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Radeon R9100 recap

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Jan 3, 2007
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System Name celer
Processor Pentium 4 650 3.4GHz 2MB L2
Motherboard MSI PM8M3-V
Cooling Thermalright SI-128 SE
Memory 2048MB OCZ 2-3-2-5 2T at 200Mhz
Video Card(s) Sapphire Radeon R9100
Storage 250G Samsung 850 PRO (MZ-7KE256BW) - 1024G WD Black (WD1003FZEX)
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Audio Device(s) onboard
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Benchmark Scores http://hwbot.org/submission/2455634_
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 :)
 
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Benchmark Scores @_@
Nice job, but ZOMG that card has been through some hell... That first pic made me cringe :D

AGP cards are a rare commodity now. I've got a couple oldies myself for testing terrible old PCs that people bring me.
 
Joined
Jan 3, 2007
Messages
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System Name celer
Processor Pentium 4 650 3.4GHz 2MB L2
Motherboard MSI PM8M3-V
Cooling Thermalright SI-128 SE
Memory 2048MB OCZ 2-3-2-5 2T at 200Mhz
Video Card(s) Sapphire Radeon R9100
Storage 250G Samsung 850 PRO (MZ-7KE256BW) - 1024G WD Black (WD1003FZEX)
Display(s) 19' iiyama ProLite E1980SD 1280x1024 75Hz DVI
Case Eurocase moded
Audio Device(s) onboard
Power Supply Enermax 620W Liberty
Mouse Logitech MX510 red
Keyboard eTech PS/2 keyboard
Software Win XP SP3
Benchmark Scores http://hwbot.org/submission/2455634_
Thank you. Yea, that was my fault. Like I say - I pressed too much and it skew away from the core a "bit", so it looks ughly now... Suxxx, but what can I do. And testing is exactly what I had in ming. I need the card to be entierly reliable and that I managed. Sadly only to discover, that the main problems of the MSI PM8M3-V mobo does not get away.

AGP cards are now rare, you got that right. If I fixed the AGP problem, then I would be looking for some small, yet powerfull AGP graphic card (the PNY 6800GT hardly fit to my case, lol) - but right now I'm more concerned that it still does crash after 4 hours of playing (when starting cold, when hot, then in about 45 min) and since the crash, it again fall back to PCI mode, witch is TERRIBLE:

 
Joined
Jan 3, 2007
Messages
454 (0.07/day)
System Name celer
Processor Pentium 4 650 3.4GHz 2MB L2
Motherboard MSI PM8M3-V
Cooling Thermalright SI-128 SE
Memory 2048MB OCZ 2-3-2-5 2T at 200Mhz
Video Card(s) Sapphire Radeon R9100
Storage 250G Samsung 850 PRO (MZ-7KE256BW) - 1024G WD Black (WD1003FZEX)
Display(s) 19' iiyama ProLite E1980SD 1280x1024 75Hz DVI
Case Eurocase moded
Audio Device(s) onboard
Power Supply Enermax 620W Liberty
Mouse Logitech MX510 red
Keyboard eTech PS/2 keyboard
Software Win XP SP3
Benchmark Scores http://hwbot.org/submission/2455634_
And in PCI mode, there is 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_trodas_3dmark2001_se_radeon_9100_7855_marks )

Also it is sad, that the rams are crappy (witch is why Sapphire run them at 200MHz, witch is deviation from the standard 250/250MHz clocks for GPU/RAMs for R9100:
http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/index.php?did=1002-514d--
So the card is somewhat disadvantaged speed-wise from the start.

Normal are 250/250MHz, just like the Radeon 8500:
ATI Radeon 8500 | techPowerUp GPU Database
...it should be just 250/250MHz...
(XT version was 300/300MHz, tough: ATI Radeon 8500 XT | techPowerUp GPU Database )

And surprisingly, look, the same PCB are used on Radeon 8500 cards - just with all the caps!!!



...damn them :) (but it give me ideas, where to add another caps... but that is probably not worth it, as the A-Data rams are slow and the card is not intended for overclocking, but for stability testing.
 
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Benchmark Scores [url=https://valid.x86.fr/gtle1y][img]https://valid.x86.fr/cache/banner/gtle1y-6.png[/img][/url]
ha ha nice work, I used to just ghetto mod my pc but now its the tv and anything else that could be improved... lol nice one...
 
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That's impressive. Anyone can spent $1,000s on a custom build, but how many can bring the dead back to life like this? Kudos.
 
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System Name celer
Processor Pentium 4 650 3.4GHz 2MB L2
Motherboard MSI PM8M3-V
Cooling Thermalright SI-128 SE
Memory 2048MB OCZ 2-3-2-5 2T at 200Mhz
Video Card(s) Sapphire Radeon R9100
Storage 250G Samsung 850 PRO (MZ-7KE256BW) - 1024G WD Black (WD1003FZEX)
Display(s) 19' iiyama ProLite E1980SD 1280x1024 75Hz DVI
Case Eurocase moded
Audio Device(s) onboard
Power Supply Enermax 620W Liberty
Mouse Logitech MX510 red
Keyboard eTech PS/2 keyboard
Software Win XP SP3
Benchmark Scores http://hwbot.org/submission/2455634_
purecain - thank you! Well, I tried not ghetto mod the card... but the glue was not as sticky as I hoped and I should checked it more... But after all, it still works. And that is what counts. Now just fix the AGP troubles and we see, how far this card can be overclocked with good caps :)


Sasqui - thx, I like to fix old HW as well. If you have something that I can make working, then... there I'm :) However I can assure you that not everyone can spent $1,000 on a custom build. I can't, because I did not have the money.
But I see where you are going with. Yes, it is one thing what you can buy and another what you can do. It is a "bit" old HW I playing with, but I try improve that, once I get from the AGP troubles. There are some PCIE projects I was gearing up to do too, so, stay tuned ;)
 
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np my heart would jump through my mouth if I made a mistake, I burnt a whole in my TV's pcb... I got lucky there though and the caps I'd added worked fine...

its very hard work, theres definatly an art to it... to anyone else thinking of modding their own appliances pcb's... watch the youtube tutorials on soldering or your going to make a mess... congrats and good luck trodas...:)
 
Joined
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Messages
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System Name celer
Processor Pentium 4 650 3.4GHz 2MB L2
Motherboard MSI PM8M3-V
Cooling Thermalright SI-128 SE
Memory 2048MB OCZ 2-3-2-5 2T at 200Mhz
Video Card(s) Sapphire Radeon R9100
Storage 250G Samsung 850 PRO (MZ-7KE256BW) - 1024G WD Black (WD1003FZEX)
Display(s) 19' iiyama ProLite E1980SD 1280x1024 75Hz DVI
Case Eurocase moded
Audio Device(s) onboard
Power Supply Enermax 620W Liberty
Mouse Logitech MX510 red
Keyboard eTech PS/2 keyboard
Software Win XP SP3
Benchmark Scores http://hwbot.org/submission/2455634_
Well, it is a great idea to practice first on dead things or things that have little to no value. That it why I collect even old, useless cards and HW. It is always good to test your soldering on then, before going into something you want to keep. Damaging PCB is not tolerated in computer world - multiple layers of PCB did not allow you just a drill or create hole where need - forget that ASAP :)
 
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