Gigabite FX5600XT with Evercons

[trodas]

My sis got this board early on spring 2006, as attempt to make the Sims2 on her machine run a bit faster over Radeon 9000. The card history is long, but to make long story short, it served me as backup card well, when I killed my FX5700Ultra, and it even show great O/C potencial (under watercooling), but novadays I did not have any use for it, and sis like it.

However I noticed that in extra stresfull situations (like in 64k intros fr-019: poem to a horse there http://farb-rausch.de/ or Life Index (curiously not present in download section, but you can grab it there: http://ax2.old-cans.com/life_index.zip) that the image like to freeze and then re-appear (no change to music or intro run) later. This indicate that the ram of core of GFX card has a problem. Either overheating core, or undervolted ran on load on load. Quick test (decreasing O/C of just core to stock) proved it is the second case (ram problems), and quick look at the card shoved Evercon caps.

Now I already suggested them to be added to the bad caps brand, based on my experience with JetWay N2PAP Ultra board. So when I was them, I know what went wrong.

There are five 1500uF 6.3V Evercon caps. There are also a Sanyo 510uF 4V Os-con cap too, but only one. I heard that these are excelent, so no change. There are also 2pcs of SMD 100uF 16V caps too. Tough I planed I recap the Vcore cap by a 560uF Pannasonic FM one, I quickly dropped that idea.

Gigabite 5600XT
----------------------
5x 1500uF 6.3V d10 Samxon GC
1x 1000uF 6.3V d8 Samxon GC (later added)
2x 100uF ??? (possibly later)

Now what we all waiting for - the results.

The Gigabite 5600XT card is what XT mark in nVidia. Pure crap. (probably to confuse ATI customers and anger ATI, where XT or XTX models are the best ones) The card come with default 235/400Mhz clocks. That is unbeliably low, considering even GF2 cards are used to have 250Mhz core clocks... With watercooling I manage it to unbeliable 375/535Mhz. Now the question is, what happen on passive only cooling (Zalman ZM80-HP) in fanless case, yet with exchanged caps from Evercon ones to Samxon GC ones.

Why Samxons? Because Pannasonic FM ones are too big. They won't fit under the cooler, even the Samxons are very close. Curiously Samxons sizes are par to par with Rubycon or Nichicon cap sizes, however these Evercon ones are even 3mm lower that the Samxons! That just increase my doubts in them...

There is another reason for it, I just recapped the whole sis mainboard with Samxons and gained excelent results, but that is explained detaily in other thread (about the JetWay V266B recap) already.

Anyway, the clock results. First at all, core has to get into 355Mhz to be stable - yet this is still good, considering that the card is not watercooled anymore like it was:
http://ax2.old-cans.com/s.php?p=wc&id=30&c=8&d=1&v=v2
(illustration pic, DangerDen Maze4 GPU block on FX5200)

Now the rams, well, they started crapping out a very little on 565Mhz now!
That is pure 30Mhz increase, just for caps exchange. Well, for stable run i backed down to 550Mhz just to be sure, but then again - the demos won't stop anymore like they used to do before and 550Mhz is still a 15Mhz increase
(and a insane overclock from original 400Mhz...!)

Very very very good, if you ask me

Of course, the card is oldie crap and nothing help it, but... The overclock from 235/400 to 355/550 is impressive. Is it not?
Any mainly - stable!


Yet now there is continuation of the story. The cap's echange was done into beginning of June 2006, however six months ago the sis computer is start making problems again. 15. December 2006 it freeze when my stepbro wanted to use it for copying something from DVD. His old home PC that is home now is not his main PC that he have on college and it not have a DVD rom. After few more days (we are clueless what can happen, prime CPU/ram tests are stable, so...) the crashing get worser. Probably because my sis start like one 3D game and that is of course not good for bad cap on GFX card... Witch bad cap? Oh, well, the one I did not exhange. The solid polymer Sanyo Os-con one!
I tried first decrease the overclock to stock, and when it then pass the prime CPU and ram tests (w/o that it crash even in 2D!) then I get suspicious and by "gut feeling" I replaced the Oscon 510uF 4V for Samxon GC 1000uF 6.3V. After that exchange I bumped the clocks back to where they are and no more crashing. I tried to push the core 10Mhz more to 365 and still no bug in display even in 3D intros If I had the card on watercooling it would be interesting to know, if it can get overclclock not over 375Mhz for the core - maybe 380Mhz?
Also very interesting bug in second to last scene in intro Life Index are gone. And I was all the time under the impression that it was because I used the beta Detonators (45.28, see there why http://doublescan.wz.cz/g.php?p=detonators&d=1&v=v2 ) witch I have to mod myself to make them work on 5600XT... Or because it was the card that it is not making some advance effect or so - but I never tough to this day that it was a overclocking bug Damn, I tested too few times!

