Do all graphics cards have capacitors?

[incapacitance]

I checked my Matrox Millennium G400 graphics card last night, and I didn't see any capacitors. At least I didn't see any of those cylindrical things that I see on my mobo and in my power supply. Can I assume that my graphics card won't suffer from the badcap problem?

[linuxguru]

Re: Do all graphics cards have capacitors?

Older graphics cards only had ceramic bypass caps, and maybe an odd Tantalum or two. That changed with the arrival of power-hungry high-performance GPUs like the NVidia Riva TNT and later. These had electrolytics as bypass caps. Newer ones have upto a dozen low-ESR electrolytics, and they do fail like mobo caps. The price of the card doesn't matter - high-end, $500+ cards have been seen with GSC caps that have failed; while there are low-end, $20 cards with good caps that last 5+ years. I've successfully recapped one GeForce FX card, and I've got another with CapXons that's working fine for now.

[Per Hansson]

Re: Do all graphics cards have capacitors?


This is my Matrox G450, as you can see there are a few capacitors around it's heatsink, that funilly enough is grounded... I do not know Matrox design ideas behind this, but I have read that when chips start reaching 10ghz hetsinks will need to be grounded... But the G450 is a bit shy of that speed


Next up is my Matrox G200, not a single capacitor on it...

[incapacitance]

Re: Do all graphics cards have capacitors?

Thanks for info. My G400 has something that looks like that oval shaped thing on the G200 board with "MM0270JK" on it. I wasn't sure if that was a cap or not. Good news then, no caps on my G400!

[Rainbow]

Re: Do all graphics cards have capacitors?

Thanks for info. My G400 has something that looks like that oval shaped thing on the G200 board with "MM0270JK" on it. I wasn't sure if that was a cap or not. Good news then, no caps on my G400!

That's a crystal.