I think the Vmem mod posted is 99 % safe even without measuring actual voltage. However you should be absolutely sure that:Quote:
Originally Posted by jlovrek
- You have a correct value resistor !!! (see that guide, e.g. 3300 ohm should give ~2.85 V and 2200 ohm ~2.9 V)
- Do not make any shorts !!
I find reading values of fixed value resistors a bit ambiguous. Sure, you can try to memorize the whole colour scheme with some rhyme, but its sometimes hard to tell apart brown from orange, and its so easy to get mixed up in the head. And ofcourse you still have the 10%, 5% or whatever, tolerance.
Nothing beats have a multimeter. Its the only way to measure the value for sure. Its nice to know the resistor you hold in your hand is nearly precisely 9.981KOhm
Ehm even with no cap mod and with stock voltage I bench at 950, with 2.9v 970 and that's with default timings :stick:Quote:
Originally Posted by ***Deimos***
Haven't treid iff the timingsmod will get me over 1ghz though but I certainly will, again :toast: for the info
Yep, the color coding system is not for humans... I agree also that multimeter is essential for every mods to be sure what you have done. My point was that this mod is quite safe to do in sense of how easily the resistor can be added (=risk to make mistake is low) and if you buy e.g. 3300 ohm resistor (low tolerance, say +/- 1%) the resulting Vmem is quite accurately within correct range.Quote:
Originally Posted by ***Deimos***
Today was the day. Last night I broke off a fin from a copper heatsink. Today, I went to dollar store and got some super glue. Using very sharp hunting knife I scored the fin and broke off 3 little pieces of copper. One side looked like it was sand blasted, so I sanded it down first. I taped off the surrounding area, just in case (there are some pretty tall ceramic capacitors around). I applied a tiny bit of super-glue on each IC, spread around some AS5, attached the copper shims, and then repeated the process to attach the heatsink. Originally, I was going to salvage an old P3 heatsink, but I found a nice small chipset heatsink which seems to fit well.
Results:
ambient temperatures are actually HIGHER. But, I think its working. After running some benchmarks the homemade heatsink gets pretty hot.. good 50-60C I guess.. but thats much better than the broiling hot before. Unfortunately it did not improve my throttling situation... but at least it didn't make it worse.
EDIT: The diode is probably behind the tape.. before when I had a 80mm case fan blowing at the back of the card, it probably caused diode to read lower temp.
Hmm.. by the looks of things I definetly have temperatures similar to those in the 2nd picture. Is the 1st picture idle temperatures, and the 2nd one under load.. I sure hope so, because thats how warm they are idle, and thats how hot they are under load.Quote:
5.5 Temperature measurements
I have measured temperatures of the cards: 'Gainward 6800le version 1b' and MSI 6800le (BS-affected). I used a Pt100-sensor (high accuracy platinum temperature sensor) glued at top to wooden stick (see foto below), which I gently put top of each component.
Figure 33. Temperature sensor (Pt100) attached at the tip of wooden stick
The accuracy of the sensor is high, but due to poor thermal contact the measured temperatures are too optimistic (=one or two degrees too low). Results for both card can be found below:
Figure 34. Measured temperatures of GW6800le and MSI6800le-cards
Quote:
Originally Posted by ***Deimos***
lol I feel your pain, send her to me and i'll braze it back together with brass,
are you able to solder it back together? if it's a really poor alloy only brass can save you ( but I like the super glue the only handy man's way for fixing some things hehehe) oh and dont forget lotrs of duct tape :).
huh?Quote:
Originally Posted by Firechicken
ok, so I know superglue is quite a good heat and electrical insulator, but I only put a tiny bit on one corner of only 2 of the ICs.. I used AS5 everywhere else.. due to my reluctance to splurge nearly $10 at Radio Shack. As fasr as I can tell.. its all working 100% fine.. its just that I now regret using the small chipset heatsink when I could have slapped on a Pentium Pro bad boy (one step away from SLK90.. certainly excessive)
Upon further testing, I have really noticed the effect of the fan. Before, with only the weak fan blowing. Temps would go up considerably under load.. but not as much as without the fan (ofcourse). Now, with the fan blowing directly at the chipset heatsink on the back of the 6800, even after 15min+ on a rather warm day, the ambient temperature monitored by rivatuner only went up to 28-29C! I still dont like how hot it gets without the fan.. and ultimately will probably change the heatsink if it really bothers me, but for now, I guess I can scratch off MOSFET/IC cooling as my throttling culprit ;)
Sounds very nice mod, indeed !Quote:
Originally Posted by ***Deimos***
You are most propably right with the diode (sensing temperature). After that kind of modding temperature MUST be lower in the critical areas: it is not important how the diode is if the core/MOSFET's etc. are cool.
