Greetings,
I recently acquired an ATI Radeon X800 Pro AGP 256MB graphics card. Installed it in my agp system and it shows video/graphics corruption right away and continues even to booting into OS. So would this be bad video memory or does GPU needs a reflow? I suspect the latter but thought I would check here. Thanks!
The only time I had this it was memory.
Core reflow, you have that kind of equipment? good 😀
PC#1 Pentium 233 MMX - 98SE
PC#2 PIII-1Ghz - 98SE/W2K
Thats definitely a dead memory IC, a reflow might work but you may also need to figure out which IC has died and try replacing it, if you dont have the tools or experience there are people out there who can do BGA rework, its a working X800 so its worth getting it repaired.
Nexxen wrote on 2023-07-18, 01:54:The only time I had this it was memory.
Core reflow, you have that kind of equipment? good 😀
Hahahaha, Nope! But I do have a hot air gun rework station thing I could try for the memory IC's. They are all Samsung K4J55323QF-GC20 chips from the looks of things (DRAM GDDR3 8Mx32 500Mhz FBGA144). Looking closer there is a lot of dark grey thermal paste on the edges of the memory chips on the front and the rear for some reason. Going to try cleaning that up really well first. And one of the screws for the heatsink clamp was the wrong type and another is missing so this has definitely been apart before at some point.
If it helps Re: Radeon x850 xt agp artefacts
Cards of this generation are know for their shitty substrate problems.(and yea, with the cooler manhandled, the card still works perfectly now)
So I cleaned the card with toothbrush and 91% isopropyl alcohol. There was a lot of old gunk around the memory chips. I let it dry for a day and then tried it. And what do you know, it mostly works now. Booting and desktop and non-3D stuff looks and works perfect. But when you push it with a 3D benchmark or game like 3dMark2003 it has graphical noise (see screenshot). When I run an older benchmark like 3DMark 1999 or 2000 it looks good. I ordered a set of memory chips since they are inexpensive but I am not sure if that is still the issue. I ran the GPU memory test utility for many hours with several passes with zero errors. Could it be failing/dried up capacitors? I imagine it lived in a very hot case , the GPU fan was completely clogged with dust.
Are the artifacts always in the same position or they move? Like a bad contact?
If they appear always in the same spots it could be bad solder joints on RAM.
Hot --> dilation --> loss of contact --> artifacts.
My guess.
PC#1 Pentium 233 MMX - 98SE
PC#2 PIII-1Ghz - 98SE/W2K
Nexxen wrote on 2023-07-20, 18:37:Are the artifacts always in the same position or they move? Like a bad contact? If they appear always in the same spots it could […]
Are the artifacts always in the same position or they move? Like a bad contact?
If they appear always in the same spots it could be bad solder joints on RAM.Hot --> dilation --> loss of contact --> artifacts.
My guess.
Artifacting seems to move around from what I can tell? I created a quick video with my phone:
https://youtu.be/REpxZchhSgc
The memory issue does seem to make more sense if I think about it more. As the older benchmarks/games would only be aware of lower amount of video memory. I have new memory coming, so I will try reflowing the memory this weekend and see if any change.
I'm still on RAM being faulty.
There is a pattern.
What happens if you try to press ram chips? Maybe you can restore contact enough to see any change.
Low level test 😀
PC#1 Pentium 233 MMX - 98SE
PC#2 PIII-1Ghz - 98SE/W2K
