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ATI Radeon X700 Artifacting

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First post, by observer

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I recently got this card. the original owner was storing them in a bucket, all stacked together 🙁
lots of nice cards in this bucket, a few 3dfx cards. about 30% of the cards worked perfectly. another 30% had artifacts or other issues (dirty fans, missing/bad caps) and the rest didn't work... though

it was a fun adventure driving to the middle of no where to get them for cheap, i'm always up for that when i have nothing else to do. one of the working cards was a 3dfx voodoo 3 3000 agp, another was a geforce FX5200, another a TI-4600.

this card was not detecting when i started. i baked it at 420* for 10 minutes and it at least posts now. it's artifacting heavily though, even in the bios. i can see about 4-6 cut traces on the back of it. i took a picture of the BIOS and the cut traces. my question to everyone here: what do you think? should i give it a try to repair the cut traces with tiny bodge wires, or is that cut likely through the second layer in which case, at best this is now a parts card?

or is the cut traces a red herring and there are other issues here?

i appreciate your opinions!

Reply 1 of 5, by tehsiggi

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The issue looks like a typical memory issue. Since those traces that are cut are memory related, they could explain your artefacts. You can try to fix them, regarding the second layer I'm not sure, it might be GND anyways.

I'd give it a shot.

AGP Power monitor - diagnostic hardware tool
Graphics card repair collection

Reply 2 of 5, by observer

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alright, i was thinking a moment ago, an approach which would be easier on my back would be to try and flash the card's BIOS to 64mb instead of 256mb. hopefully in that case, the cut memory traces would simply be inactive. 64mb for this card in even a fast P4 computer will likely be way faster than what's needed.

i removed the solder mask and used a multimeter to confirm there are 5 cut traces. the 6th looks bad but still works. the plan is to put 5 pieces of copper wire down, solder them in place and if it works, cover it with hot glue. some of the traces have vias which i'll use as the solder points.

Reply 3 of 5, by tehsiggi

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If you disable memory, you'll also cut the bandwidth in half, meaning you'll have a 64MB/64Bit Radeon X700. What a weird thing. I think It'd be performing around Radeon 9600 level then.
However I'm not sure if you can "control" which of the memory modules are disabled, by just setting 64MB as the memory target.

As you mentioned, the testpads around those traces are already very inviting as a mountpoint for one side of the repair wires.

I think there is a very good chance to get this going again.

AGP Power monitor - diagnostic hardware tool
Graphics card repair collection

Reply 4 of 5, by PcBytes

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tehsiggi wrote on 2025-07-23, 05:30:
If you disable memory, you'll also cut the bandwidth in half, meaning you'll have a 64MB/64Bit Radeon X700. What a weird thing. […]
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If you disable memory, you'll also cut the bandwidth in half, meaning you'll have a 64MB/64Bit Radeon X700. What a weird thing. I think It'd be performing around Radeon 9600 level then.
However I'm not sure if you can "control" which of the memory modules are disabled, by just setting 64MB as the memory target.

As you mentioned, the testpads around those traces are already very inviting as a mountpoint for one side of the repair wires.

I think there is a very good chance to get this going again.

Probably less than a 9600... even those are usually 128MB or 256.

(I know the Mac version exists, but I'm specifically talking about retail cards.)

"Enter at your own peril, past the bolted door..."
Main PC: i5 3470, GB B75M-D3H, 16GB RAM, 2x1TB
98SE : P3 650, Soyo SY-6BA+IV, 384MB RAM, 80GB

Reply 5 of 5, by tehsiggi

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PcBytes wrote on 2025-07-23, 10:47:
tehsiggi wrote on 2025-07-23, 05:30:
If you disable memory, you'll also cut the bandwidth in half, meaning you'll have a 64MB/64Bit Radeon X700. What a weird thing. […]
Show full quote

If you disable memory, you'll also cut the bandwidth in half, meaning you'll have a 64MB/64Bit Radeon X700. What a weird thing. I think It'd be performing around Radeon 9600 level then.
However I'm not sure if you can "control" which of the memory modules are disabled, by just setting 64MB as the memory target.

As you mentioned, the testpads around those traces are already very inviting as a mountpoint for one side of the repair wires.

I think there is a very good chance to get this going again.

Probably less than a 9600... even those are usually 128MB or 256.

(I know the Mac version exists, but I'm specifically talking about retail cards.)

Yeah it's the question how the bandwidth starving will influence the performance. The GPU itself is basically double a 9600 in every aspect:

9600:

  • Pixel Shaders 4
  • Vertex Shaders 2
  • TMUs 4
  • ROPs 4

X700:

  • Pixel Shaders 8
  • Vertex Shaders 6
  • TMUs 8
  • ROPs 8

A curious experiment.. If I only had time this week 😁

AGP Power monitor - diagnostic hardware tool
Graphics card repair collection

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