If a power bump dies, it may not be a big deal, but if a signal bump dies, that would be certain doom for the GPU.Ģ) Using a low Tg underfill that starts to soften at 60˚C and quickly turns to mush at 80+˚C.ģ) As a result of issue #2, the die is never properly soldered to the substrate to begin with.Ĥ) As Unique said, nVidia derated the current capability of the chips by overvolting them and that caused them to produce far more heat than necessary.Įutectic bumps and pads all partook the move to RoHS products / the lead-free standard. This is bad because high lead bumps cannot handle thermal stress in comparison to eutectic bumps and will fracture with far more ease (although eutectic bumps cannot handle as much current as high lead bumps).
The "bumpgate issue" is really two or three (or four?) issues that can summarily be described as the following:ġ) Using high lead bumps with eutectic pads (bumpgate) in lieu of of eutectic bumps and eutectic pads.
I'm certainly not an expert on this topic (I'm sure Unique knows more than me), but it's my understanding that it's a bit more complex than "all cards that use low Tg underfill are defective". I'm really tempted to grab it, even though there are a ton of video cards with better performance/watt. Īlso saw an HD4870 x2 for really cheap recently (it's listed "for parts or repair", of course). I think there is a good chance I will get all of them working, but let me not jinx it, of course. I've had 3.5 successful repairs out of 4 attempts so far (the 0.5 loss is because one card is missing blue or green on the analog output on both DVI connectors, so probably GPU BGA problem). Now the Radeon HD4850 cards, on the other hand, are wonderful when it comes to reflowing. That said, I guess I will also be staying away from the several GeForce GTX 260/275/285 "For parts or repair" video cards I have bookmarked on eBay. So I think ATI may have had a problem as well, but just not as bad as nVidia's.Īnyways. The Xbox 360 GPUs are based on the ATI R520 (Radeon x1800) core. We used leaded solder, so I doubt the solder failed. Likewise, when I briefly worked in a console repair shop, some of the reballed Xbox 360s still came back. Moreover, no matter how many times I've reflowed some of my failed Radeon 9700 video cards, they won't come back to life. I say this, because the older Radeon 97 video cards use leaded solder, yet they still fail with artifacts quite often.
Nvidia 8600m gt undervolting series#
In fact, if I recall correctly, even Th3_uN1Qu3 mention this somewhere a long time ago.Īlso, I am starting to suspect that even early ATI Radeon video cards like the Radeon 97 up to the x1000 series may also have something similar to the bumpgate issue. The GeForce 6x00 series were also affected, though they didn't seem to fail as much due to lower heat output. That estimation of 60 degress celsius max is the same I have for Nvidia series from 6000 to at least some 500 that I could test.
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