I don't know if such a temperature is normal, but I instantly remember that pink stuff around the middle of the bridge chip, seems to be supposed to be that way.

Yeah, it's fine. The bridge chip on my X1950pro is completely exposed.

Standard Def Steve wrote:

Yeah, it's fine. The bridge chip on my X1950pro is completely exposed.

Is the core of the bridge running very hot in your card?

Tetrium wrote:

I don't know if such a temperature is normal, but I instantly remember that pink stuff around the middle of the bridge chip, seems to be supposed to be that way.

I think the pad is more a protection ofr both the core and the resistors (or whatever they are) in the area of the core.I would put an heatsink with adesive thermal pad on it but I need a very specific small heatsink to let the pad there. Also the pad is a bit higher than the core itself so a bigger heatsink would not work.

Not putting a heatsink on these bridge chips caused all sorts of issues with the Powercolor and Club3d HD3850's, I think because they were
higher clocked and higher GPU voltage than most other brands. Putting a heatsink on there solved this problem for good, then I could crank the GPU up into the
high 800 range. If You put a heatsink make sure the card will still fit. I originally used sikkaflex to secure it, or something heat resistant.

Imperious wrote:

Not putting a heatsink on these bridge chips caused all sorts of issues with the Powercolor and Club3d HD3850's, I think because they were
higher clocked and higher GPU voltage than most other brands. Putting a heatsink on there solved this problem for good, then I could crank the GPU up into the
high 800 range. If You put a heatsink make sure the card will still fit. I originally used sikkaflex to secure it, or something heat resistant.

I need to find a very thin and rectangular heatsink that match the size of the core of the chip. Until now it seems to run ok even without anything on it.

Off topic: by the way a nice thing I discovered is that the 20/30W of the card seems to be mostly on the 12V rail cause passing from the 9600 (that consume less watt) to this card, the 5.0v rail went up to 5,00 from 4,95. So the psu maybe will be a bit less stressed considering the Barton.

Yes, bridge chip will get burning hot while card is working.
It's that way on all pcie to agp cards (ATI/NV) I own.

386SX wrote:

Imperious wrote:

Not putting a heatsink on these bridge chips caused all sorts of issues with the Powercolor and Club3d HD3850's, I think because they were
higher clocked and higher GPU voltage than most other brands. Putting a heatsink on there solved this problem for good, then I could crank the GPU up into the
high 800 range. If You put a heatsink make sure the card will still fit. I originally used sikkaflex to secure it, or something heat resistant.

I need to find a very thin and rectangular heatsink that match the size of the core of the chip. Until now it seems to run ok even without anything on it.

Off topic: by the way a nice thing I discovered is that the 20/30W of the card seems to be mostly on the 12V rail cause passing from the 9600 (that consume less watt) to this card, the 5.0v rail went up to 5,00 from 4,95. So the psu maybe will be a bit less stressed considering the Barton.

RAM heatsink?

And I wonder if a fan could be enough cooling. Iirc these bridge chips were very small (harder to cool without a heatsink).

Tetrium wrote:

386SX wrote:

Imperious wrote:

Not putting a heatsink on these bridge chips caused all sorts of issues with the Powercolor and Club3d HD3850's, I think because they were
higher clocked and higher GPU voltage than most other brands. Putting a heatsink on there solved this problem for good, then I could crank the GPU up into the
high 800 range. If You put a heatsink make sure the card will still fit. I originally used sikkaflex to secure it, or something heat resistant.

I need to find a very thin and rectangular heatsink that match the size of the core of the chip. Until now it seems to run ok even without anything on it.

Off topic: by the way a nice thing I discovered is that the 20/30W of the card seems to be mostly on the 12V rail cause passing from the 9600 (that consume less watt) to this card, the 5.0v rail went up to 5,00 from 4,95. So the psu maybe will be a bit less stressed considering the Barton.

RAM heatsink?

And I wonder if a fan could be enough cooling. Iirc these bridge chips were very small (harder to cool without a heatsink).

I thought about them but they are still bigger than I need. The core itself is smaller and I can't just put a ram heatsink on it without the problem of the pink pad. Somone maybe did remove it but I think that the pad is important considering the core's maybe fragile. And also the many resistors on the chip are extremely small and I don't think hard to accidentally remove.

About the fan, it would work but fan plus fan it begin to feel like an airplane this case. 😁 Anyway it's not easy to put a fan on the back of the vga and I don't like badly fixed solutions. 😉