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Brand NEW nVidia Geforce FX5500 256MB

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Reply 20 of 24, by Greywolf1

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Had a look at the pictures tho that doesn’t mean anything for Chinese sellers the caps say fp tho I think one of connections is a dummy vga port as well.

Reply 21 of 24, by Lynxman

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Yeah probably not better than any of the other caps.

Dummy VGA?

Reply 22 of 24, by Greywolf1

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Yeah like one of the ports isn’t real the pictures aren’t exactly high res will have to see when/if the card arrives 🤣

Reply 23 of 24, by Lynxman

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All three ports work on mine.

Reply 24 of 24, by momaka

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Lynxman wrote on 2025-01-12, 15:08:

Thanks for that info. Mine has "FP" caps. They are through hole caps.

"FP" is different from the Sacon FZ caps... though, only maybe.

In general, red caps with a stylize "FP" text on top were originally Fujitsu's Functional Polymer series - real polymer caps with really good ratings. IIRC, Nichicon (a good Japanese brand) bought out Fujitsu, so now the FP caps are Nichicons and still superb quality.
*edit*
Here's a catalog with all of Nichicon FP's different series:
https://www.nichicon.co.jp/english/products/p … catalog_all.pdf

Problem is, this is a Chinese-built card from who knows who / what manufacturer. As such, there are four possibilities here:
- The FP caps seen on the card above may not be genuine, but rather counterfeit polymers.... which should still hold up OK, if we are to judge by other cheap polymer cap brands so far (e.g. CapXon, OST, and etc.)
- They could also still be plain ol' electrolytic caps, but just made without vents to look like real polymers (I have some Sacon FZ like that - they blow up nicely like a firecracker if their bungs don't let out the pressure in time.)
- They could be genuine Fujitsu/Nichicon FP caps from some factories' leftover stock or factory rejects.
- They could be genuine Fujitsu/Nichicon FP caps that really were bought for the build of this card and not factory rejects or NOS/leftover stock... but I think this is the least likely case.

So on a good day, I think there's a 50% chance they are good/legit stuff. But that doesn't mean you should panic and throw away the card or anything like that. Just use them and keep an eye on them from time to time to see if they start looking rounded at the top or bulge from the bottom - that would indicate case #2 above. I doubt the cheap manufacturers would go that far to make a crappy product look so genuine and not actually spend the money to get something better... but having seen all kinds of fake/counterfeit electronics parts, I just can't afford to not be skeptical every time.

As for the video ports - I think all of them should work, even on these cheapo cards. The FX5200/5500 core does have dual RAMDAC, so it would be a big waste (and probably lead to many customer returns) if the manufacturer placed a video port of some kind but didn't have it functional.
FWIW, I have a cheapo Radeon 9600 "XT" (more like a cross between a regular 9600 non-Pro and a Pro, but I digress), and it has both its VGA and DVI ports working as it should. Caps were the same garbage FZ's mentioned earlier, but I recapped it and it's as good as new again. (More on that old project here.)