GeForce Go 7800 GTX [rare]

[erek]

welp as my signature indicated I have been using a laptop with a newly damaged GeForce Go 7800 GTX video card. how did it get damaged? during Quake Live's Public Beta while going from browsered/windowed/full screen modes.

the end result?

the story behind this card is i got it by selling my previous card, a GeForce Go6800 Ultra/256MB on eBay for approximately $265 which covered most of the original's $365 price tag.

this was all fine and dandy til the card got damaged.

here I am now replacing it for $290 (after making offers then receiving counteroffers for a refurbished piece...)

the refurbished piece: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...ht_1395wt_1165


the seller describes it as

If you look at my feedback you will see my overall experience with laptop
video cards. All laptop video cards have issues with getting to hot. The
GPU and the memory are reworked. I stand behind my products and will
resolve any issues that come up right away. What type of pictures do you
want. The card I have is the exact part number listed in the auction. It
is a Dell nVidia 7800 GTX. Any angles that you would like?

Thanks,

and further reassures me with.

I understand. I use Arctic Silver #5. Best stuff out there. I will take
a picure and send it to you before I get ready to ship. Just for you own
peace of mind. I will pay half of your square trade warranty if you get it.
I will refund it with your old card once I receive it. Just let me know how
much it is. I don't have the exact card in front of me at the moment, but
pictures will follow shortly.

while offering a $50 refund for my broken card upon receipt.


...do you think this is going to be all right?

[Tisti]

What about a newer laptop? Those must have better cooling? :\

[erek]

not in the budget... i'm a student (and now 24 years officially an independent without any family contributions,) so i have to take out an Alternative loan to continue going back to school :-\

[erek]

the performance is almost like a Desktop Geforce 7800 GTX/256MB: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2557

Originally Posted by AnandTech

NVIDIA's GeForce Go 7800 GTX, while not quite as fast as the standard version, still lives up to its name and handles the native 1920x1200 resolution with ease, even with 4x AA enabled.
...

[Jokerzwild]

Have you tried blowing any dust out of the heatsink? Or even trying to reseat it yourself? What are the idle temps like?

Honestly that looks like the vmem's going bad but it could be artifacts caused by overheating. Definitely wouldn't have been caused from switching display modes, if it started during that time it was just a coincidence and it would have went bad during any other extended gameplay session.

Download Rivatuner and see if downclocking the card makes the artifacts go away.

[erek]

Originally Posted by Jokerzwild

Have you tried blowing any dust out of the heatsink? Or even trying to reseat it yourself? What are the idle temps like?

Honestly that looks like the vmem's going bad but it could be artifacts caused by overheating. Definitely wouldn't have been caused from switching display modes, if it started during that time it was just a coincidence and it would have went bad during any other extended gameplay session.

Download Rivatuner and see if downclocking the card makes the artifacts go away.

i reseated the video card numerous times now, and have been thorough on my dust removal for years now... its an evolving understanding that vacuuming out the dust using various pressure measures is better than compressed air cans. i basically have a dust attractor/removal cloth that i use to cover 1/2 to 3/4ths of the vents while focusing a straight and narrow path for the tubing from my Shark 700W vac. i also use a paper clip or other obstruction to pause the fans from spinning for even more resistance to get the dust bunnies.

(every so often i go deep into the heatsink/fan assemblies and use a knife/q-tip swab with 91% wal-mart brand isopropyl rubbing alcohol to really get the lingering dust off the blades)


but anyways... i went into the video cards heatsink assembly and re-applied some paste recommended by Xtremesystems as being the best out there: Arctic Cooling MX-2)

well... what i began to notice is that SOMETIMES the problem would go away if i unplugged the notebook (Which has no battery.. just an AC adapter.) but it would soon return, so i took my thermal paste application a step further.... i removed many of the thermal pads to the memory and even voltage regulators and attempted to make as much surface contact between the aluminum heatsink/copper heatpipe assembly as possible with AC MX-2.


for a little it seemed to "help" but as time went on the damage prevails... its just too unstable of a situation to be hopeful about.... this new refurbished card comes to me with technically certified professional application of Arctic Silver #5, and research has shown that "premiselaptops" or however they spell themselves does good repair jobs on these cards.

