Beware! nVidia SLI Agonies via SW GPU Killer!

[pocket-rocket]

That's because Video RAM, caches, etc, all count towards that 4gb. So if you had say half a gig in caches, and a 1gb video card, you'd only have 2.5gb left for RAM.

I was told in class that back in the day they thought computers would never come close to seeing 4gb in a home pc and so they put the memory addresses for stuff like the bus, ect. at the address just above the 3gb area. So sure, the hardware sees 4gb but the OS doesn't, unless it's a 64 bit OS.

[60dgrzbelow0]

Okay...

After checking around on eBay last week for a likely candidate to use as a salvage board to scavenge parts from and try to ressurect this dead XFX 9800-GT Graphics Card... I came across a "ThreeFer" of these as possible candidates and with 7 Days left on "Death Watch"... I just lurked on them until a few minutes ago. Even with three idiots engaging in an automatic bidding war circle jerk... I still managed to grab the three nVidia 9800 GT Cards for only $62.00. What I will do now is look them over when they arrive and see if any one of the three makes the best candidate for a GPU swap with the XFX card and try that and then... use both of the operational ones as an SLI pair and then... use the third FUBARed one to scavenge the resistors from as depicted in tbe above images and try to resurrect the original "bricked" XFX card as well. If it all goes to plan... (as if anything ever does...) I should be able to get at least ONE of them to blink on screen and come to life. If nothing else... it will be an interesting thing to experiment on... and you all KNOW how much I like doing THAT... (No... not like the "Using a Party Olive Fork on the Dog's Nose Trick to Make the Wife Laugh" Project that Schmeider must cooking up for the next April Fool's Day...

[robertisaar]

good deal!

[60dgrzbelow0]

Maybe another dead card from ebay? Go to Radio Smack and pick up a roll of solder wick (they might also call it solder or desoldering braid). It looks kind of like the old style braided ground straps, but it's copper and much smaller. You heat it up between the part and your soldering iron and it sucks the molten solder right up because of the way solder moves.

Pocket... This is the next step of spec tools to get... My sad NDN Bob...(another "TLA" LOL for Next Door Neighbor) gave me this cool set of Butane Soldering Tools after the rescue of his Craftsman Riding Mower (See the OT Thread calle "INTEKATASTROPHE" for the dope on how all that worked out...) that might come in handy when de-soldering the old parts and poking in the new ones... we'll see... depends upon what you guys in the "E" biz recommend besides my trying to turn a ten pound trip hammer forged from an Iron Meteorite into a soldering tool...that doubles as a water heater...

[pocket-rocket]

Just be careful not to delam the board and start pulling pads off of it as well with that butane soldering iron. That's why I like my Weller. It's temperature controlled.

[60dgrzbelow0]

Just be careful not to delam the board and start pulling pads off of it as well with that butane soldering iron. That's why I like my Weller. It's temperature controlled.

Okeedoke... Got a pic of your soldering gear? It'll take a few days for the three graphics cards arrive here from California... so I've got some time to prep and be advised on what to do/not do with the soldering "wick"... it reminds me a bit of something I saw way back when Sears and Roebucks Catalogs were all the rage ... back when people actually piled them up in "The Looo" for General Education... it was called and "Ear Wax Candle Wick"... Apparently ...way back when... people who suffered from what is now medically defined as having "Exuberant Ear Wax" that can get impacted enough to completely occlude the ear canal and get solid as a street brick and impossible to get out with your average "Q" Tip when it dries out. Genetically... humans fall into one of two categories 'ere' ... (Cockney English Accent for an Ear Joke intended)... either they have soft, liquid-like wax that tends not to become a problem ...or in the other case, the stuff precipitates out as hard and flaky and they have this plugged up feeling ... Go figure....

Anyway ...the old treatment was (and is still offered to this day...) to have a person lay down with their head sideways on a pillow and with the offending ear pointing up to the ceiling,this "Wick" thingy is pushed down inside the hole in their coconut... and after striking a wood match... the end of the "Wick" is lit like a candle...and sure enough... the heat generated by the device warms the wax built up in the person's ear canal... and as the mess liquefies...it is "wicked" or drawn out and burned like a friggin' Halloween Candle !!! . So when you made your "solder wick" suggestion ...this damned image popped into my head... I suspect that the same principle of capillary action is involved.

[robertisaar]

same idea, less nastiness

[pocket-rocket]

Okeedoke... Got a pic of your soldering gear? It'll take a few days for the three graphics cards arrive here from California... so I've got some time to prep and be advised on what to do/not do with the soldering "wick"... it reminds me a bit of something I saw way back when Sears and Roebucks Catalogs were all the rage ... back when people actually piled them up in "The Looo" for General Education... it was called and "Ear Wax Candle Wick"... Apparently ...way back when... people who suffered from what is now medically defined as having "Exuberant Ear Wax" that can get impacted enough to completely occlude the ear canal and get solid as a street brick and impossible to get out with your average "Q" Tip when it dries out. Genetically... humans fall into one of two categories 'ere' ... (Cockney English Accent for an Ear Joke intended)... either they have soft, liquid-like wax that tends not to become a problem ...or in the other case, the stuff precipitates out as hard and flaky and they have this plugged up feeling ... Go figure....

