The Serpent Rider wrote on 2021-07-28, 15:50:Too old for that. […]
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Too old for that.
is it becaue BGA memory during that era was faulty?
Mostly yes. Plus high operating temperatures. Some manufacturers are more notorious than the others. From my anecdotal experience - early Samsung BGA chips are the main culprit. Infamous GeForce FX 5800 cards were exclusively on DDR2 chips from Samsung and most are dead already. Same goes for Radeon 9700/9800 cards, which were commonly packed with Samsung DDR 2.8ns memory.
Good guess, just checked and my dead 9800 PRO has samsung memory! Not sure about the Ti4600 as its back in storage now. My replacement 9800 PRO has hynix (I think, its in the machine now)
The dead 9800 PRO had an aftermarket cooler installed (was like that when the card came to me), but I removed it just now as I was curious and it didnt look like it was making proper contact with the die, due to that shim they have being slightly higher ... when I removed it there was barely any thermal paste on the die... curse whoever fitted that! I guess the RAM not core died but still, im sure it didn't help the temperature situation. My "new" card is a Sapphire 9800 PRO, I think its a slightly later card as has the R360 core, the cooler has a raised section that makes contact with the core, no thermal pad, so I was able replace it with new paste without too much difficulty.
Machine seems good now anyway ... played NFS Underground for a few hours yesterday with no issues