it gave up. been having some issues with random drop in FPS a few days ago. then yesterday, the FPS dropped to 40fps. ran MSI Kombustor and it failed miserably. when i restarted it. there's artifacts(colour distortion) all over the screen. it wont even boot into windows.
took it out. thought tat it was a simple case of overheat since i just got the card n i didnt clear out the dust and all. opened it up. cleaned everything. still not working. then i thought the thermal coupling paste might hv dried up. opened it up again. found out the the heatsink has terrible contact with the processor, power mosfets and the memory modules. changed the thermal paste, and fixed the thermal contact by adding a layer of aluminium to close up the gap. plug it in and its still the same.
frustrated. did some research. turns out the card has this problem all along. all 8000 series especially the 8800, 8800GT, 8800GTX, 8800GTS(which is mine) and 8800 ultra. these cards are problematic bsc of the cheap glue used to secure the die to the base of the processor. which means if the processor operates at slightly high temperature(but still well within the processor's temperature tolerance), the glue will melt and cause movement of the die which in terms breaks the solder contacts between the die and the card. english? the manufacturer screwed up and hence a defective card. dont believe me? maybe u'll believe Wikipedia.
so all we need to do is just to re-solder the broken contacts. easier said than done. these cards are built on SMT(Surface Mount Technology) which means that they arent soldered the way u guys did at KH labs. no, these needs to be reflow soldered. click here if u dont know what im talking bout. basicly you dont touch ur soldering iron to the contacts and add solder. you heat the whole thing up along with a solder liquid. heat the whole thing eh? there are two ways to do this,
1. buy a hyper expensive reflow kit and reflow solder the thing.
2. this is the LOL part. get a reflow oven and heat it to 200 degree celcius. OR, you can just dump it into a conventional oven and bake it. seriously, i've read alot of forum posts that it worked. even in lowyat there's quite a few confirmed cases. best of all... there's a video of it too. check this!
k, im not stupid enough to do so. yet. since i might get another one as replacement. n no, its not tat this thing got warranty, its just tat my uncle has 2 of them tat he got for free. hah!
tats bout it... n my class starts tmr.
