No more GPU folding for me

S

SmokeRngs

[H]ard|DCer of the Month - April 2008
Joined
Aug 9, 2001
Messages
18,258
It appears my trusty 8800GT finally died today. Went to watch some movies on the computer earlier today and my system locked up. After a restart I tried it again and the system locked up again with some nasty green crap all over the screen. I restarted the system again and Windows acted as if there were no drivers installed so I downloaded and installed the newest drivers and after a reboot things seemed fine for playing movies without the GPU client running. After watching what I wanted I started up the client and everything went to hell again. A reboot later and Windows wouldn't recognize the card anymore. Drivers wouldn't reinstall and during the next boot sequence some of the text was garbled.

I probably would have said to hell with it except that since Windows wouldn't recognize the card and I couldn't install any drivers, I only had one of my two displays working. I have since pulled the 8600GT out of the system my son normally uses. I have the 8600GT running in my system for the dual displays and put the 8800GT in my son's system for now as it only needs one display running on it although he'll be in the same boat as me and won't be able to play any games.

This means about a 4500PPD loss on average for me and I'm back purely to CPU folding. Although my 8800GT is an EVGA, it's not looking like I'll be able to do any type of RMA on it either.

At least I haven't felt like doing any gaming for a while now so it's not all bad. I'd be really pissed if I was in the middle of a new game or something.

 
Serious? No 8800GT and no oven either?! Wow...how do you make cookies...?

You'll need a video card, though, won't you? If it's your primary system...
 
Mr. Pedantic said:
Serious? No 8800GT and no oven either?! Wow...how do you make cookies...?

You'll need a video card, though, won't you? If it's your primary system...
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No cookies here and that really isn't a problem. The inability to make my own pizzas is the worst part of not having a working oven.

As for a card, I swapped the 8800 with the 8600 in the system my son normally uses so I have working dual displays for my main system. I could have swapped out with the 6600GT in my server but I can't afford possible instability in my server from the 8800GT.

For now, I have the displays I need, I just can't do any gaming or GPU folding.
 
Keep your eyes opend in the FS section.once in a while there are crazy deals.
 
No cookies here and that really isn't a problem. The inability to make my own pizzas is the worst part of not having a working oven.
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:eek:

As for a card, I swapped the 8800 with the 8600 in the system my son normally uses so I have working dual displays for my main system. I could have swapped out with the 6600GT in my server but I can't afford possible instability in my server from the 8800GT.

For now, I have the displays I need, I just can't do any gaming or GPU folding.
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Look for a 275 or 285 on the forums, or spoil yourself and get a 470 or two. Or three...
 
Sorry to hear about your troubles. I have been scanning the FS forums of late and there are definitely some options there. I can't actually pull the trigger on anything as all of my funds are tied up, but I like to window shop :)
 
BAKE IT!

*Get an easy bake oven* ;)
 
Dude that sucks. I had a 8800GT die on me in january. I tried baking mine but it didn't do any good. Least your isn't completely dead. Anytime win7 tried to load the drivers it'd BSOD. I failed at registering it so i got hosed by evga too. Sucks. I found a used xfx 5870 on the FS forum tho and jumped on it. Been pretty happy with it but it dumps way too much heat into my case, I'm about half way to getting all the parts to watercool it as well.
 
My 8800GT is problematic as well. Other than EUE's practically every day, every once in awhile I get checkerboards until I do a system reset. IDK how much longer the card has to live but at least I registered it after I bought it so once it goes, there will be replacement D coming for [H] from EVGA themselves. :D haha
 
Its a pain when it happens. On my old 8800gt i gave the heatsink a good clean and that helped cure my errors. You could try that
 
Sorry to hear that. GPU folding seems to really take the life out of those GPUs after a year or two. I have a 8800GT that got really crappy with tons of artifacts all over the screen. Still seems to work ok as long as I don't fold on it. What really hurts is I have a GTX260 that also crashes at least every two days if not daily when folding. They seems to work fine gaming but folding is too much. I didn't learn though. Got a used GTX260 and it is back to folding.
 
HighYield said:
Sorry to hear that. GPU folding seems to really take the life out of those GPUs after a year or two. I have a 8800GT that got really crappy with tons of artifacts all over the screen. Still seems to work ok as long as I don't fold on it. What really hurts is I have a GTX260 that also crashes at least every two days if not daily when folding. They seems to work fine gaming but folding is too much. I didn't learn though. Got a used GTX260 and it is back to folding.
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For me it's more irritating that I didn't have any hints of problems before the card basically died on me. In my experience most components normally give hints of instability before they go off the deep end with exceptions for things like a dead fan which overheats the card. My card was running just fine until all of a sudden it went out on me.

75C was the hottest this card has gotten this year and I normally won't run the card if it gets over 80C. That's well within tolerances for the card and most of the time it would actually be 60-65C.

If it wasn't in use as a stopgap card for another system, I'd take the cooler off to look at the rest of the card. The bottom looks the same as it always has but the majority of the components are covered up by the cooler.

I guess what bugs me the most is that I can't afford to replace the card and probably won't for the foreseeable future. I'd also fold on the 8600GT except that I reboot as little as possible and if I folded with it, I would have to reboot at least once every two days because of video corruption from folding on the card. I dealt with that for a while when the 8600GT was in a secondary system but gave up on it because it was annoying and not worth the time and effort to babysit it.

Truthfully, I never expected the 8800GT to last as long as it did while folding. Video cards were never made to be run 24/7 like other system components.
 