Anyway ...the old treatment was (and is still offered to this day...) to have a person lay down with their head sideways on a pillow and with the offending ear pointing up to the ceiling,this "Wick" thingy is pushed down inside the hole in their coconut... and after striking a wood match... the end of the "Wick" is lit like a candle...and sure enough... the heat generated by the device warms the wax built up in the person's ear canal... and as the mess liquefies...it is "wicked" or drawn out and burned like a friggin' Halloween Candle !!! . So when you made your "solder wick" suggestion ...this damned image popped into my head... I suspect that the same principle of capillary action is involved.

I've heard of those ear wicks (no pun intended )

Here is the soldering iron I use. Ben liked it so much back when I first introduced him to it that he bought his own (after borrowing mine for a while).

http://www.amazon.com/Weller-WTCPT-Temperature-Controlled-Soldering/dp/B00004W463

It might be a pricey station, but it's well worth it. You can solder in about 10 seconds after flipping it on and it always stays the right temperature. You can usually find a good deal on them on ebay, which is where I got mine used for ~$75 shipped around 10 years ago. Yes, they are that well built where mine still works. So far all I've had to do was replace the temperature control switch because it would only heat up if tipped face down, or tapped on lightly due to contacts in the switch being old and well used.

One quick video I looked up on youtube showing how to desolder with solder wick, and how to solder.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieoM_40nRVs

And another on soldering.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHNDa2Wvk8I&NR=1

[60dgrzbelow0]

Thanks...as ever... P-R... A superb explanation and description of using the right tools for the hard jobs... This is another interesting video on the fine aspects of soldering ...and all that it entails...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_NU2ruzyc4

"Troubles Come... Not as Single Spies... But in Battalions..." (Wm. Shakespeare's Tragedy... "Hamlet")

It took me while to come back with a response because as you were penning a response... the "Evil Doer" Heat Hobbits and Attic Gremlins of HVAC were up inside my A/C Air Handler making their merry mischief and putting the final Kibosh on the A/C evaporator ... and I've spent the better part of my time since then trying to run down a replacement 3 Ton Unit (13 SEER) compatible unit to with my split 3 Ton external condenser unit and lucked into locating one in a nearby town for about $125 worth of "Pieces of Eight"... So ...when the "Lil Woman" has her brow knit and fastens her anger gaze on me with flames in her eyes that rival the rising temperature inside our Florida home... you can just guess which project is "...Number One on the Runway", to quote Buzz Aldrin inside Apollo 11 waiting to leave the Moon and come home... for this coming Monday morning.... and Yes... I cleaned both sets of coils with alkali cleaner...and flushed them both thoroughly with fresh water ...changed the filters and set the thermostat to the proper level... but nothing would prevent the low side accumulator on the outside condenser unit from freezing up into a block of ice.... and the evaporator in the attic is a ball of rust and a mess... with the fins all decayed...etc... Dammit!!!

If you check my latest update on "Eric's Toy" you will see that I was trying to kill two birds with one stone this afternoon and glommed some images of his latest improvements on his 64' Chevy Nova II Race Car...and beg him to ask his Buddy and Co-Worker... an HVAC expert to call me on Monday and see if I can coax him into helping with the Hi/LO silver solder of the copper A/C lines and pull a vacuum and freshen everything up with some R22 so I can live again without fear of being killed by "The Lil Woman"... LOL... Besides ...I'm still waiting for the three video cards to arrive to try out your fine suggestions and How-To-s ...so this other pressing task will give me something to do and worry about of a higher priority until then. Oh yeah...and now I've got Tony Stark Pissed at me for pinching his equipment for my XFX Project...!!!

[60dgrzbelow0]

Okay... When last we saw this thing in action... I had snagged three 9800 GT cards off eBay and out from under the noses of a bunch of "Beaters" for what amounted to around $20.00 per card. I have not had the chance to tinker with these and drop them into a test box, but one thing is for sure... even if any or all of these graphics cards have been "bricked"... none of their SMDs (my newest TLA) look even close to the ones that are scrabnoid on the XFX card. So... what I intend to do is bench test all three cards sometime this week and see which of them is the most serviceable using the Fedora 12 64 Bit flavor of Linux and whatever drivers nVidia has available to be able to test them with some open source games. I will use the GPU and the copper cooler off of the XFX card to try on any (or all) of these three cards that are not working...just to see if that is what went bad on any (all) of them)... I just have to figure out how to lift the chip out of its socket without FUBARing it or cracking the substrate with too much heavy handed maneuvering. The attached images will also show the amazing variety and shape of the cooling solutions and board layouts that can spring from the design of a fairly powerful GPU for its class. One interesting observation about the "Copper" in the XFX Cooler... when I looked at its underside where the multiple thermal pads for the memory sticks are situated... I thought that its oddly over-bright patina was an indication that it was merely a chunk of steel that had been flash plated with copper as some of the cheaper cooling applications are doing to save on the expense of using a full application of this conductive metal. But after taking the edge of my knife and dragging and scraping it along the very edge of the thickest part of the thermal plate... I could see that it was solid CU...through and through.

[60dgrzbelow0]

Here are the rest of the XFX Copper Cooler images...