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Radeon 9700 Pro - Artifacts on Boot

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First post, by nwsw

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Hi All,
I picked up an untested Radeon 9700 Pro off of eBay fairly cheap and I'm having some issues with it. When I boot it up, I immediately see artifacts all across the screen. I noticed that the GPU fan is not functioning, so I am wondering if it's possibly dead due to that as I don't see any bulging/leaking caps. I'm using the VGA connection.

Funny thing is if I disconnect the floppy power from the card it will boot without artifacts and give the "Your Radeon needs connected to the power..." screen. Any ideas? I was thinking of using the oven trick based on other posts. Also if there are any tricks to getting the CPU fan working again, I'd love to hear it. I'll just disassemble/clean/lubricate it if I can actually get the card to boot without artifacts.

Thanks!

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Reply 2 of 23, by mastergamma12

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F

Another dead 9700 Pro.

NNH9pIh.png

The Tuala-Bus (My 9x/Dos Rig) (Pentium III-S 1.4ghz, AWE64G+Audigy 2 ZS, Voodoo5 5500, Chieftec Dragon Rambus)

The Final Lan Party (My Windows Xp/7 rig) (Core i7 980x, GTX 480,DFI Lanparty UT X58-T3eH8,)
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Reply 4 of 23, by darry

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Suggestion:

a) Get a 9700 non Pro from an OEM like Dell as they had lower factory clocks and less chance of having died by overheating .
b) Remove the shim around the GPU core and replace thermal compound/cement (WD40 works relatively well for that) .
c) Optional - replace the thermal solution (heatsink fan combo) with something less anemic .

Reply 5 of 23, by darry

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nwsw wrote on 2020-08-08, 22:15:

Thanks, is it even worth trying the oven trick?

If it was sold as working, I would return it .

Even if it works, the oven trick is a short term solution .

Reply 7 of 23, by darry

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nwsw wrote on 2020-08-08, 22:26:

Thanks darry! I'm going to skip the oven and try replacing the thermal compound cement and see what happens. I was sold as-is so no returns.

If the card is already borked, that is unfortunately unlikely to work .
One thing you could try is applying pressure to the memory chips while the card is on and see if artifacts disappear . If that works, you may just have some bad soldering needing a reflow around one of the RAM chips .

Reply 8 of 23, by mastergamma12

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darry wrote on 2020-08-08, 22:30:
nwsw wrote on 2020-08-08, 22:26:

Thanks darry! I'm going to skip the oven and try replacing the thermal compound cement and see what happens. I was sold as-is so no returns.

If the card is already borked, that is unfortunately unlikely to work .
One thing you could try is applying pressure to the memory chips while the card is on and see if artifacts disappear . If that works, you may just have some bad soldering needing a reflow around one of the RAM chips .

Yeah, re pasting isn't going to help.

I've been through enough 9700 Pro's that have died.

Something in that card is shot, be it memory or the core.

NNH9pIh.png

The Tuala-Bus (My 9x/Dos Rig) (Pentium III-S 1.4ghz, AWE64G+Audigy 2 ZS, Voodoo5 5500, Chieftec Dragon Rambus)

The Final Lan Party (My Windows Xp/7 rig) (Core i7 980x, GTX 480,DFI Lanparty UT X58-T3eH8,)
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Reply 9 of 23, by nwsw

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mastergamma12 wrote on 2020-08-08, 22:31:

Yeah, re pasting isn't going to help.

I've been through enough 9700 Pro's that have died.

Something in that card is shot, be it memory or the core.

Thanks, I just repasted it and confirmed it's dead. It actually had more artifacts when I repasted it. 😀 Guess I'll just be on the hunt for a Geforce 6200 512MB.

Reply 10 of 23, by austinham

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I would still try looking into other problems the card may have. wile many 9700's have died from overheating and failed BGAs, that may not be the problem, althoug it is likely the prob,en given the fan does not spin . There could be a missing SMD or cut trace somewhere. Or the RAMDAC could be bad so try DVI. And don't toss out the idea of baking the card. Wile baking a card is a often a temp fix, sometimes its lasts for quite some time.

Reply 11 of 23, by nwsw

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austinham wrote on 2020-08-09, 01:32:

I would still try looking into other problems the card may have. wile many 9700's have died from overheating and failed BGAs, that may not be the problem, althoug it is likely the prob,en given the fan does not spin . There could be a missing SMD or cut trace somewhere. Or the RAMDAC could be bad so try DVI. And don't toss out the idea of baking the card. Wile baking a card is a often a temp fix, sometimes its lasts for quite some time.

Thanks, I'll dig out a DVI to VGA adapter and give that a shot. I'm not going to oven it based on the fact I don't have one to stop cooking food in. 😀

Reply 12 of 23, by Horun

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The fan should spin no matter if video ram is bad or not. I think those SMT caps are the reason for the bad video, have had same on GF6200 and others. Someone marked some of the caps with a felt pen (is not typical of any retail card I know of). Return it if you can or fix the fan and replace the big caps, may be cheaper then buying another one that could have same issues. just a thought ...

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 13 of 23, by hwh

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Although the 9700 PRO has a very dear spot in my heart, the card had some issues and a lot of these cards spontaneously failed.

Including mine. Under warranty.

And no, I didn't overclock it or do anything at all other than use it with ATI drivers. ATI mailed me back a 9800 PRO. Although performance is 5-10% higher and compatibility is the same, it's a loud card and a derivative of a great card, so...I don't like it as much. The 5-10% doesn't matter to me; the fan noise does.

I still have that card.

Reply 15 of 23, by Miphee

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Ah, the good old AS-IS trick AKA "I know it's junk so I use Ebay's loophole to sell it and refuse returns or refunds because the buyer bought it at his own risk."
But they are wrong. You can contact the seller for a return and ask Ebay to get your money back if he refuses.
Don't let him scam you, he obviously knew this card is toast.

Reply 16 of 23, by nwsw

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Miphee wrote on 2020-08-09, 10:42:

Ah, the good old AS-IS trick AKA "I know it's junk so I use Ebay's loophole to sell it and refuse returns or refunds because the buyer bought it at his own risk."
But they are wrong. You can contact the seller for a return and ask Ebay to get your money back if he refuses.
Don't let him scam you, he obviously knew this card is toast.

It's my stupid fault for buying an as-is item from a seller with less than 10 reviews. I'll take it as a lesson learned and go ahead and request a refund since his response was "sorry man, that was as-is but I have a 9800 pro up as well if you want to bid on that".

Last edited by Stiletto on 2020-08-12, 02:38. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 17 of 23, by nwsw

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Update: I slapped the kid sideways via a message and he gave me a refund and changed the title on his misleading 9800 Pro. Too bad I already reported the misleading title to eBay for fraudulent practices. 😀 😀 😀

Reply 18 of 23, by darry

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nwsw wrote on 2020-08-12, 01:25:

Update: I slapped the kid sideways via a message and he gave me a refund and changed the title on his misleading 9800 Pro. Too bad I already reported the misleading title to eBay for fraudulent practices. 😀 😀 😀

A story with a happy ending, always uplifting in a world full of crappy ones .

Reply 19 of 23, by Byrd

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darry wrote on 2020-08-08, 22:30:

One thing you could try is applying pressure to the memory chips while the card is on and see if artifacts disappear . If that works, you may just have some bad soldering needing a reflow around one of the RAM chips .

I've had two Radeon 9800XTs like that, slight flexing the cards "fixes" the artifacts, but it's more than the memory chips themselves - assume BGA of the 9800 is also at fault. Extensive resolder, temp gun fixes did nothing at all.