A possible fix to these 7900 problems?

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pandora's box

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I was just browsing the evga forums looking for potential fixes for all these 7900 problems people are having. I came across this post by Jrzimm612:

I looked at the back of the board against the light and noticed that there was all sorts of residue left over from the assembly/soldering. Most of the time, the assembly factories do a quick wash to get rid of all the flux material on the circuit boards. This is usually good enough. However, when we start doing our mods, we're not always too careful and lay our sweaty, oily hands right across the components. This adds conductive paths across circuits and causes instabilities.

Here's what I did and what I recommend:

1. Get a bottle of 90% Isopropyl alcohol. Pure acetone (nail polish remover) should also work.
2. Get a roll of paper towels.
3. Take one paper towel, saturate a corner of it with alcohol.
4. Scrub vigorously the areas around the chips that control the memory and gpu voltages. Also scrub the components opposite each the ram chips. As your paper towels shreds, soak a fresh corner and continue. IMPORTANT: Don’t put your hands or fingers on the freshly scrubbed areas!
5. Get a clean paper towel and rub vigorously, sopping up all the alcohol. DO NOT BLOW ON IT TO DRY!
6. Hold up the board at an angle and look for any traces of residue. Use a magnifying glass if necessary. Repeat steps 4 and 5 if any residue is detectable. The board should look absolutely shiny.
7. Do your volt mods. DO NOT blow on the board to dry or to blow away graphite from a pencil mod. This will leave residue from the moisture on your breath. Use a can of compressed air instead (if you use an air compressor, make sure it has fresh oil and moisture filters).
8. Put your video card back into your system holding it only by the edges and bracket.

After you do this, your results hopefully will be similar to mine –

7900GT before cleaning:
GPU = 630MHz @ 1.4V and high fan speed (VF900), no artifacts, no blanking
Memory = 800MHz @ stock volts, no artifacts, no blanking
-- with pencil volt mod, 840MHz, no artifacts, but lots of blanking.

7900GT after cleaning:
GPU = 650MHz @ 1.4V and LOW fan speed (VF900), no artifacts, no blanking
Memory = 940MHz @ STOCK volts, no artifacts, no blanking!!

My 7900GT is now rock solid stable even at the low fan speeds.
Click to expand...

http://www.evga.com/community/messageboard/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=14951

Sounds plausable if you ask me. Those of you who are experiencing problems, perhaps you should try this?

I am not having problems with my 7900GT yet but I did look on the back of my card, there is indeed some sort of residue on there. Im going to pick up some 91%+ Isopropryl alcohol tomorrow along with a lint free cloth (dont use a paper towel).

Just thought I would share with you guys ;)
 
So even if I have stock cards that are fresh out of the factory, doing this could let me OC more or something? I just don't want dead cards. I'm not overclocking till this whole delta/memory timings thing is sorted out.
 
according to evga, they came out with a new bios to address the issues, but once the cards mess up, the bios does nothing, so hte best thing would be to flash it right away to get any problems out of the way as the memory voltage regulators are the problems, both my cards messed up 2nd day I had em and wiping the back fo the cards with alc does nothing for them, aside from lowering the memory clock to 600 there is no fix for me anyway. so flash the new bios and hope that takes care of it. btw my cards were overclocked for 1 3dmark run and started messing up from there on.
 
toddm27 said:
according to evga, they came out with a new bios to address the issues, but once the cards mess up, the bios does nothing, so hte best thing would be to flash it right away to get any problems out of the way as the memory voltage regulators are the problems, both my cards messed up 2nd day I had em and wiping the back fo the cards with alc does nothing for them, aside from lowering the memory clock to 600 there is no fix for me anyway. so flash the new bios and hope that takes care of it. btw my cards were overclocked for 1 3dmark run and started messing up from there on.
Click to expand...

have a link?
 
this was according to tech support as both my cards are awaiting rma replacements
go here and input your serial number and model number and download the bios, that will be the first thing I do with my new cards. according to them the bios update fixes the volt regulator probs
 
so how are there any fully fixes about this? Should we clean it? flash it? what? I just got the N563_1806 BIOS from eVGA for my 7900GT. Should I flash my card with that? Anyone? My card comes today and I wanna know.
 
Bump. According to my card and NiBiTor, I have BIOS version 5.71.22.14.03 and on eVGA's site is this

N563_1806

Thats all it says. No date or anything. Im curious, is that the latest one? Should i flash it?