PS. idle GPU temps w/o drivers are 44C (i don't even know if my new card has been shipped,yet)

[Jokerzwild]

Originally Posted by erek

i reseated the video card numerous times now, and have been thorough on my dust removal for years now... its an evolving understanding that vacuuming out the dust using various pressure measures is better than compressed air cans. i basically have a dust attractor/removal cloth that i use to cover 1/2 to 3/4ths of the vents while focusing a straight and narrow path for the tubing from my Shark 700W vac. i also use a paper clip or other obstruction to pause the fans from spinning for even more resistance to get the dust bunnies.

(every so often i go deep into the heatsink/fan assemblies and use a knife/q-tip swab with 91% wal-mart brand isopropyl rubbing alcohol to really get the lingering dust off the blades)


but anyways... i went into the video cards heatsink assembly and re-applied some paste recommended by Xtremesystems as being the best out there: Arctic Cooling MX-2)

well... what i began to notice is that SOMETIMES the problem would go away if i unplugged the notebook (Which has no battery.. just an AC adapter.) but it would soon return, so i took my thermal paste application a step further.... i removed many of the thermal pads to the memory and even voltage regulators and attempted to make as much surface contact between the aluminum heatsink/copper heatpipe assembly as possible with AC MX-2.


for a little it seemed to "help" but as time went on the damage prevails... its just too unstable of a situation to be hopeful about.... this new refurbished card comes to me with technically certified professional application of Arctic Silver #5, and research has shown that "premiselaptops" or however they spell themselves does good repair jobs on these cards.

PS. idle GPU temps w/o drivers are 44C (i don't even know if my new card has been shipped,yet)

You know what? I bet when you run on battery power it downclocks the card, hence why it seemed to run ok unplugged for awhile. As the problem progressed the artifacts would return though. Sounds like bad vmem for sure to me. I'm glad you were able to find a replacement card!

[erek]

Originally Posted by Jokerzwild

You know what? I bet when you run on battery power it downclocks the card, hence why it seemed to run ok unplugged for awhile. As the problem progressed the artifacts would return though. Sounds like bad vmem for sure to me. I'm glad you were able to find a replacement card!

well here's the thing... i don't even have a battery... so when i unplugged it there was no power and i think the caps eventually discharge, etc

[biscuitownz]

i agree with jokerzwild bad vmem, as he said find a replacement

[erek]

Your package will be shipped by PayPal Shipping with U.S. Postal Service

[erek]

Originally Posted by Dell Diagnostics CDROM

error code 5300:0119

Msg: failure while writing and reading video memory

welp, i downloaded the official Dell Diagnostics CDROM ISO, and ran the Video Tests which resulted in the above error. looks like you folks are correct! some parts of the video memory are probably bad.

Thank you!

[erek]

well a guy over at [H] forums fixed one of his dead 8800 series cards by using a hackish technique used to fix RRoD failed Xbox 360s. He put his card (stripped down) in an oven upside down @ 385F for 8-10minutes and apparently this rectified his situation!

it worked! Dead video card resurrected!

(tomorrow IFF (if-and-only-if) my refurbished card arrives I will attempt this fix on my current card before i put the new one in...)

Holy crap, it worked! Dead video card resurrected!
my 8800gtx died a little over 3 months ago. went ahead and ordered a new video card because i figured the card is completely dead without having to pay to send it in and get it repaired because i didnt register it when i bought it initially(dumb, i know...). anyway, i am posting this message running off my 8800gtx!

i got the idea from another forum, because some guy in the UK bought a dead 8800gtx off of ebay that had red vertical lines through the screen...my card had the same symptoms...one day it locked up on me, rebooted, then locked up on me even quicker...rebooted, red lines all over the screen and windows wouldnt even boot. i tried the card in a friends computer with the same result...

sooooooo, i removed all bits from the card including the i/o shield and placed it gpu side down with the card raised up on 3 sides by tiny balls of aluminum foil and placed it on a very thin cookie sheet. i preheated the oven to 385f, put the card in and waited around 8-10 minutes. i carefully removed the cookie sheet and placed it on top of the oven to cool down naturally. waited about an hour and voila! =D

supposedly this is similar to a trick used to fix dead xbox 360s. some sort of electrical connection gets frail and it eventually fails because of some tiny micro-fractures in solder joints or something....anyway heating the components up helps melt the solder and form new joints.

im now torn as to whether i should sell this card for cheap to someone or keep it as a backup...