But this all means that the sometimes used old Oscons aren't good caps at all. Their perameters quickly gone very bad and even being replaced by "normal" Samxon GC make the cards/mainbaord operate better! Now that is a pretty shocking to me, as BIG fan on solid polymer caps. Almost breathtaking. Looks like we have to take in account this sometimes mentioned pretty low life expectancy of 1000h as fact and probably the lifetime did not extend twice per each 10°C down as with electrolytes...

Despite all claims I did not consider Sanyo Os-con caps as good ones anymore. The card was not used much over the years it was more in the cupboard that in PC. Hence the new Gigabite marketing claims about "all only solid polymer caps used on mobos" ( http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/News/Motherboard/News_List.aspx?NewsID=1308# ) I did not welcome that much. My card has solid polymer cap. My card is used to crash with it in 2D...

Anyway, it still looks that it will be need to exchange the last two SMD 100uF electrolyte caps, as sis reported that windows right after start has sometimes fu*ked up display and need restart to fix, so I get overclock back from 365/550 to 355/550 and problems are gone. Yet the monitor DPMS power off after specified time did not working reliably, so I looking where to get such caps. I think should check if 6.3V ones are enough, because they probably aren't need to be 16V ones. And there are even ceramics (yep, even the polymers failed me, I'm still ceramics fan!) caps size 1210 and 100uF / 6.3V capacity now, produced by Taiyo Yuden
JMK325F107ZM-T

 

[tkpenalty]

My sis got this board early on spring 2006, as attempt to make the Sims2 on her machine run a bit faster over Radeon 9000. The card history is long, but to make long story short, it served me as backup card well, when I killed my FX5700Ultra, and it even show great O/C potencial (under watercooling), but novadays I did not have any use for it, and sis like it.

However I noticed that in extra stresfull situations (like in 64k intros fr-019: poem to a horse there http://farb-rausch.de/ or Life Index (curiously not present in download section, but you can grab it there: http://ax2.old-cans.com/life_index.zip) that the image like to freeze and then re-appear (no change to music or intro run) later. This indicate that the ram of core of GFX card has a problem. Either overheating core, or undervolted ran on load on load. Quick test (decreasing O/C of just core to stock) proved it is the second case (ram problems), and quick look at the card shoved Evercon caps.

Now I already suggested them to be added to the bad caps brand, based on my experience with JetWay N2PAP Ultra board. So when I was them, I know what went wrong.

There are five 1500uF 6.3V Evercon caps. There are also a Sanyo 510uF 4V Os-con cap too, but only one. I heard that these are excelent, so no change. There are also 2pcs of SMD 100uF 16V caps too. Tough I planed I recap the Vcore cap by a 560uF Pannasonic FM one, I quickly dropped that idea.

Gigabite 5600XT
----------------------
5x 1500uF 6.3V d10 Samxon GC
1x 1000uF 6.3V d8 Samxon GC (later added)
2x 100uF ??? (possibly later)

Now what we all waiting for - the results.

The Gigabite 5600XT card is what XT mark in nVidia. Pure crap. (probably to confuse ATI customers and anger ATI, where XT or XTX models are the best ones) The card come with default 235/400Mhz clocks. That is unbeliably low, considering even GF2 cards are used to have 250Mhz core clocks... With watercooling I manage it to unbeliable 375/535Mhz. Now the question is, what happen on passive only cooling (Zalman ZM80-HP) in fanless case, yet with exchanged caps from Evercon ones to Samxon GC ones.

Why Samxons? Because Pannasonic FM ones are too big. They won't fit under the cooler, even the Samxons are very close. Curiously Samxons sizes are par to par with Rubycon or Nichicon cap sizes, however these Evercon ones are even 3mm lower that the Samxons! That just increase my doubts in them...

There is another reason for it, I just recapped the whole sis mainboard with Samxons and gained excelent results, but that is explained detaily in other thread (about the JetWay V266B recap) already.

Anyway, the clock results. First at all, core has to get into 355Mhz to be stable - yet this is still good, considering that the card is not watercooled anymore like it was:
http://ax2.old-cans.com/s.php?p=wc&id=30&c=8&d=1&v=v2
(illustration pic, DangerDen Maze4 GPU block on FX5200)

Now the rams, well, they started crapping out a very little on 565Mhz now!
That is pure 30Mhz increase, just for caps exchange. Well, for stable run i backed down to 550Mhz just to be sure, but then again - the demos won't stop anymore like they used to do before and 550Mhz is still a 15Mhz increase
(and a insane overclock from original 400Mhz...!)

