.
The thermal paste was extremely fresh, suggesting that these are probably new production runs from China using salvaged chips similar to the Rage XL PCI cards.
Another indicator is the "RoHS Compliant" silkscreen on the board. The Radeon 7000 series was released around 2001, years before this was even passed into law.
IMG_20220220_200825.jpg
those resistors appear to have been messed with...
so what's the scoop with mobile 7000 vs real 7000? same thing just lower voltage/clocks??
Sphere478 wrote on 2022-02-21, 05:05:so what's the scoop with mobile 7000 vs real 7000? same thing just lower voltage/clocks??
According to Wikipedia, the regular Radeon 7000 has a 64-bit bus but this one has a 128-bit bus which is more like the Radeon LE / 7100.
For a point of reference, I tested this against a GeForce 4 MX 420 PCI which scored a little more than double in 3DMark 99 and 2000.