HighYield said:
Sorry to hear that. GPU folding seems to really take the life out of those GPUs after a year or two. I have a 8800GT that got really crappy with tons of artifacts all over the screen. Still seems to work ok as long as I don't fold on it. What really hurts is I have a GTX260 that also crashes at least every two days if not daily when folding. They seems to work fine gaming but folding is too much. I didn't learn though. Got a used GTX260 and it is back to folding.
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Well, if you've got a working oven, you could always try baking the cards. It worked for my 9600GSO.
 
I have a EVGA initial release 8800GTX still folding and has been folding since I got it. Knock on wood.
 
SmokeRngs said:
It's rather difficult to do when you don't have a working oven.
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Wow that really stinks, especially the not having a working oven part...

If you live in Arizona, I wonder if you can lay your 8800gt on the sidewalk and set up some tanning mirrors to bake it.
 
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Don't you have a neighbor or someone you know that will let you bake it? Just tell them it's a really cool cookie shaped like a computer component...:)
 
After resurrecting a dead Radeon X700 card I had which means all my systems will continue to stay up and running, I'm going to try and bake my card tomorrow when I go down to my parents' house.

The fan on the X700 died a while back and I pointed another fan at the heatsink which should have been enough to keep it cool. However, my server kept locking up anyway so I put the spare 6600GT in it. I took a look at the X700 earlier today and noticed one of the two pins holding the heatsink on was broke. While messing with it, the other pin broke and the heatsink came back off. Using some screws and nuts I had from a waterblock or heatsink setup from the socket A days, I reattached the heatsink securely and pointed an 80mm fan at it. So far it's working fine and my son can play games again since I put the 8600GT back in his system.

I've already disassembled the 8800GT and I have to say that EVGA really needs to cut back on the amount of thermal goop they put on the GPUs. There was enough thermal goop on and around the GPU for at least three GPUs. It's a wonder the temps on the card were as low as they were which were pretty good for a single slot cooler.

I hope the baking works as I'd really like to have the 8800GT back up and running.
 
leh18621 said:
Just buy a new video card, maybe?
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maybe you should buy one for him? little hard to justify spending money on hardware when you have bills to pay.. its not that simple to just go out and buy a new card when one dies for some of us..

SmokeRngs said:
After resurrecting a dead Radeon X700 card I had which means all my systems will continue to stay up and running, I'm going to try and bake my card tomorrow when I go down to my parents' house.

The fan on the X700 died a while back and I pointed another fan at the heatsink which should have been enough to keep it cool. However, my server kept locking up anyway so I put the spare 6600GT in it. I took a look at the X700 earlier today and noticed one of the two pins holding the heatsink on was broke. While messing with it, the other pin broke and the heatsink came back off. Using some screws and nuts I had from a waterblock or heatsink setup from the socket A days, I reattached the heatsink securely and pointed an 80mm fan at it. So far it's working fine and my son can play games again since I put the 8600GT back in his system.

I've already disassembled the 8800GT and I have to say that EVGA really needs to cut back on the amount of thermal goop they put on the GPUs. There was enough thermal goop on and around the GPU for at least three GPUs. It's a wonder the temps on the card were as low as they were which were pretty good for a single slot cooler.

I hope the baking works as I'd really like to have the 8800GT back up and running.
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good to see you got the system running again.. and yes i completely agree on that.. my evga 8800GT had so much thermal grease on it i sat there going wtf! no wonder why people complain about these things running so hot.. it was thicker then the pads on the vrm's and ram.. so i was glad i spent the extra 60 bucks and bought the duorb cooler for mine..
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
maybe you should buy one for him? little hard to justify spending money on hardware when you have bills to pay.. its not that simple to just go out and buy a new card when one dies for some of us..
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I'll give him one!
If you can't afford $50 for a video card, I have an extra 9600GSO I'll send him for free!
I'll even pay the shipping from Alaska!
I have one that has a questionable fan on it, but has a 3 year warranty from Asus and I bought it last November.
Either change the fan or send it in for a free replacment!
Asus uses a date on the card for the warranty, not a recipt.
Just PM your address to me and I'll ship it out in the next couple day!
 
gkanakis said:
I'll give him one!
If you can't afford $50 for a video card, I have an extra 9600GSO I'll send him for free!
I'll even pay the shipping from Alaska!
I have one that has a questionable fan on it, but has a 3 year warranty from Asus and I bought it last November.
Either change the fan or send it in for a free replacment!
Asus uses a date on the card for the warranty, not a recipt.
Just PM your address to me and I'll ship it out in the next couple day!
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I appreciate the offer and if my 8800GT doesn't work after baking it, I might take you up on it. As it is, I don't have $50 for a video card. Hell, I couldn't tell you the last time I had $50 that wasn't immediately to go for bills or necessities although it's probably been about a year and a half. My only saving grace as far as folding goes is the fact that I have some of the cheapest electricity in the US here.
 
After baking the card, the preliminary results are looking good. A runthrough of 3DMark 2006 went fine, GPU folding appears to be working and playing a video while GPU folding is working as well. There was no video corruption on bootup like there had been before either.

Hopefully it will stay this way.

Temps also look good as well now that the inch thick thermal goop was removed and replaced. At the moment while working on a P6606 the temp is 61C. I don't remember what temps the card was running on these before, but I'm going to bet it was a good bit warmer than this.
 
PM me. I have an XFX 8800GT win an Accelero S1 Rev. 2 on it I'll ship to you if you pay shipping. I'm feeling charitable.



EDIT

Seems I fail at reading the last post... ;)
 
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