This is what happened to my Ati 9800 Pro...

Dimy · 01-02-2006 11:19am #1

I took the following pics last monday morning... as I woke up and turned on my computer screen the screen stayed black. There was still power on the PC and the num lock key was responding, just no image. After having it cool down for a while, it would eventually boot up again and it stayed on long enough for me to copy some files to a mobile hard drive for backup. I figured there was a problem with my graphic card and indeed there was...

The weird thing is that this video card is less than 2 years old, not overclocked and I don't stress it very often by playing computer games (I hardly play games to be honest, but when I do I wanna have the graphic power to play them decently). I usually have my PC switched on for 24/7 with the odd reboot every now and then or switched off when on holidays. Still.... I've done that before with other (Nvidia) cards and never had anything like this happen before. No more Ati for me... a friend of me had exactly the same thing, also a burned out fan.

ShiverinEskimo · 01-02-2006 11:25am

That sucks fat hairy man-ass.

Gutted for you man. Not even overclocked? I'd email ati a link to this thread or send them the pics or something - let them think about making sure this doesn't happen in future.

Whats the warrenty on these things in Ireland? I know in some cases a 2 year warranty is mandatory (the original xbox was for sure) - you might be still covered.

Dimy · 01-02-2006 11:33am

ShiverinEskimo wrote:

That sucks fat hairy man-ass.

Gutted for you man. Not even overclocked? I'd email ati a link to this thread or send them the pics or something - let them think about making sure this doesn't happen in future.

Whats the warrenty on these things in Ireland? I know in some cases a 2 year warranty is mandatory (the original xbox was for sure) - you might be still covered.

I bought the card in Holland when I was on Holidays as prices are far cheaper there as they are here. Didn't keep my receipt either, ah well... good lesson learned...always keep receipts! :rolleyes: I have an old Geforce TI4200 lying around somewhere, so will use that one for now until I can replace it with a decent one (definitely a Nvidia again).

WizZard · 01-02-2006 11:45am

Sapphire and ATI are generally very good with RMAs. I'd email both if I were you.

Khannie · 01-02-2006 11:50am

Is the chip banjaxed? If not, you could get yourself an arctic cooler. I had fan trouble before on a 9800pro (ATI branded one), just replaced it with the arctic.

The heatsinks on the 9800 pro are too small IMO. Burned the hell out of myself by touching one before.

Sherifu · 01-02-2006 11:57am

Khannie wrote:

Is the chip banjaxed? If not, you could get yourself an arctic cooler. I had fan trouble before on a 9800pro (ATI branded one), just replaced it with the arctic.

The heatsinks on the 9800 pro are too small IMO. Burned the hell out of myself by touching one before.

I agree with Khannie,
rip out the stock coolers and go with arctics all the way.

Khannie · 01-02-2006 12:07pm

Oh, my standard advice: If you do get an arctic, don't use the included thermal paste. It's conductive. Killed a 9800 pro with it before.

Get some arctic silver and use it very very sparingly. A rice grain sized amount should do a 9800 pro.

Dimy · 01-02-2006 12:20pm

Khannie wrote:

Oh, my standard advice: If you do get an arctic, don't use the included thermal paste. It's conductive. Killed a 9800 pro with it before.

Get some arctic silver and use it very very sparingly. A rice grain sized amount should do a 9800 pro.

I think the chip is still ok, because I could boot my PC after it had cooled down, I think there's a "self-defense" meganism that shuts the card down when the temperature is getting too high.

Where can I buy the Arctic cooler? And which one specifically? I might give that a shot.

Khannie · 01-02-2006 12:34pm

You can pick one up on www.hitide.ie

Edit: This is the one for you. They also do arctic silver.

You could also get some ramsinks from hitide if you felt like overclocking it (seeing as it may be borked anyway). The 9800 pro is memory bandwidth bound when overclocking.

Sherifu · 01-02-2006 12:38pm

I got mine from
http://jes.de/

Search for:
ATI Silencer 1 Rev.2
The first one in the list is for the 9800 pro

Dimy · 01-02-2006 12:45pm

Thanks rkm and khannie, I'll have a look at that. Well...that will be after my holiday as I'll be in Brasil for the next two weeks as of saturday

. Thank God I have a laptop so I'll survive a few days without my PC.

Calibos · 01-02-2006 1:12pm

I flashed my sapphire 9800pro bios to XT and it runs at XT speeds obviously. Fitted an arctic cooler before I booted up the newly flashed card for the first time. Also fitted some Ramsinks. Card still runs fine. Anyway I got my arctic cooler from Peats of parnell street. Ordered online. Was amazed that they turned out to be the same price in peats as any other online store I could find. First time I ever found something in Peats that wasn't massively more expensive than other places.

