Nice find!
Gratulations!

one of these Fujitsu keyboards, FKB8725... I know it's not mechanical but they made decent keyboards back in the day so we'll see how it is for a daily.

This BFG GeForce 6800 Ultra OC 512MB arrived today. I thought it was quite unusual to see GeForce 6800 Ultra with 512MB memory. Dug up some old announcements. Apparently this guy retailed for $999 MSRP. Probably one of the worst buys, as it was quickly eclipsed by the GeForce 7800 GTX, which was literally twice as fast.

They are easily recognizable by the 2 heatsink setup... not sure what the other one covers.

dexvx wrote:

This BFG GeForce 6800 Ultra OC 512MB arrived today. I thought it was quite unusual to see GeForce 6800 Ultra with 512MB memory. Dug up some old announcements. Apparently this guy retailed for $999 MSRP. Probably one of the worst buys, as it was quickly eclipsed by the GeForce 7800 GTX, which was literally twice as fast.

They are easily recognizable by the 2 heatsink setup... not sure what the other one covers.

The other heatsink covers the voltage regulators (VRMS). They got really hot on these models from the extra power for the added ram on these cards.

Also I own a pair of these too, and yeah they're pretty damn rare to find online at all, and usually expensive when they do show up. I was lucky to get both of mine at a low price. And what with a very high percentage of all the 7000 series being dead today, and half of the 8000 series dead today too.. they're one of the few cards worth collecting. At least the 6800 Ultra's will most likely still work 5-10-15 years from now after being in storage.

Why are 7000/8000 series randomly dying?

They aren't rare by any stretch of an imagination. It's basically rebranded leftovers of Quadro FX 4400, which can be found very cheap.

Why are 7000/8000

Random deaths of 7000 series is a myth. And random deaths of 8000 series were discussed many times - BGA failure, sometimes failure of GPU due to manufacturing defect.

In my experience any mobile 7k series cards are liable to die. From a laptop bought new to 5-6 dead laptops due to Nvidia chipset failures.

The Serpent Rider wrote:

They aren't rare by any stretch of an imagination. It's basically rebranded leftovers of Quadro FX 4400, which can be found very cheap.

dexvx wrote:

Why are 7000/8000 series randomly dying?

Random deaths of 7000 series is a myth. And random deaths of 8000 series were discussed many times - BGA failure, sometimes failure of GPU due to manufacturing defect.

It's been discussed many, many times.. and it's not worth opening that whole 'can of worms' again.

The short summary is the entire line of 7000 series cards, desktop and mobile, have a fatal design flaw. All 7000 chips will die on their own eventually. The longer they've been running in operation (and the hotter they get) the faster they die. But they will all die eventually. It effected -some- of the 8000 series, but not all. Which ones are effected is mostly unclear at this point.

Bough this today ...

Not what you see (that's still one of the 10 Voodoo 3 3000 I bought lately) but what was used to take this photo 🤣

These photos have a retro feel that I really like !

Here are some other :

The N610C arrived today. The LCD backlight somehow died during transport. No clue how since all considered it was reasonably packaged and the eBay listing had it shown with a perfectly fine and working LCD. At least the LCD replacement procedure for this model doesn't look too terribly complex.

Unfortunately, for the time being I'm ordering another laptop to use for Windows 98. This is sad because I doubt I'll find another as well configured.

kithylin wrote:

The short summary is the entire line of 7000 series cards, desktop and mobile, have a fatal design flaw. All 7000 chips will die on their own eventually. The longer they've been running in operation (and the hotter they get) the faster they die. But they will all die eventually. It effected -some- of the 8000 series, but not all. Which ones are effected is mostly unclear at this point.

The only "fata design flaw" is that the stock coolers are not near good enough to keep the cards cool enough to keep them alive.

When I got a stock 8800 Ultra, the first thing I did was change the cooler because the card got so hot just sitting in DOS that it scared me. The fan runs at a super slow speed and the whole thing was heating up so much I didn't even want to touch it.

Now that it has a modified Arctic Accelero and a modified Zalman RAM/VRM cooler that was meant to go with a Zalman cooler for the 8800 series, it barely even gets warm to the touch.

Bought another Pentium M laptop.

Sony PCG v505dx

Processor of unknown speed, 1GB of RAM which will be halved to 512MB and a Mobility Radeon 9200 (Mobile 8500). Hopefully the screen arrived in tact this time. Comes with an authentic copy of XP Pro as well. That may very well be worth more than the laptop.

Should be fun. My first laptop was a Sony Vaio NR180E. Should run Windows ME and all the 90s/very early 2000s games I want fine too.

Edit: Can an improper charger cause a backlight to not work in a laptop? Thought just crossed my mind.

