Radeon R9100 recap

[trodas]

A long time ago I get this old card. It was, even back in his day, low end card. But it was capable of running fanless and as backup AGP card it was usefull. And exactly that is the reason, why I ended up recapping the card completely. That is, because of the problems I having with the MSI PM8M3-V mainboard stability in gaming, I need a rock-stable and 100% reliable AGP graphic card.

However this card was unlucky from the day one. First it was unlucky, because it got known bad Licon caps. These 470uF 10V suxxkas show good capacity, yet terrible ESR. 60mOhms is way over what is usable:



...not to mention the little 100uF 16V SMD caps having lost chunk of their capacity and ESR starting to pump up to whooping 890mOhms...

Therefore it is no surprise, that the card crash during SoF2 gaming. Almost always the game crash when level loading...

Also the card was unlucky, because when I decided to upgrade it's cooling with half of the Zalman ZM80A-HP vga heatpipe cooler. But there are no holes near the chip. So I decided to glue it to the chip. And during this the weights slided a bit and the result is, well, not optimal and ughly...



So I decided to give the Radeon R9100 much better caps (as you can see already the caps are replaced), completely polymer (and ceramic) ones and add few and bump the capacity a little too:



All these caps are Nichicon polymers, that have quite much better specs that the original crap caps. Even the SMD caps are Nichicon polymers now and their capacity was, with the 470uF exception, bumped from 100 to 330uF (220uF in the 6.3V case, as the bottom cap run at 5V, not 3.3V as the rest):



That is the bottom cap - look at the shocking number of places, where caps might be! If there is cap everywhere, then the card will be probably designed to take far much powerfull graphic chip that the R9100 is:



Near the ram chips I added 4 22uF 6.3V SMD ceramics to four empty places near the ram chips and I also added another two 330uF 4V Nichicon CK caps for better ram stability (having overclocking also in mind):



Two of these ceramics are added to the bottom of the card:



When the heatsink are screwed in, then the whole fault is revealed and... it did not looks nice at all. But at least it fit into the AGP slot w/o any issues...



So, to recap this unknown Radeon R9100 card, you need:

Radeon 9100
-----------
4x 470uF 10V d10 Licon - 1x 1200uF 4V Nichicon F5 (d10x13) RR50G122MDN1 - 3,3V (top one, near coil)
- 3x 1000uF 2.5V Nichicon LF (d10x13) PLF0E102MDO1 - under 2.5V
4x 100uF 16V d6.3 SMD - 1x 220uF 6.3V Nichicon PCK0J221MCO1GS - 5V (bottom one)
- 3x 330uF 4V Nichicon CK PCK0G331MCO1GS - (3,3V)
1x 470uF 6V d8 SMD (3,3V) - 470uF 6.3V Nichicon HA (d8) SMD RHA0J471MCN1GS
2x 22uF 16V d4 SMD (2,5V) - 22uF 6.3V Murata X5R (1206) JMK316AB7226MLHT
- added 2x 330uF 4V Nichicon CK PCK0G331MCO1GS (near rams)
- added 4x 22uF 6.3V Murata X5R (1206) JMK316AB7226MLHT (near rams)


The result?
Well, when I put it into my MSI PM8M3-V mobo, it at first show ram errors (heartbreaking, after so much work and so many polymers and added caps...) on the screen, so I have to pull it off and check.
Fortunately, I managed to find the bit of tin, that ended up on one of the bottom ram chips and after cleaning - removed and - hoooray, all works like a charm!

Immediatelly the card go into AGP 4x mode (!) and despite being TAD slower that PNY 6800GT, the system feels notably faster. That is, because, PCI mode DO SUXX BADLY. Therefore the card is now used now to test, what is wrong with the mainboard

[SuperDuty]

Re: Radeon R9100 recap

Actually, the Radeon 9100 is a rebranded and cheaper Radeon 8500 with lower clocks.

This seems to be the 8500 version of this card, it does have many more caps :

[Majestyk]

Re: Radeon R9100 recap

I´m quite sure the Radeon 9100 in question was made by Sapphire.

