Fried TI4600; trying to figure out whether it's GPU or memory.

[ih8mblogins]

I thought I'd post the symptom to see if anyone recognizes whether it's the GPU or memory that's borked.

The screen is corrupted at post, with every five columns or so of characters are ')', other, along with other random spots with off characters displayed. Graphic modes are similarly messed up with artifacts and lines.

No hints to which chip it is based on heat as nothing seems hotter than the others.

Would a fried core exhibit these kind of visual artifacts? I'm hoping it's memory. To explain, I used the tsr bios loader & 64MB 4200 bios from here: http://whitebunny.demon.nl/hardware/chipset_nvidia.html hoping that might avoid a bad memory chip but no joy so perhaps it's one of the front chips. Before I try my extreme next step, I figured I'd get some input. The extreme step being ripping off the front memory in hopes that one of those are the sole bad chips and that with those gone, the card hopefully seeing that backside good memory.

Or perhaps someone has some alternative ideas?

[Reaper106]

Originally posted by ih8mblogins
I thought I'd post the symptom to see if anyone recognizes whether it's the GPU or memory that's borked.

The screen is corrupted at post, with every five columns or so of characters are ')', other, along with other random spots with off characters displayed. Graphic modes are similarly messed up with artifacts and lines.

No hints to which chip it is based on heat as nothing seems hotter than the others.

Would a fried core exhibit these kind of visual artifacts? I'm hoping it's memory. To explain, I used the tsr bios loader & 64MB 4200 bios from here: http://whitebunny.demon.nl/hardware/chipset_nvidia.html hoping that might avoid a bad memory chip but no joy so perhaps it's one of the front chips. Before I try my extreme next step, I figured I'd get some input. The extreme step being ripping off the front memory in hopes that one of those are the sole bad chips and that with those gone, the card hopefully seeing that backside good memory.

Or perhaps someone has some alternative ideas?


Sounds like memory to me, Have seen it plenty of times. I wouldnt bother trying to pry the ram off of the PCB..... Just buy a new video card.... Good Luck:firedevil

[poursoul]

Don't think i ever posted this miracle before:

Had a GF3 Ti200, had the same probs your explaining. Dont ask me why, but i decided to try to bend the card (i really mean just put pessure on it) and it fixed it perfectly. To keep pressure on it i just tied speakerwire to the hole in the top corner of the card then to a hole in the bottom of my case.

I tried to untie it just the other day to see if it was perma-fixed and it just went back to the same crap it was doing..lol

BTW: It's still in operation today.

[Kurgen]

LOL :D @ poursoul

Reminds me of my old trusty Amiga 500 - I had to use a "G" clamp on the power supply end of it to get it to work... something to do with the grounding plate losing contact or whatever... worked for 3 years afterwards - no problem. Heh.

K.

[ih8mblogins]

I figured it out, it's the gpu. When I had tested for heat before I only touched the heatsink and just after running. Touching the back while running revealed it getting scorching hot at post. It'd need a gpu transplant to save it:)