The most important (?) difference between those figures is core voltage: 1.1 V and 1.2 V. Those temperatures are measured from different cards, but using the same setup/chassis in the same day etc. so those results should be highly comparable. There are two different cases in both fotos idle/load (in parenthesis ) as explained in text.Quote:
Hmm.. by the looks of things I definetly have temperatures similar to those in the 2nd picture. Is the 1st picture idle temperatures, and the 2nd one under load.. I sure hope so, because thats how warm they are idle, and thats how hot they are under load.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ***Deimos***
My rig is on 24/7 folding with my le, and now while it's starting to get real hot ambient temp readout from the vc is 33c to 35c but I haven't noticed any bad side effects. This is with a 80mm fan blowing over the pcb to cool some off the caps near the molex connector and the two black chips on the backside which regulate current, which were smoking hot after I flashed a higher core voltage. I thought cooling those two regulator chips was the most important?
well, ofcourse a lot of it depends on the ambient temperature (room temperature). Assuming based on where the memory voltage reading points are and the capacitors on the front of the card, the two upper 8 leg SOPQuote:
Originally Posted by MartianInvader
IC are the two transistors for the memory buck converter, and the ones at the bottom of the card, near where the AGP tab is, are the transistors for the GPU voltage buck converter. That big rectangular 32 pin TSOP is the voltage regulator for both of them... there is a really interesting pdf with all its specs that SikaRippa provided.
On the first page he also has some pics with temperature measurements. My card corresponds to the 2nd one.. ie its quite hot.
The two vmem reg's I described earlier where the one's getting the hottest, after I found out they were fine with a fan I never looked at the pdf again. Not an electrician here, I only digest what I need :toast:Quote:
Originally Posted by ***Deimos***
But I'm moving my pc's to a cooler room anyway, just wanted to comment on temps being that high without bad side effects here.
Yep, those THREE MOSFET's close each other (2 with 8 pins, 3rd usually a little bit different but in some cards also 8 pin) are in any condition (=Vmods) running at highest temperature AFAIK. Usually no problems appear even GPU voltage is increased a little bit, but these MOSFET's seem to be the weakest link e.g. burn at first => cooling of those = good.Quote:
Originally Posted by MartianInvader
In finnish forum has been reported that also other MOSFET's (for Vmem regulator) are vulnerable to burn e.g. after of capacitor modification. Since, this kind of problems are rarely reported I think in those cases the MOSFET's have been more poor quality than average.
Now that is quite interesting... since in my case, they are barely warm.. and this is after 5min of atitool, or rhdribl.Quote:
Originally Posted by MartianInvader
Once again, my situation is almost EXACTLY like the 2nd temperature measurement picture posted by SikkaRippa in his first post.
As for replacing that mosfet.. we'll see.. my brother went by that electronics store today, but got confused with all the ripple current, leakage current etc... I also forgot to tell him to get SMT type, since I dont think I would be able to fit NV5 overtop if it was typical radial lead package.
Sorry about that deimos, I read your post wrong and thought you broke your heat sink by accident. I have welded back together some pretty expensive
0.03 deg c/w heatsinks ( a measure of heatsink dissipation) along with a few aftermarket video card coolers people have had me fix up. Must have been a late night when I read your post sorry lmao...MD.
I think here SMT MOSFET's are MUST also in the electronic point of view: the inductance of the leads etc. parasitics ruins easily performance.Quote:
Originally Posted by ***Deimos***
'Local electronic shops' do not have too many SMT versions and high performance capacitors (solid electrolytic, extremely high max ripple current at stock, since that kind of stuff is usually not asked by a standard 'hobby electronics'.
yeah. :banana:
i did the cap mod at TP10 & TP9 with the black screen affected gainward 6800LE of my sister and it seems to have worked. no bs within about 2 hours of gaming. that should do the trick.
thank you for the guide. was just a matter of minutes to get the show running. :) :) :)
i almost forgot to mention:
the card's strange beep noise while playing is gone too.
everything seems great for now. but with a time bs will be back 99% more often and often...Quote:
Originally Posted by ya_master
Nice :up:Quote:
Originally Posted by ya_master
Noise from CARD or SPEAKERS ? You mean whistling etc. *modulated* somehow by framerate (changes) e.g. high noise during loading screens of benchmarks ? I am asking because of this kind of noise is not usually fully disappeared after cap mods.Quote:
Originally Posted by ya_master
It depends.. with some (most/all/?) MSI cards it has been seen that added capacitor do not help too long (weeks/months..). However, GW-cards and especially those NOT having "4 3 470 6E" capacitors seems to usually work quite well/long with added QUALITY capacitor. The poor design of the card is reason that propably all cards will be BS-affected after some years, but hopefully none of us is not anymore using these cards in that day.Quote:
Originally Posted by jlovrek
I hope your sisters GW will work long enough without extra mods (replacement capacitors are much harder to obtain/install).
