Probably damaged RAM on 9800PRO

[peta01]

Hello,

My friend gave me his Sapphire 9800PRO 128MB RAM, as it wasn't working correctly. There were amazing artifacts everywhere inside Windows, while booting, even in bios. The card was underclocked, as its fan was not working properly.
I think that the overheating caused damage to memmory, therefore those pernament artifacts appeared. I tried flashing bios with very low clocks, but it didn't help.

Does anyone else have the same experience with video card memmory? Is there any way how to fix it? Is it possible to disable one of memmory chips to allow the others work properly?

All ideas would be very appreciated.
Thanks.

 

[Namslas90]

Clean out All ATI drivers with a driver cleaner and download a fresh set from ATI with the card installed. Might just solve the problem.

 

[dolf]

Yes I understand you very well because I still have 9800PRO 128MB converted to 9800XT (with XT board) but after few years of hard usage it started to show aretifacts even in DOS mode and I am almost sure that some of the memory chips is bad. The artifacts are usually dashed lines (vertical) combined with black holes allover the screen. Of course it could be the GPU but I would like to be the memory. I will give it to guys which can replace the bad chip (chips) if the problem comes from the memory. If it isn't possible to be fixed I will live it like remembrance .

 

[zwawy]

no way to fix it ....

Clean out All ATI drivers with a driver cleaner and download a fresh set from ATI with the card installed. Might just solve the problem.

i don't think that because the artifacts show also in dos mode and while booting.
there is no working to the driver there.

 

[peta01]

Yes I understand you very well because I still have 9800PRO 128MB converted to 9800XT (with XT board) but after few years of hard usage it started to show aretifacts even in DOS mode and I am almost sure that some of the memory chips is bad. The artifacts are usually dashed lines (vertical) combined with black holes allover the screen. Of course it could be the GPU but I would like to be the memory. I will give it to guys which can replace the bad chip (chips) if the problem comes from the memory. If it isn't possible to be fixed I will live it like remembrance .

Hi Dolf,

Yes my 9800PRO shows the sames artifacts as you described. I think that it has to be the memory, as the architecture of GPU doesn't allow it to run stable with artifacts (it would crash after a while). Usualy if GPU is damaged the card does not work at all.
I checked the card properly and I found one melted memory chip

My questions is, whether there is any way how to disable that one damaged memory chip. I think that it would be possible, but I do not have any clue how t do it...

As the card is almost useless, I can try any possible solution, which would disable one memory chip.
Any suggestions?

Thanks.

 

[Kursah]

If you could trace the issue to the memory chip(s) that are faulty, you may be able to remove them. I doubt it'd work without a Bios customization and maybe more hardware based changes...that and I wouldn't know how to begin to verify what memory modules were okay and which ones were faulty.

 

[kohan69]

What memory half does the 128mb version of 9800 use?

im thinking if u got a damaged 9800 256mb card, u can flash it to a 128mb one, possibly solving the problem

ALso a 64mb version of 9800 exists for mac, what about pc?

 

[FR@NK]

You might try using RaBiT bios editor. It has a option to set the size of memory on the card.

http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/283/RaBiT_Bios_Editor_v2.2.html

 

[dolf]

Hi Dolf,

Yes my 9800PRO shows the sames artifacts as you described. I think that it has to be the memory, as the architecture of GPU doesn't allow it to run stable with artifacts (it would crash after a while). Usualy if GPU is damaged the card does not work at all.
I checked the card properly and I found one melted memory chip

My questions is, whether there is any way how to disable that one damaged memory chip. I think that it would be possible, but I do not have any clue how t do it...

As the card is almost useless, I can try any possible solution, which would disable one memory chip.
Any suggestions?

Thanks.

Use the above proposal and reduce half of the available memory using RaBit. There should be a way to disable front or back memory chips but I don't know how (it is determined in the BIOS which exactly chips to use and how many of them). I presume that RaBit disables the back side memory chips and if you have luck after flashing of the moded (1/2 memory size) BIOS the card will run normally. If you acheive some results please let us know. One more thing use older version of RaBit for exanple 1.7 but not 2.x.

 

[FatCat]

I've had the same problem (dotted vertical lines in boot and black triangles and colour smears within windows, though only with more graphical applications, it works fine for simple browsing etc) with a 9250 256mb and decided it was probably a faulty memory chip so I tried what you suggest about reducing memory size with RaBit. I reduced the memory to 128mb and still had the same problem on boot. I installed new drivers but on restart when it loaded the driver the monitor switched off entirely. I tried reducing to 64mb but the problem was still there on boot so I didn't bother installing a driver. I then tried flashing a bios from what seemed to me a very similar but 128mb card (same bios number, memory timings etc) and once again no improvement in boot but it did install a new driver without issues and ran as well as before (but no better). My feeling is that either I was unlucky and never managed to isolate the faulty chip and hence it may work if it was a different chip that was faulty, or more likely it would require better understanding of the bios than I have and editing of the memory configuration beyond that easily done with RaBit alone. Or else it can't be done! On the bright side, nothing I've done has further damaged the card at all. Obviously I'd be interested to know if anyone has any success with this.

 

[peta01]

Thanks for all suggestions.

I will try to disable half of memmory using RaBit, as the damaged chip is on the back side of PCB.