Picked up a ABIT AS8 with a 3ghz p4 for 18$ just incase the sk423 system does not cut it, will only need to get the ram if I want to use it.

dexvx wrote:

This BFG GeForce 6800 Ultra OC 512MB arrived today. I thought it was quite unusual to see GeForce 6800 Ultra with 512MB memory. Dug up some old announcements. Apparently this guy retailed for $999 MSRP.

I used the EVGA 6800 Ultra Extreme Edition back in those days and that puppy set me back almost $900.00. Didn't realize there was a 6800 Ultra model with 512MB though.

https://www.evga.com/articles/188.asp

cyclone3d wrote:

The only "fata design flaw" is that the stock coolers are not near good enough to keep the cards cool enough to keep them alive.

When I got a stock 8800 Ultra, the first thing I did was change the cooler because the card got so hot just sitting in DOS that it scared me. The fan runs at a super slow speed and the whole thing was heating up so much I didn't even want to touch it.

Now that it has a modified Arctic Accelero and a modified Zalman RAM/VRM cooler that was meant to go with a Zalman cooler for the 8800 series, it barely even gets warm to the touch.

I would suggest you actually inform yourself and go read a little about the nvidia bumpgate issue and what it was actually about.

Some starting information here: https://semiaccurate.com/2010/07/11/why-nvidi … -are-defective/

Further reading here: https://www.google.com/search?num=100&rlz=1C2 … 1k1.LZFqRf4PszE

It actually is a physical design flaw that effects the entire line of all nvidia 7000 series GPU's, and, some, but not all of the nvidia 8000 series.

Again.. I'm trying to avoid a huge discussion like last time this came up and de-railed this thread. But it is not speculation, it is fact. Just go read, there's even past threads on vogons somewhere, I don't feel like searching / digging em up right now.

kithylin wrote:

I would suggest you actually inform yourself and go read a little about the nvidia bumpgate issue and what it was actually about […]
Show full quote

cyclone3d wrote:

The only "fata design flaw" is that the stock coolers are not near good enough to keep the cards cool enough to keep them alive.

When I got a stock 8800 Ultra, the first thing I did was change the cooler because the card got so hot just sitting in DOS that it scared me. The fan runs at a super slow speed and the whole thing was heating up so much I didn't even want to touch it.

Now that it has a modified Arctic Accelero and a modified Zalman RAM/VRM cooler that was meant to go with a Zalman cooler for the 8800 series, it barely even gets warm to the touch.

I would suggest you actually inform yourself and go read a little about the nvidia bumpgate issue and what it was actually about.

Some starting information here: https://semiaccurate.com/2010/07/11/why-nvidi … -are-defective/

Further reading here: https://www.google.com/search?num=100&rlz=1C2 … 1k1.LZFqRf4PszE

It actually is a physical design flaw that effects the entire line of all nvidia 7000 series GPU's, and, some, but not all of the nvidia 8000 series.

Again.. I'm trying to avoid a huge discussion like last time this came up and de-railed this thread. But it is not speculation, it is fact. Just go read, there's even past threads on vogons somewhere, I don't feel like searching / digging em up right now.

I understand the main argument. I have been building, repairing and doing warranty repair on computers for work for about 17 years now. Take it back to before I was actually old enough to get a job and I have been doing it for 26 years... I started when I was 12.

I was doing Dell and HP warranty work during the time bump-gate was going on. The biggest problem was that the OEMs were not actually cooling the chips properly, especially in the laptops. A huge thick thermal pad that was supposed to cool the GPU by just sinking to the thin metal plate of the case was just stupid.

The same can be said for the add-in cards for PCs. The cards ran waaaaaay too hot to be able to hold up.

Sure there was a problem, but if the temperatures were/are kept way lower than what they were stock, the failure rate would not have been near as high.

When reducing temperature, not only do you reduce the expansion/contraction of parts a good amount, you also decrease the resistance/increase the electrical conductivity of the metals which in turn reduces the electromigration. (This is the key right here)

It was a huge fail all around by multiple parties. Nvidia was not the only company to blame for it.

Cooling or lack of cooling only made the problem arise faster. Most 7/8 series cards will be dead by the end of the next decade.

Same goes for early cards with tin solder by 2030 most will be gone or damage.

So I bought something on eBay. Picture clearly has box and all.

I get the package. No box.

Holy sh1t. Do I need to verify with every seller that I want the box? Argh.

File a SNAD, but frist ask the seller were the box is first.

dexvx wrote:

So I bought something on eBay. Picture clearly has box and all.

I get the package. No box.

Holy sh1t. Do I need to verify with every seller that I want the box? Argh.

Maybe I should go update two of my ebay listings and state they get the box with it. I legitimately didn't know this was a thing. Who would be so stupid of a seller to show a box and not send it.