geforce 6800 revival

A not-too-good quality movie showing friends (and maybe other interested people) how to revive a Geforce 6800GT that is showing artefacts.

I didn't know that it would work with the oven I had, so I didn't put too much effort in filming (afterwards, I was somewhat dissapointed that I missed a few interesting things in the movie). Also filming off an CRT screen is difficult because of reflection and refreshrates (LCD ftw).

Anyway, it's a common problem for nVidia graphic cards to show artefacts after a while because of micro-fractures in the soldering. Sometimes this can be fixed by putting the card in an oven and let it bake at 200ºC for 10 minutes. I don't have the money to buy an oven like that so I bought this cheap oven with very little controll. First attempts where utter failure (used old VLB graphics card for testing) as the oven was too hot and most parts fell of the card. After a few more tests I figured out to use only the heater at the bottom of the oven and let the card bak for 10 minutes and then let i cool down.

Results were beyong what I expected (to tell you the truth, I expected to end up with a black screen :P).
The PC booted, artefacts in the bootscreen were gone. Also I was able to set the resolution back to 1024x768 32 bit colour (before the PC would crash instantly). Ran 3dMark, ran a few games and everything worked like a charm.

I had to cut out most of the audio, because people around tend to talk too much when Im filming...

Anyway, it worked, cheap oven can do the job to save your (nVidia) graphics card :P
(this also worked on a 8400m I baked 2 days later)

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• geforce
• artefacts
• fix
• oven

[rick62008]

Won't this melt the plastics or blow caps?

[Nemesizzonline]

@rick62008 Most of the plastic parts are quite heat-resistant (like the DVI connectors). They change colour a bit, but do not realy melt. The small speaker on the card however does melt and the fan connector as well (fan plug still fits though). Caps can blow, happened only once with an old vga card. But blowing caps rarely happens (I've baked quite a lot of cards by now).

[rick62008]

@Nemesizzonline Rate of success?

[Nemesizzonline]

@rick62008 So far, only 1 card fell apart (wasn't even a nVidia card but an old trident), and only 1 didn't work after baking (acer laptop mainboard with nVidia GPU).

All the others worked afterwards, but the time it lasts varies.

Some cards give up again after 3 weeks and need to be baked again, others last for months without any problems. The laptop I mentioned was baked 4 times now, and only the last time it didn't work anymore.

So succesrate is quite high, but not guaranteed.

[argfa]

hey.... ca u tell what did u use for the memories]??? arctic 5 too?

[Nemesizzonline]

@argfa For this card I didn't use thermal paste or pads on the memorychips because I didn't know it would work at all when I baked the card. However it is recommanded to use paste or pads when removing and re-attaching the heatsink.

This 6800 model could have used thermal paste (the heatsink is in direct contact with the memory chips). A lot of other cards require a thermal pad (1mm or 2mm or something) for the memorychips.

Adding 1-2 mm thick paste isn't a good idea incase your card uses pads.

[leonxwerty]

IT WORKS!!! THANK YOU!!!

[MrH4rper]

Step 1: Providing the card is defective

Step 2: Throw your 10 years old computer out of the window

Step 3: Get a new one

[1994fergo]

@Nemesizzonline  if stuff's melting its to hot. 180C for 10mins tops

[argfa]

hey mate.... thx a lot... i tried ur video... well good news!!! i brough back from deaths my old Evga 6800gt... she died like 1 1/2 years ago... by artefacts... but i didnt droped it to the garbage... so im amazed.. i bough an arctic ceramique and used it to gpu and memorychips and 200c by 10min and 40min into the oven turned off... waiting to get cool... so surprise... well mate thx a lot i really mean it. i say hello from Venezuela.