[erek]

the oven heating; it worked... but then i further tightened the heatsink assembly (a smidgen, and moved the laptop into the main room where the graphics got worse)


alas i am far from entertaining the notion of worrying about an already unreliable situation, so i am giving up for the moment on the older damaged card... BUT there has been MULTIPLE 4 out of 4 attempts over at [H] with desktop cards being repaired with this oven heating method.

CONCLUSION;

i am actively using the refurbished card, and sofar it is fine. i think the old card is repairable, but i don't have the patience (nor does my grandmother with using the oven,) so i may send it to premiselaptops for $50. who knows... I am very hungry and sleepy after all of this nonstop work

[Jokerzwild]

Glad you got it going again!

[erek]

welp, the "refurbished" GeForce Go 7800 GTX started artifacting just like my previously "new" bought one.



when i stripped the card down i saw what i can conclude as a gross over application of Arctic Silver 5 on the GPU core...


this time i oven baked it under more controlled circumstances... 385f for 9mins (where i finally knew what preheating an oven was all about, and i carefully watched the time)

took it out and let it cool down for approximately 20 minutes and then applied Arctic Cooling MX-5 (the best, or so I am told.)


I am now posting to you from a freshly working oven baked GeForce Go 7800 GTX based Inspiron 9300

it worked! Dead video card resurrected!

[erek]

do you guys agree with this guy on the airflow?

Air gaps from Dell's stock setup of heatsinks

Now this was something I was not happy about. There is a large gap from the left fan (fan 1) to the CPU's heatsink from before. Then there was now a gap between the CPU and GPU's heatsinks. You can see in the picture above the screwdriver that is clearly visible (click the image for the full-res version).

In my history of custom cooling back in the 80s and 90s, there is one thing I learned that always remains constant: airflow is key. So my task would be to modify the airflow to force all air through the heatsinks by not allowing any to escape the airflow path through any gaps.


Aluminum Foil Shrouds
I accomplished this by using a few pieces of kitchen aluminum foil, scotch-tape, and additional AS5. There are multiple reasons for this. First for safety I evaluated the entire area and found no electrical components or circuit boards anywhere near this area. You do not want a piece coming loose and short-circuiting things!

Second is having aluminum foil allows the heat to transfer from one copper pipe to the other (just a tad though, too thin really to do a massive amount). That may not have been the best idea at first because CPUs usually run cooler than GPUs from my overclocking experience. But considering how freakin' high my CPU temps were before I even began, I could only see this as helping to offload some heat to the GPU's heatpipe - even if just a tad amount, anything had to help.

I also closed down the air escaping on the left side of fan's outlet to the CPU's heatsink, as well as the gaps between the two heatsinks. Now all air is forced by the fan trough the CPU heatsink, and then through the GPU's heatsink where it than only has room to exit the back vent.

[erek]

Re:

Originally Posted by qhn@NotebookForums

His argument is sound. So yes! A tight (no leak) air flow is better in dissipating heat.

cheers ...

Originally Posted by serpretetsky@HardForums

generally yes, but i wouldn't think it would change temps that much. Does he have a results post?

[erek]

Re:

Originally Posted by zzpulp@NoteBookForums

Its something that even Dell acknowledges, they're just too cheap to do anything significant about it. They, by default, put the wind tunnel strip on the GPU's heatsink fins. This is only on newer dualpipe heatsinks though I believe: 7950 GTX and FX3600M Personally though, I am more concerned with other types of airflow. I have a laptop cooler that props the bottom off the ground (it does this by prop'ing the back edge of the laptop up) and blows cool air in from the bottom and that's what allows my laptop to run some of the lowest idles I've seen on this site. Other laptop coolers try to draw heat away from the bottom either by sucking air from the bottom or prop'ing it up with an angled piece of metal which acts similar to a heatsink.

Go 7950 GTX

I see, so on the next tear down/intense deep cleanse I will make the appropriate modifications (wind tunnel strips on the GPU's heatsink fins.)