Great rework done here!

[trodas]

Re: Radeon R9100 recap

SuperDuty - yes, that it is. That is exactly the card... But this is a rip-off, lol. So many caps are gone... And the Radeon 8500 have a nice Hynix rams...

That suxx. But congratulations, you found how the card should look. IMHO is there a little point of adding all these caps, because the A-Data rams are slow and the card is not intended for overclocking, but for stability testing.
What clocks the Radeon 8500 are running at...?

According to this: http://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/93/radeon-8500.html
...it should be just 250/250MHz...
(XT version was 300/300MHz, tough: http://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/199...n-8500-xt.html )



Majestyk - yes, you are right. GPU-Z agrees with you:

And thanks! I doing my best...

If the regulators on the MSI mobo aren't so bad, I would try overclock the card to see, how far the memory can go and how far I can take the GPU clock. Maybe I can touch the XT speed at least for the GPU?
As for the sucky -5 rams, well, they are doomed...


PS. Looks like only Sapphire and Club3D cards lower the memory clock to 200MHz At least Club3D increased the GPU clock to 275MHz... http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/i...id=1002-514d--

[tazwegion]

Re: Radeon R9100 recap

G'day trodas,

At least you saved it from the landfill that's always a bonus in my book! additionally spare GFX cards come in quite handy especially when fault finding older systems

[trodas]

Re: Radeon R9100 recap

Thank you! Yes, that was the whole point of doing so. It is also a very much low-power card, so when my mainboard AGP slot did not manage to power R9100 - then it must be faulty. Simple as that.

(At least that is what I think...)

PNY 6800GT can overhelm the AGP mosfets, and given the mATX size of the PM8M3-V mainboard, it was not intended for gaming, but rather for low-end office work. Therefore I cannot seriously blame it for not working with 6800GT (altrough it should, but... it is really not designed to). But with R9100 - this is another story.

It would be very interesting to be able to measure the mosfets temps during load till the point the game crash... But that is something I have no means to do so ATM. Who would have thought, that thermometer with like 3 or 4 inputs and atachable sensors could be so helpfull there to diagnose the problem?

[tazwegion]

Re: Radeon R9100 recap

You should grab an IR Temperature Gun like they use in Supermarkets to see what temp the stock is at (refrigerator maintenance checks), they're about $30 upwards


Amazon has some on clearance for $22

[trodas]

Re: Radeon R9100 recap

Yea, I already had something like this longer time ago... but that does not help me single bit. I would need a hand and clean space to point it at the mosfet - while I need both hands to SoF2 gameplay

Therefore that one is useless for me. I need sensors, that can be on wires, hold by some tape to the mosfets and going out of the case for measuring there.

The case and mobo are pretty crowded already. The mATX board have everything so close to each other, that there is no way that I can measure the mosfets by laser thermometer, even if the mobo is running on my desk. Much less into case...

[trodas]

Re: Radeon R9100 recap

There is no point of overclocking, when your AGP 4x card is running, after the first crash, in PCI mode:



Then you have NO PERFORMANCE to speak off. It absolutely and completely SUXX. (from my measuring, it give about half the performance it should do, so no 7850 3DMark01 marks, but about 14k it should yield: http://hwbot.org/submission/2455634_...100_7855_marks )

Yet since my machine is not crashing anymore during gaming, then I decided to try look out, what overclocking is possible with this recapped Sapphire Radeon R9100 card. And it is not that bad:



It can do 293 for the GPU, but I backed it down to around 290, same for the rams, around 248MHz it can do. That make it clear, why these rams had to run at 200MHz, because they cannot take the normal 250MHz reference design clock, not with any caps.
Hence I cannot match the XT version (300/300 vs 290/248), but at lest some overclocking is possible. It would be interesting to know, if adding more caps on the empty spaces (there is space for DAMN much caps!) could help to reach faster speeds. I was kinda hoped for the 300MHz mark, but I got burned shy 7MHz of it...