Sherifu · 01-02-2006 1:20pm

Calibos wrote:

I flashed my sapphire 9800pro bios to XT and it runs at XT speeds obviously. Fitted an arctic cooler before I booted up the newly flashed card for the first time. Also fitted some Ramsinks. Card still runs fine. Anyway I got my arctic cooler from Peats of parnell street. Ordered online. Was amazed that they turned out to be the same price in peats as any other online store I could find. First time I ever found something in Peats that wasn't massively more expensive than other places.

Flashing it makes it use the clock and memory speeds of the 9800XT, on top of a few core optimizations. However, not every card can flash. You'll need to make sure it's actually got an R360 core, which means you have to look at the core itself. If its R350 forget it. Google and you'll see what i mean.

Linkie: http://www.i-hacked.com/content/view/153/74/

Dimy · 01-02-2006 2:04pm

Great...I'll check that out as well...

The card won't have to last very long anymore anyway as I'm planning a total system upgrade early next year.

Dimy · 01-02-2006 2:53pm

rkm wrote:

Flashing it makes it use the clock and memory speeds of the 9800XT, on top of a few core optimizations. However, not every card can flash. You'll need to make sure it's actually got an R360 core, which means you have to look at the core itself. If its R350 forget it. Google and you'll see what i mean.

Linkie: http://www.i-hacked.com/content/view/153/74/

Well I'm lucky...it's the R360:

Ordered all the parts today, gonna try to fix and flash it when I'm back from holidays.

Thanks again

Sherifu · 01-02-2006 2:57pm

nice1 i had the 350 on my pro

gline · 01-02-2006 3:37pm

if u do wana rma, ati are great for rmaing, i sent back 2 physically damaged x800pros to them and they replaced them with no fuss

Khannie · 01-02-2006 3:46pm

Jesus christ. That looks like some serious heat damage around the core.

Dimy · 01-02-2006 3:59pm

Khannie wrote:

Jesus christ. That looks like some serious heat damage around the core.

No that's not heat-damage, that's just some thermal paste left-overs I didn't remove yet. The core seems to be in fine shape

Dimy · 01-02-2006 4:00pm

gline wrote:

if u do wana rma, ati are great for rmaing, i sent back 2 physically damaged x800pros to them and they replaced them with no fuss

A friend of me had different experience... he returned his card for RMA 3 months ago and never heard from them again... they didn't answer to email either. I'll first try to fix this myself.

Khannie · 01-02-2006 6:26pm

Dimy wrote:

No that's not heat-damage, that's just some thermal paste left-overs I didn't remove yet. The core seems to be in fine shape

Ah right. I thought it might have been, but it looked more like warped plastic at first glance. Arctic cooler ftw then. Should keep your card going indefinitely.

Dimy · 01-02-2006 9:36pm

Khannie wrote:

Ah right. I thought it might have been, but it looked more like warped plastic at first glance. Arctic cooler ftw then. Should keep your card going indefinitely.

Yep I think so too, I already ordered it. About the firmware flashing.. I don't think it's going to work, I read on for a bit and as I have a 128MB version I need the firmware of a Sapphire 9800 XT with 128MB from Hynix and I can only find firmware for the Sapphire 9800 XT 128 MB with Samsung memory. Ah well... doesn't really matter, I'd be happy enough if the cooler will make it run fine again.

Calibos · 01-02-2006 10:28pm

I wasn't suggesting you flash your card Dimy, my point about flashing mine to XT speeds was to illustrate how good arctic coolers were keeping my overclocked and flashed card cooler than my card was when at standard pro clocks with stock cooling.

But seeing as there was no harm done to your card and you are replacing your stock cooler with an arctic anyway then why not flash I suppose.

.......and you are in luck. I happened to come across the cd-r with the XT firmware when I was up in the attic. Its for a 128mb sapphire with hynix:

Serial number (look on your ram) HY5DU283222A
F28 408A
W?CD5609KG

Anyway PM me your email addy and I'll send you the firmware. I can't remember the process involved in flashing so you may have to research that but it may have involved buring the file to disc, making it bootable and booting from it. IIRC. Not sure though.

You should buy some ramsinks for the ram while you are at it.

Oh and when your card is flashed to XT you may find you have an active temp monitoring chip. Not all cards with the 360 core have the chip but my sapphire did. ATITOOL now lets me monitor temps of my card.

This is what happened to my Ati 9800 Pro...

Comments