I definetly have that noise, during games, but most noticable during loading screens. I've also successfully gotten fast writes "kind of" working. If the GPU frequency is <370, it just works, and is transparent. Raising GPU higher, on first benchmark or timedemo, the whole screen flashes... all textures flash.. but when you close the application, and restart it, everything is fine.. UNTIL... some 10-12min looping 3d01 Nature later (at 425/950 lets say), it suddenly gets stuck in 3/4 speed mode. Now, an interesting thing that happens in this "mode", is vertex shader performance is way down to about half, and high polygon tests, especially the one with 1 light source, go down to like 1/10th. But, single and multi texturing fill rate tests still show near identical results.. interesting no?
There is no way to get my GPU unstuck from this. Chaning clocks, AGP, fastwrites, CPU speed, re-starting the driver, nothing works to unfix it. I always have to restart the computer.
nah. sister reported a blackscreen yesterday while running skialpin demo. but just one time and everything else seems to run quite fine. maybe BS is not completely gone but it's a real big improvement anyway.
would it be possible to avoid BS by increasing vmem a little?
or by using a better psu?
noise from the card. i can't tell exactly because i just took a look at the sh*t for about one hour before i grabbed that cap and soldered it to the card.Quote:
Originally Posted by SikaRippa
i don't know if there was noise while showing the 2d windows desktop but while running a 3d game it was definitly really noisy. now it seems to be completely gone. but i will have a closer look tomorrow.
Too bad :( Some questions/comments.Quote:
Originally Posted by ya_master
1. What codes there are top of green capacitors e.g. "4 3 470 6E" ?
2. What kind of capacitor you used, exact coding capacitance ... did you solder it ?
Increase of Vmem propably makes things worse ! Better PSU might help but usually BS will be back no-matter-how-good-PSU you have. So, check capacitor specifications and post numbers/codes to get an idea whether the added capacitor is good enough.
yes i soldered the cap but it looks like i will have to remove that one and replace it with another one. the ones i used for my card (just capmod. i had no bs). a better one than the one i soldered i hope. that one came from the guy i bought the card and maybe nood good enough.
got blackscreens again today while running alpinski and elite force 1. one each.
but after that everything was fine for hours. strange sh*t.
i will have a closer look at it when the zalman vf 700 for the card arrives. then i'll mount the cooler, add some heatsinks, look at the caps, the strange noise, the voltages, the temps, solder the other cap, try enabling the last quad and take a look at overclocking.
this is really getting on my nerves.
i did some soldering and the heatsink was removed and replaced by another one for a time but is it possible to rma the card directly to gay-nward? or will it fail cause to the removal of the stock cooler anyway?
card is 1 1/2 years old.
things seem to get better.
- new zalman vf 700 arrived today and i mounted it with arctic silver 5 and the ram heatsinks
- i didn't add other heatsinks. the little 2 things in the card don't get too warm and the big silver box from my leadtek card is represented by a thing with open wires in the gainward card of my sister. that one gets really hot and i can't apply a heatsink to it. damn. they should use these boxes in the future... :mad:
- psu voltages seem to be ok. no new one needed i think.
- found out the gpu is running with 1.3v. looks like it's really working on gainward cards.
- removed the old cap i added before and redid the capmod with one of my caps.
- ran 15 games of alpinski :stick: and no blackscreen appeared. could be gone now but i need my sister to do more 'testing'. :D
- card is now running at 440 / 850. 460mhz core gave erros with atitool and so did 870mhz mem. i will leave it at 440 / 850 and everything will be fine. was already flashed to the bios anyway.
- ran atitool for 30 minutes without errors and no BS at 12/6. now trying the same with 16/6. that would be nice if it works at 16/6. my sister's card is getting better than my own. argh! ;)
- markings on the stock caps are ... 470 6E. that's sh*t right?
- the noise from the card only appears while loading screens get faded out. you know? this fade to black / fade to white. that gives some noise. anything else doesn't. but when i enabled the card to run at 16/6 the noise was back and playing all time while unter 3d load. but not as loud as before the capmod.
i think that was all i wanted to mention. :confused:
woah.. backup for a second there partner..Quote:
Originally Posted by ya_master
you are getting 440 running in all games stable without any artifacts what so ever, and no throttling... ie
if you use rivatuner to set perfromance3d to 440, and lets say low-power-3d=410, and 2d=400.. that it will remain at 440 while its running the game/benchmark. If so, you truelly have a remarkable chip, or mine is fubar, and was defective from the get-go (btw: I get my problems regardless if I'm running 16/6,12/5, or even 8/3.. yes I was THAT desperate)