4870 dead?

[crauko]

My old gaming rig Im letting my brother use has been out of commission for a while. Everything has worked fine and still works fine except the video card.

Just before i stopped useing it the 4870 got extreamly hot like on fire hot smelled like it was burning.
I took it out removed the heat sink cleaned it replaced it with new paste temps have been fine ever since.


however it has tearing and artifacts now even with under clocking it below stock.

Any ideas if its possiable to fix for him or is it a paper weight?



Thanks.

Specs are
E2180 @ 3.0
4gb ddr2 800 ram
radeon 4870 512mb
550w Hyper psu

 

[blade061188]

If you smelled burning, it is likely something burned, sadly.

If your temps are now under control, and you are underclocking, and you are still having gfx problems, you may have a paperweight on your hands.

The heat could easily have fried parts of the board leaving the card damaged.

 

[crauko]

ya thats kinda what im thinking

whats throwing me however is sometimes it works fine..... even ocd a bit (just did it to see if it made it worse) but then after a bit of playing start seeing minor tearing and artifacts.

and for 2 days it worked fine well when i tested it anyway no tearing or atrifacts but i did get a few crashes blue screen with viedo drivers faild to restart or somthing to that nature

 

[blade061188]

If it is a minor part of the board that was damaged, it could lead to intermittent failure like you are describing, but it is certainly a hardware issue. Since you had overheating problems on the GPU I obviously would suspect the GPU as being bad.

However, you could try a complete uninstall, and re-install of the drivers (as opposed to an update) or try a different GPU in your machine (if you have one around) or try your 4870 in someone else's PC to see what happens

 

[crauko]

ya I have planned on completly removing all the drivers and trying a clean install again.....actually removed them last night but got busy and havent had time to try.

However my money is on its trash.

He has an old 8800GS he may just have to deal with that his monitor is only 1280x1024 anyway so doesnt take too much to max that out.


Thanks for info

 

[blade061188]

Sure, Do you need anything else?

If not, please close the thread (by selecting a best answer)

Good luck

 

[crauko]

Best answer selected by crauko.