Is This Typical GPU Failure ?

[mmartell]

Re: Is This Typical GPU Failure ?

I do not know the exact model number of a 7300GT off the top of my head so i googled it and that's what came up. It could be the wrong one. What is the model number on your chip?



Yes, it is likely a replacement. However, nvidia only figured out what they were doing wrong at the end of 2008, so most chips from 2008 are affected by the so-called "Bumpgate" as well.

I think mine had GO7300 on it. Crap, I should have taken a picture.

As far as I can see the 7600GT is superior. A replacement 7300GT plus the cost of getting it soldered to the board gets me in this territory...

http://m.ebay.ca/itm/151312980280?_mwBanner=1

It would likely need to be flashed for mac. Going to try to get a datecode off one of them.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: Is This Typical GPU Failure ?

Those ic's you linked to are labelled differently but they are the same ?

I do not know the exact model number of a 7300GT off the top of my head so i googled it and that's what came up. It could be the wrong one. What is the model number on your chip?

I had the heatsink off my ic tonight - datecode 0830 so Aug 2008. If I'm not mistaken this must be a replacement already as they stopped manufacturing the a1200 in 2007.

Yes, it is likely a replacement. However, nvidia only figured out what they were doing wrong at the end of 2008, so most chips from 2008 are affected by the so-called "Bumpgate" as well.

[reaper57]

Re: Is This Typical GPU Failure ?

Those ic's you linked to are labelled differently but they are the same ?

I had the heatsink off my ic tonight - datecode 0830 so Aug 2008. If I'm not mistaken this must be a replacement already as they stopped manufacturing the a1200 in 2007.

Where do you find the mac bios .bins to flash the atmel ?

Check this out http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=877441. They mention a tool that can generate the BIOS, but I'm not sure if it can generate a 7300GT BIOS.
If you can't find a BIOS file, can't you just dump it from the old card?

[mmartell]

Re: Is This Typical GPU Failure ?

Those ic's you linked to are labelled differently but they are the same ?

I had the heatsink off my ic tonight - datecode 0830 so Aug 2008. If I'm not mistaken this must be a replacement already as they stopped manufacturing the a1200 in 2007.

Where do you find the mac bios .bins to flash the atmel ?

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: Is This Typical GPU Failure ?

Ok these chips are faulty internally, nothing to do with bga solder joints, gotcha.

You say they changed the manufacturing process in 2010 so if I was so inclined I would be looking for anything after Jan 1 of that year as a replacement ? Thanks for the great info btw.

Yes, if you were to have your graphics card repaired professionally you would ask the tech to solder one of those chips: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Brand-New-NV...item2a26ba69ee

If the bios info held in the atmel on the daughtercard then I can swap it to another mxm 7300GT anyway.

Yes, that's the BIOS chips, but not all are cross-compatible, flashing the chip on the replacement card is the recommended solution. You can try just moving it to the new card, but a SPI programmer can be done extremely cheap, just a few resistors from the parallel port and a 3.3v source. That's assuming you still have a computer with a parallel port lying around. If you do, there's no excuse not to build one, really. It comes in handy especially since computers have been using SPI BIOS chips exclusively for years.

Original info here: http://rayer.g6.cz/elektro/spipgm.htm however i have some observations. It works better with 220 or 330 ohms resistors, with 150 i was getting issues on the laptop i used it with (Compaq Evo N410c). The diodes as shown in the schematic are not necessary, and i think they weren't even drawn in there when i first saw it. Also, you can do away with external power entirely, but a picture (or in this case, a schematic) is worth a thousand words, i'll share how i did it later, as i actually figured that out after i built my current (2nd) board using this scheme and i haven't updated the PCB design yet.

[mmartell]

Re: Is This Typical GPU Failure ?

It should be a 7300GT. Swapping the card for something like a 7600GT, 8400 or a 8600 should work (an ATI X1600 should also work), but I think it needs to have a mac bios. I don't think that the normal ones will work. MXM cards cost a lot so if you can't fix this one and don't already have a spare MXM card it might not be worth buying one.
P.S. I think I was right, the cards need to have a mac bios. Quote from wikipedia, "As with full-sized PCIe GPUs, the cards must be capable of accepting the installation of Macintosh firmware in order to work with Macintosh drivers.".
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_PCI_Express_Module

If the bios info held in the atmel on the daughtercard then I can swap it to another mxm 7300GT anyway.

