Burned vram chip on 580m?

Hey guys,

I had a 580m for a long while in my R3. I decided to flash it to a 675m about 2 months ago. No problems, was getting even better performance and 3dmark scores due to the 675m working better with 3XX drivers. I was using it for many weeks perfectly with the 314.14 drivers from laptopvideo2go.

Then one day I install Geforce Experience. I don't think they are related but I thought I would mention it anyway. That night I would run a game and boom, reboot. Again and again. So I did a fresh driver install. Still no dice. I reseat the graphics card. This works for about 30 minutes before it starts rebooting again.

So I try running it only on the HD3000. No problem, no reboots. Then I disabled the IGP and booted on the Nvidia. Windows barely has 3 seconds to open before it reboots again.

So I read up on a couple of threads that the only way forward is a full repaste. I order fujipoly extreme pads in 0.5, 1mm, and 2mm. Do a full job with IC Diamond. Boot the system... temp is 32C and climbing slowly. OK, I thought, we're good. Run 3DMark11 and bam, reboot again,

Needless to say I feel annoyed now, especially after waiting more than a week to get the fujipoly pads. I did notice one thing while repasting though. One of the Hynix chips on the end of the row seems slightly "lighter" in shade and I could read the "HYNIX" text quite a bit easier than the rest. Do you think all the gaming and video encoding has taken its toll and one of the ram chips has kicked the bucket? Or is it some deep driver issue?

Thanks in advance dudes

 

Hi, I'd try flashing it back to a 580 and re-installing the Dell driver (I know it's old) first. Then if OK update from the NV site. You would not need a modded ini for a 580. From what I read the 580 flash to a 675 has no benefit but I'm open to be corrected

Good luck

 

Alrighty, I'll do that. If that doesn't work I guess I'll have to wait for the 780m to come out and grab a 680m when the price drops... since I'm guessing the price of the 780m will be insane on launch...

I'm 2 months over warranty. There isn't a point in contacting the reseller or Dell, is there?

 

It's just a good starting point, it should be fixable

I'm also waiting to see if the 680 drops to a reasonable price. Right now, if I were to get dell to do it (and reatain FULL waranty cover) it's 1/3 the price of a new machine

You can contact dell, they might even let you renew if you wanted to, but you will always get a pay-as-you-go option. It doesn't sound like anything serious though so maybe we can resolve it.

I don't have a intel GPU on my 3D model so I will ask for more help if it's the GPU switching that is the problem? Check out 'whitelisting' a game (no link I'm afraid) to see how to force the NV card, might be worth a try for one game, but see what is happening with afterburner first

Good luck.

 

I did that already in the BIOS. I disabled the Intel GPU, and 2 or 3 seconds after windows had finished loading, it rebooted. When I enable the Intel, it works fine until it swtiches to Nvidia (running a game or graphics application) then it reboots...

Thanks for the help! Just a question on MSI Afterburner... can I use it to help me troubleshoot the card? (Drivers, memory, etc)

 

In the fact that you can see temps and clock speeds as you game gives you some diagnostic information, but if it restarts as soon as a game loads then it's not much use. If you get a BSOD then you can use whocrashed to examine the log files and give hints as to the cause.

I'd still flash it back and use dell driver. If it still happens then you may well have a bad card

Had a thought on this, try to switch to the NV gpu then hit F12 at boot and run the dell diags - might show something?

 

I ran the dell dials, nothing showed up wrong for the gfx card. I'll flash the card back to 580m tomorrow morning and report the results!

 

oh well, it might have shown a faulty ram (on the card) if that was the issue.

If it is still doing it (after a driver rollback) then it looks very much like the card. All you have left to try is a complete clean install, and that is unlikely to be it...

 

Well today I removed all my hdd's and installed a fresh copy of windows 7. After everything installed I ran 3dmark11 and it crashed as expected. However, it did throw a bsod instead of just a pure reboot this time. Which looked very much like this:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/697439-nvidia-gtx-580m-error.html

I wonder what happened in the end...

 

You could try PM'ing Luis, reference the thread and maybe he will help/remember?

If you got a BSOD then whocrashed can give more details but it's probably going to be the same as that thread

 

Hey, I PM'ed Luis so hopefully he can shed some light on the issue. Probably he'll tell me to go buy myself a new card

Btw, today I successfully flashed the card back to 580m and installed the latest drivers from the dell website. Still the same BSOD and instability. I guess I'll limp along on the HD3000 until the 780m comes out. The cheapest 680m I've found on ebay is $650 which is still a little steep...

Thanks for donating your time MickeyD

 

Yeah your best bet is to wait until 780M hits the market. Then the 680M should drop in price.

 

You're very welcome, just a shame no resolution. At least you have exhausted all the possibilities of software/firmware so are more secure in the fact your card needs replacing

 

Yup! The interesting thing is i downloaded a video card memory stress test and ran it in dos, after 3 passes there were no errors.

Once I get a response back from Luis, I'm going to do the video card in oven trick and see what happens. Nothing to lose right?

 

Nope, can't hurt it any more! The memory thing might be just a red herring. Those chips are general purpose and no guarantee that they all came from the same batch (hence printing differences?)...

 

Ok here's the latest. I decided to put the damn thing in the oven, lol. Pre-heated to 195C and then slapped it in for 5-6 minutes. And you know what! It came back to life! But now with red fuzzy artifacts.

Since the red lines are the reason many people baked their cards in the first place, I told myself I just need to bake it a little higher and a little longer and all the solder connections will hopefully be made. So I went for 210C and around 7 minutes. Bad move, the card wouldn't even post after that!

Now even though I'm at peace that the card is properly dead, I have one last problem. I last set the BIOS to enable both the nvidia and intel BUT I set the Nvidia as primary. Now the laptop won't boot, with the card in or out. I just want to get to the BIOS so I can set the Intel as primary and use the laptop.

Am I screwed unless I go to the store and beg them to let me do a quick card swap and change the bios settings? I already tried removing the battery from the mobo for 2 minutes but its still trying to boot with the NV card...

 

All good, cleared CMOS. Thanks guys

 

Good stuff, it was worth a shot.

Have you decided what to replace it with? The top AMD is way cheaper than the 680, but you get to learn a new (and sometimes problematic) driver...

 

I would easily go AMD even though I have used nvidia most of my life. I love supporting the underdog haha- but the main problem is CUDA. I use it all the time when video editing in Premiere.

 

That would clinch it. I switched to NV some years ago when I was building desktops. Had a lot of work to get crossfire working well, then I tried a quad-sli (2 x 295's) with dedicated graphics (9600), and it just worked. Sold me