7970m revived via reballing!

Hey guys

some of you may remember me from a couple of weeks ago when I reported that my 7970m was dead.

Well today I got it reballed and lo and behold, it is working now. From the few games I tested, performance seems to be as good as ever.

However, I noticed max temps had reached 102C. That has me troubled now. Could this be a side-efffect of the reballing process or is this just down to the heatsink/fan?
I notice that the heatsink right next to the fan isn't seated properly. Is it ok if I just tape it down with scotch tape? Or should I attempt to bend it back in position?
Also, any tips of how to allign the heatsinks/fan for best results.
Tips on thermal paste application would also be beneficial! =)

 

Congrats, that helps extend the life of the computer for sure.

Have you tried reapplying the thermal compound for the GPU, that should help drop it down. We always recommend IC Diamond and their suggested way of application http://www.innovationcooling.com/application.html.

Which heatsink next to the fan are you referring to, can you include a pic?

 

Ok I've attached a file that shows the heatsink issue.

I have taped it down with scotch tape for now, but I do not see any drastic improvements in temps.

Another issue, I was just trying out cod4 multiplayer, and I noticed significant stuttering every 5 seconds or so. The game is running at 250 fps smooth and suddenly halts completely before returning to 250.
I tried tomb raider. The benchmarks show the same average fps as before, but I notice the minimum fps is 1.4 (5.4 on a second rerun). This again points to a stutter. Gameplay wise, I do not detect any stutter during my brief run(ultimate settings).

While temps are pretty high during tomb raider (102C), they barely touch 80C during cod4, which makes this all the more baffling.

What could be the problem here?

 

it certainly looks like its not lining up properly. if a reapplication of the paste does not work then my suggestion (just to be 100% certain its not the heatsink) would be to just replace the heatsink entirely with one from the newer model sager (assuming you have an older model).

other then that check to make sure the contact surface has no irregularities (warped, pitted, scratched, etc.)

 

Thermal paste issue.
Get yourself some ICd7 and be done with this problem.

Good luck.

 

Ok today got the whole heatsink/fan taken apart and cleaned up. I bent the heatsink a little bit so it would not protrude like it is in the picture above.

Thermal paste was cleaned up and reapplied (not the fancy type, regular 50c paste from china).

Upon benchmarking Tomb Raider a few times, temps did not rise over 90C, which is good, since previously I was looking at 100+.

The only thing bothering me is the stutter. While Tomb Raider is averaging 34 Fps on Ultimate settings as it should, minimum FPS is around 1 or 5, which is not ok. I tried playing it for a bit and did not face anything too troubling.
However, when I play COD4, the game stutters ever 2-3 secs or so before returning to 250fps.

My worst fear is that this stutter is due to he reballing. However, I also notice that my AMD drivers were installed with the device disabled (I did this before the reballing because otherwise windows would not boot). As a result (or totally unrelated), the CCC won't open and the driver seems to have some problems. I hope a fresh install fixes this. Might as well reinstall windows while I'm at it. And then again, might as well install Windows 10 to prepare for that dx12 goodness while I'm at THAT.

 

Yeah you could always use DDU to remove the drivers in safe mode and then reinstall the drivers.
I doubt the card is cactus as oven baking should either bring it back to life or won't work its one or the other.
Good luck with windows install and let us know how you go.

Good luck.

 

Alright, I launched CoD4 and in the video settings enabled Dual GPU. The stutter was gone!
I guess I can now definitely pin this problem down to the Drivers and breath easy while I install Windows 10.

Moving on, I download and install the windows 10 technical preview. Now that I have it installed, I am faced with a problem I did not exactly anticipate....Drivers, or more correctly, lack of drivers.

I have updated the drivers from the device manager (There is 1 PCI device for which no drivers are found).

The only drivers I updated was the 7970m and the HD4000 (In this order, Yes I know it is the wrong order but I could not tell which device was which prior to updating these).

Anyone who has installed windows 10 mind sharing which drivers they have installed and from where?

 

What unknown devices do you have? Have you tried the windows 8 drivers for anything missing?

 

that unknown pci device could be the card reader or something. I am not too annoyed by it to be honest (will probably look into it when everything else is sorted out).

The display driver was acting up(gpu under utilization), so I uninstalled the amd drivers from that windows update installed, and installed the latest 15.7 that recently launched. Things seem to have returned to normal.

One thing I noticed though. The GPU seems to be always on now. Before when running hwinfo64, everything would go down to 0 (zero) when on desktop. Now the GPU always seems to be on, albeit at lower clocks. Any tips on how to fix this?

Also, I will monitor temps for a few days in order to gauge exactly how far they are maxing out. Will then attempt to tweak it to get better temps (and avoid another meltdown lol).

 

Sorry, what notebook is this in? Also have you installed MSI AB or something to monitor the GPU so you can see what is happening when the stutter occurs?

 

The notebook is a p170em.

The stutters have been completely eliminated after a fresh driver installation.

My only concern now will be the temps (which to be honest were high even before the card died).

These last few days I have been unable to play around too much with it, but hopefully I'll get around to it and try to get in a good spot (repasting, foil tape mod etc)

 

Let us know your results, if they are really bad it could be the heatpipes failing.

 

Ahh the good'ol tape mod

Good luck