[mmartell]

Re: Is This Typical GPU Failure ?

It's a faulty nvidia. They do lots of weird and wonderful things. It could very well be that while you were messing around with it, it warmed up a bit and the bumps inside dillated enough for it to regain basic functionality, hence why it works fine now with Puppy Linux.

Try installing a driver on that and see how it performs... My guess would be "not good".

Ok these chips are faulty internally, nothing to do with bga solder joints, gotcha.

You say they changed the manufacturing process in 2010 so if I was so inclined I would be looking for anything after Jan 1 of that year as a replacement ? Thanks for the great info btw.

[reaper57]

Re: Is This Typical GPU Failure ?

Should I not be baffled that a malfunctioning video card can't render a text based application properly but CAN render a gui perfectly and that the way in which it fails to render is always predictable and repeatable ?

Well I have an HD4850 that works almost fine on DVI and gives a screen full of artifacts when using VGA. And one of the weirdest things is that when using DVI you can see thick lines when there is mostly one or only one color on the screen, but when using VGA the screen is full of green and white dots! Regardless it always causes a BSOD when installing the drivers.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: Is This Typical GPU Failure ?

It's a faulty nvidia. They do lots of weird and wonderful things. It could very well be that while you were messing around with it, it warmed up a bit and the bumps inside dillated enough for it to regain basic functionality, hence why it works fine now with Puppy Linux.

Try installing a driver on that and see how it performs... My guess would be "not good".

[mmartell]

Re: Is This Typical GPU Failure ?

Should I not be baffled that a malfunctioning video card can't render a text based application properly but CAN render a gui perfectly and that the way in which it fails to render is always predictable and repeatable ?

[reaper57]

Re: Is This Typical GPU Failure ?

Nvidia 7300 GT or the 7600GT probably the former.

It's bad because this is common enough that they are hard to come by.

It should be a 7300GT. Swapping the card for something like a 7600GT, 8400 or a 8600 should work (an ATI X1600 should also work), but I think it needs to have a mac bios. I don't think that the normal ones will work. MXM cards cost a lot so if you can't fix this one and don't already have a spare MXM card it might not be worth buying one.
P.S. I think I was right, the cards need to have a mac bios. Quote from wikipedia, "As with full-sized PCIe GPUs, the cards must be capable of accepting the installation of Macintosh firmware in order to work with Macintosh drivers.".
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_PCI_Express_Module

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: Is This Typical GPU Failure ?

Either way, avoid the 8000 series and i wouldn't replace it with the same model, either. The 7600s held up a bit better, but the 7300 all failed. It wasn't so bad as with the 8400 and 8600, but they were still crap chips.

At least with desktop versions, 7-series are notorious for having FZ caps!

So I get a not very good feeling when you say that 7 series is better than 8 series, lol.

But, thank God I never heard of those caps being on laptop boards.

Even though 8400 and 8600 look like they're lousy at best. (probably 8500, too) (not Radeon 8500)
Thus, leaving only 8800s, which are for a desktop, lol.

For Nvidia, I suggest to get a 9-series or later.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: Is This Typical GPU Failure ?

From what I've read can only use one of the two cards listed in previous post. Others which fit simply won't boot. I think the chip is fine but needs reballing. It's in a location where I can't really put heat on it just to test that theory.

I don't know about compatibility, never been much into Macs, and this is one of the reasons. They're generally a pain in the ass to take apart.

However, trust me when i'm telling you it is a waste of money reballing this chip. I understand that you do not have the required equipment. If you are going to pay someone for a job, at least have him do a proper job and install a brand new BGA chip. That way you will never have to worry about it again.

Well Puppy 5.01 loads up nicely and works properly. Does this have to do with loading a basic video driver ?

Yes, absolutely, and you may get a couple months of use like that before it dies completely.

Now I'm wondering if one of the gpu ram chips is bad and not the nvidia chip. But tbh I don't know how all that stuff works...

On those generations i've never seen bad VRAM. Never ever ever, not even once. Doubt anyone else has seen that, either. It's the GPU, period.