Ok so does anyone have 5.71.22.14.03 BIOS of an eVGA 7900GT CO that they could send me? Although I just did an auto detect of the 5.71.22.12.7 (the BIOS that I just downloaded from eVGA) and I got a core of 612 and a RAM of 815 so yay. Hopefully it wont artifact. This is all on 1.2v. I wanna have the BIOS taht the card came with just incase something happens.
 
go to www.mvktech.net and they have a full list of official evga bios's and the one the techs are saying to use is the 12.07 bios, I just got one of my replacements, and its all good so far, keeping my fingers crossed, first thing I did was flash to that bios, and they also want you to use their drivers ver 84.56 I think off evga website, your core is smoking, is that with the volt mod? mine only autodetects between 570-580, with the 1.4 mod it auto at 670, I'll try more volts later though
 
Nope, no volt mod yet. Im going to do some tests now. Q4 here i come :p

Edit: WTF. Everytime I do an auto detect, I get above 600 on the core and above 800 on the RAM. but when I click apply -> Ok, and then go back into coolbits, it says 568/712!!! Even if its a 12MHz OC from 500! Why is it doing this?

Edit again: I think its just a coolbits being gay thing. Becuase when I change in rivatuner, ati tool and powerstrip, it works fine.
 
Nope, went to bed and woke up this morning and checked powerstrip....its 468 AGAIN. Why is it doing this? The monitor flashes really quickly like twice then back to 468. DAMNIT.
 
Where are these chips? I get low overclocks and want to try this, but don't know where to wash.
 
From that site, I got the 5.71.22.14.9 BIOS (updated from stock of 5.71.22.14.3 and from eVGA's site of 5.71.22.12.7) and the 12.7 kept defaulting back to 489 while the 14.3 kept defaulting back to 500. I flashed this time and no more! It finally works. Coolbits recognizes it and keeps it. It auto detects 612/882. Now if that doesnt artifact.... :D

Edit, DAMNIT..now its stuck @ 612/882! WTF!

Edit again. Fixed the issue. It seems if powerstrip was running, it was conflicting w/ coolbits and vice versa. Stopped that from always running and coolbits/rivatuner work fine. So know you know. Becuase when i set it in coolbits, it set back to default, or when i set it in powerstrip,it set back to coolbits setting. Who knows...
 
you know, when the GF 3 came out it was a good card right out of the box. There have been other good cards. But no, not good enough. Instead we get an UPGRADE from the excellent 6800 series, the 7000 series. Why ? 7800. Not good enough. Now the 7900. Not good enough. Now the overclocked versions of the 7900 that are having issues. Even the parent chip manufacturer says these are a bad idea. Folks, you get what you asked for. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Not all overclocking is going to be successful. Sure, those cards should have been checked over completely before sold, but they were not. Best plan of action would be ask for your money back and be happy with a lesser and totally stable card. I mean, this is all about having fun right ?
 
compulsivephreek said:
you know, when the GF 3 came out it was a good card right out of the box. There have been other good cards. But no, not good enough. Instead we get an UPGRADE from the excellent 6800 series, the 7000 series. Why ? 7800. Not good enough. Now the 7900. Not good enough. Now the overclocked versions of the 7900 that are having issues. Even the parent chip manufacturer says these are a bad idea. Folks, you get what you asked for. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Not all overclocking is going to be successful. Sure, those cards should have been checked over completely before sold, but they were not. Best plan of action would be ask for your money back and be happy with a lesser and totally stable card. I mean, this is all about having fun right ?
Click to expand...
It seems to be more then just an overclocking issue.

Me thinks it's a design flaw... probably having to do with the cheaper components used to keep the prices down and compete with ATi. ATi have stricter control over what there partner's can use as components and do with teh cards. I think nVIDIA needs to start doing this as well again. Because this has been the worsed publicity for nVIDIA.
 
It is more then overclocking...or the overclocked cards.

I don't overclock anything. My first build was (2) 7900 GT KOs. They lasted 8 days and I believe it is because I didn't do anything for 5 of those days (work). They are stock overclocked 520/1440 from EVGA.

So I thought "overclocking is killing these...let's play it safe"...and bought (2) MSI GTX cards which were stock 650/1600. On the morning of the 4th straight day installed, they began to die too.

It's a slow death, and it is painful to see and watch, since you see such great performance for those first couple days (or weeks, as some have had happen).

I went with the red team for now, and am insanely curious watching what develops with this ongoing 7900 saga. But, the point is, I can actually watch!
(Just a little joke)

When the DX10 cards come around, I may give SLI Nvidia a chance again, but only after a few months and heavy research. I seems the 7900 issue exploded right when I bought my cards (around May 1st).
 
Whoever gets a "modded" card back from eVGA 1st, please post images if there are physical mods to the card (jumper wires, etc..). I am VERY curious to see what they did to mod the cards.
 
revenant said:
Whoever gets a "modded" card back from eVGA 1st, please post images if there are physical mods to the card (jumper wires, etc..). I am VERY curious to see what they did to mod the cards.
Click to expand...

There are pics in the sticky thread at the top of this forum. :)
 
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