Voltage problem on xfx 8800GT

[Unstoppable]

Hi guys,

I have been busy overclocking my videocard lately (not extreme), but anyway when I booted my PC last time it wouldn't even post!
So I have done a lot of searching on the internet and found a way to measure the voltage on the vGPU of the card and how to take of control with a variable resistor. So when I measured my voltage, I saw it runned at 0,80V ! While this should have been 1,1V. That explained why it wasn't able to boot. There were two things I could thing of to do.
1) Reset the BIOS of the motherboard
2) Solder the variable resistor and force it to run at 1,1V.

The first one was no go, but the second one actually worked!
But as soon as remove the resistor it still goes back to 0,80V.

Does anyone might know what could have caused this problem? (When the resistor is connected the card runs fine, any game I throw at it.)
And also how I might solve this..

Thanks in advance !

[Methious]

Get with the XFX techs in the XFX support section and they'll hook you up with the correct bios flash for the card.

I'd be hoping the BIOS flash works because soldering on a card would tend to void the warranty.

[Unstoppable]

I know it will void the warranty. I haven't actually soldered it yet. I just taped the wire on it. Kinda hard to let it stay connected, but it works now as long as you don't touch it.

I did try a BIOS flash with the original one. I made a backup of it. It didn't help much though.

The XFX support section can be found on the normal site can it not?

[xfxsupport]

Yes, start a ticket at www.xfxforce.com and we can help out. It sounds like perhaps a resistor or other component may or may not be working correctly. In any case it is better to have us look at it instead of soldering parts, however I do like the intense troublshooting!

[Unstoppable]

Alright I started a ticket (#161631). I hope you guys can help me out with this one :)
I also realized that probably an electronic component on the card might be broken/not working correctly. I makes sense, though I didn't thought of it in the first place because I didn't think it would be that extreme.

About the intense troubleshooting.. Yeah I really try everything that I can to fix my problems :grin: This is especially because I study electronics.

Anyway, just a question out of curiosity, how come that one of the electronic components gave up on me? Could it be a faulty component or something?

[Miker]

If you fix it with the resistor you might end up with a better OCing card then the good stock XFX card.

[Unstoppable]

Yes I might do so. I have been experimenting a little bit, and have it running at 1,25V. I can get pretty neat clocks, but temperatures get a little to high. At 700/1850/985 (core/shader/mem) and when doing the ATi Artifact scan it reaches a temperature of 71C. This is with the Zalman VF1000 Led. Thought it would cool better...

Anyway, I pinpointed what is actually broken on the card. The point where you need to solder the resistor, is actually a resistor itself. And that one is broken.

http://img46.imageshack.us/img46/1129/brokendx9.jpg

That thing selected in pink seems to be broken.

[Miker]

71C is nothing 90c+ is bad, with your knowledge I think you are save to mod your card, but it will void the warrenty.

[Unstoppable]

71C is nothing 90c+ is bad, with your knowledge I think you are save to mod your card, but it will void the warrenty.

I guess I have some headroom left then when it comes to temperature.
I probably still won't let it go over 80C :razz:

And I might indeed mod my card. But I still have some measuring to do before I really will do this. And I don't worry to much about the warranty. My experience with the XFX cards is that they don't break that easy :)
It is already running for almost four months without any problems... Except for the broken resistor ;-)

2 last questions :-D Is is true about the memory, if you run it at 1GHz(x2) you'll damage it but if you run it at 975MHz(x2) you are safe?
Also, on front of my card, where the cooler is placed, there is a plug for a jumper. It says J8 next to it... Does anyone know what's it for?