The chips die due to a (now) well-known fabrication defect (or rather several engineering mistakes piling up and leading to a big oopsie) that plagued all nvidia BGAs made from 2005 to 2009, and perhaps even earlier. Some held up better than others due to lower heat output, but ALL of them have suffered from it.

I have here a Dell D620 with the nVidia Quadro NVS110M which is basically a rebadged 7300 Go with DDR1 memory instead of DDR3 (ouch), and calling itself a "workstation" chip. It had never been worked on before. Sometimes you wonder where people keep these things.

I know the GPU was bad as i did another one of those a couple years back, and it took two reflows and stupidly high temperatures to get it to work - and who knows how long it lasted. I played with it a bit and it would work fine if kept warm - think "warm" as in leaving the heatsink off the GPU entirely. But it also crapped out immediately after being allowed to cool, so this seemed maybe like actual bad soldering instead of a bad GPU... maybe.

I did briefly think about reballing it but i was convinced i was wasting my time, and i was right. After reflowing it with all the proper temperatures and time it showed a nice clean Dell logo on boot-up - but after the "Starting Windows" screen it just turned blank. It worked in Safe Mode and with the driver uninstalled.

I then took just my hot air station and heated the die. It booted fine with the driver. Worked for a few quick tests. Then after i shut it down, it would go to a blank screen again after loading Windows. Got mad at it and cranked up the hot air temperature to max, and blasted the die with the hot air for about 4 minutes, then immediately took a heatsink and pressed that against the die (just slight pressure, not bending the whole board), holding it until it cooled down.

It works now, but nobody knows how long it will. I have also undervolted it to 0.84v from 1.03v and replaced the thermal pad with 3mm thick copper (there's a lot of distance between GPU and heatsink on the D620) but it doesn't help much, as the fan in the D620 is programmed to run only when the notebook is about to catch fire. If i max out the fan manually the GPU sits at 55C in FurMark, which is out of the danger zone, but that is without loading the CPU as well. A completely stock cooled D620 easily creeps up into the high 80s and even low 90s when loaded heavily, and if only the GPU is loaded, it allows the GPU to go up to 76C before turning on the fan. These affected nvidia chips will die (just a matter of time) if exposed to temperatures above 60C as reported by their internal sensor. And keeping them under 60C is in most cases impossibile.

Reflow, reball, pointing a mini torch at it, putting it in the oven... it's all the same for these crappy nvidias, as anything you can do to them with heat resolders the connections on the inside of the chip, only to have them fail again due to their poor materials choice and high operating temperatures. It is completely pointless to reball such a chip. I have said it several times before and others have said it too. I've had chips pulled from boards with other causes of failure die after 3 months, and i've had four reworked dv6000 boards die just sitting on a shelf unused for 2 months or so. These nvidia chips were that bad.

If you want a solution worth paying for, replace with new chip manufactured 2010 which uses a revised material set and also runs significantly cooler. They haven't been in production since, there are chips with newer datecodes but most of them are fake. I've been burned too. Otherwise you're better off cooking it yourself, you'll get a few months if you're lucky.

[mmartell]

Re: Is This Typical GPU Failure ?

Well Puppy 5.01 loads up nicely and works properly. Does this have to do with loading a basic video driver ?

Now I'm wondering if one of the gpu ram chips is bad and not the nvidia chip. But tbh I don't know how all that stuff works...

[mmartell]

Re: Is This Typical GPU Failure ?

From what I've read can only use one of the two cards listed in previous post. Others which fit simply won't boot. I think the chip is fine but needs reballing. It's in a location where I can't really put heat on it just to test that theory.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: Is This Typical GPU Failure ?

I think you can upgrade or even replace it with an ATI. I know there are several cards floating around that are compatible with iMacs. Either way, avoid the 8000 series and i wouldn't replace it with the same model, either. The 7600s held up a bit better, but the 7300 all failed. It wasn't so bad as with the 8400 and 8600, but they were still crap chips.

[mmartell]

Re: Is This Typical GPU Failure ?

Nvidia 7300 GT or the 7600GT probably the former.

It's bad because this is common enough that they are hard to come by.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: Is This Typical GPU Failure ?

That isn't too bad then... What card is it?

[mmartell]

Re: Is This Typical GPU Failure ?

Removeable card with an MXM interface.

[reaper57]

Re: Is This Typical GPU Failure ?

Is the video card on this one removable or is it soldered to the motherboard?