Yes it happened, i was trying to clean the remainder of the shite thermal glue that ATI use to stick the stock heatsinks on with and managed to rip off threee of the surface mounted componants (resistors??) that are mounted on the core. Thought it was completely screwed, so put the arctic cooler back on a fired up the pc, to my complete suprise it still works!!! However it is destinctly down on power (about 3500 3d mark 2001 points to be exact), oh well it still works so thats the main thing. I do have a backup of the 9500 non pro, which i have softmodded to a 9700 pro, however the ram is slightly slower than the genuine 9700 pro and so it cant quite reach the same speeds (although the core is better).
i had a bad day with a 9700pro once, i tried to remove them metal shim from round the core and pulled off almost half of the damn gpu. grrrr, and that still worked after but had vertical lines going down the screen and atrifacts in any games i tried. i wont be doing anything like that again
I was trying to scrape the remaining yellow thermal glue from around the outside of the core with a credit caed, and it must have just bent enough to catch them Oh well it still works at least, ill just have to see if i can get this 9500NP up to a good speed with some ram sinks. Might even try my hand at a bit of volt modding to see if that helps.
i tend to use toilet-paper and ear-buds (those lil plastic straws with cotton on either end, for cleaning out your ears) for this sort of job. the little earbuds are stiff enough to scrape off the goo, but not strong enough to rip off surface-mounts (they just bend, and the cotton-wool comes off). it probably takes longer than useing a credit-card or similar, but im cheap, i'd spend an hour longer doing something if it meant i didnt have to replace it.
3500 3d mark 2001 points ? Thats less than a GF 4 MX 440! But I am really surprised that it still works I guess the card can be used for an low end non-gameing PC
no it still gets 14400 3d mark 2001 SE points, i meant it was 3500 points down from the 18000i had managed to obtain from the card. I think im going to try and make the contacts using a pencil to see if i can get the card back performing.
they disappeared withought a trace so that wont be possible, they are soooooo small there was no way i was going to find them in the carpet.
well the pencil nethod didnt work so im stuck with an underperforming card. Oh well, ill just have to get this 9500NP up to a beasty speed with some RAMsinks.
I didn't even realize a card would work without all of the SMDs mounted. That's actually sort of nice to know.