Very very very good, if you ask me

Of course, the card is oldie crap and nothing help it, but... The overclock from 235/400 to 355/550 is impressive. Is it not?
Any mainly - stable!


Yet now there is continuation of the story. The cap's echange was done into beginning of June 2006, however six months ago the sis computer is start making problems again. 15. December 2006 it freeze when my stepbro wanted to use it for copying something from DVD. His old home PC that is home now is not his main PC that he have on college and it not have a DVD rom. After few more days (we are clueless what can happen, prime CPU/ram tests are stable, so...) the crashing get worser. Probably because my sis start like one 3D game and that is of course not good for bad cap on GFX card... Witch bad cap? Oh, well, the one I did not exhange. The solid polymer Sanyo Os-con one!
I tried first decrease the overclock to stock, and when it then pass the prime CPU and ram tests (w/o that it crash even in 2D!) then I get suspicious and by "gut feeling" I replaced the Oscon 510uF 4V for Samxon GC 1000uF 6.3V. After that exchange I bumped the clocks back to where they are and no more crashing. I tried to push the core 10Mhz more to 365 and still no bug in display even in 3D intros If I had the card on watercooling it would be interesting to know, if it can get overclclock not over 375Mhz for the core - maybe 380Mhz?
Also very interesting bug in second to last scene in intro Life Index are gone. And I was all the time under the impression that it was because I used the beta Detonators (45.28, see there why http://trodas.wz.cz/g.php?p=detonators&d=1&v=v2 ) witch I have to mod myself to make them work on 5600XT... Or because it was the card that it is not making some advance effect or so - but I never tough to this day that it was a overclocking bug Damn, I tested too few times!

But this all means that the sometimes used old Oscons aren't good caps at all. Their perameters quickly gone very bad and even being replaced by "normal" Samxon GC make the cards/mainbaord operate better! Now that is a pretty shocking to me, as BIG fan on solid polymer caps. Almost breathtaking. Looks like we have to take in account this sometimes mentioned pretty low life expectancy of 1000h as fact and probably the lifetime did not extend twice per each 10°C down as with electrolytes...

Despite all claims I did not consider Sanyo Os-con caps as good ones anymore. The card was not used much over the years it was more in the cupboard that in PC. Hence the new Gigabite marketing claims about "all only solid polymer caps used on mobos" ( http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/News/Motherboard/News_List.aspx?NewsID=1308# ) I did not welcome that much. My card has solid polymer cap. My card is used to crash with it in 2D...

Anyway, it still looks that it will be need to exchange the last two SMD 100uF electrolyte caps, as sis reported that windows right after start has sometimes fu*ked up display and need restart to fix, so I get overclock back from 365/550 to 355/550 and problems are gone. Yet the monitor DPMS power off after specified time did not working reliably, so I looking where to get such caps. I think should check if 6.3V ones are enough, because they probably aren't need to be 16V ones. And there are even ceramics (yep, even the polymers failed me, I'm still ceramics fan!) caps size 1210 and 100uF / 6.3V capacity now, produced by Taiyo Yuden
JMK325F107ZM-T

For the memory, please post the proper clocks. My 9550 runs at 510/280 with a stock core cooler, more than 50% OC so yeh... no offense but the FX series totally sucked.

 

[trodas]

Well, I posting clocks what I setting into the control pannel. If you want the memory clocks get real, then make these marketing liars drop their DDR fantasy clocks, I will gladly accept it then
(point for consideration, DDR = 2x clock, DDR2 = 4x clock, DDR3 = 8x clock ...!)

(new possible overclock from 2014 with polymers and added ceramic caps)

And yea, XT cards suxx badly. However that was not the point of the thread. The point was, that good caps = good overclock and surprisingly even the praised Sanyon Os-con polymers did suxx in real test and their lifetime is at least questionable.
That was the main problem discovery there.

No point of saying that the card suxx. I know it already for a long time


PS. you REALLY had to quote my WHOLE post?!

 

[trodas]

And now it is time to get back to this card to test one suggestion - stacking ceramic caps!

First at all, I replaced every caps for a top-spec Nichicon ones:

Gigabyte FX5600XT
----------------------
1x 1800uF 4V Nichicon CK SMD (d10) (5600XT) PCK0G182MCO1GS
3x 1500uF 2.5V Nichicon LE (d10) (5600XT) PLE0E152MDO1
2x 1200uF 4V Nichicon R5 (d10) (5600XT) RR50G122MDN1
2x 1800uF 6.3V Nichicon LG (d10) (5600XT) LG0J182MDO1
2x 180uF 6.3V Nichicon CG (d5) SMD (5600XT) PCG0J181MCO1GS
17x 10uF 6.3V Murata SMD 0805 (5600XT) GRM21BR70J106KE76L

...and then I teied something, that I never did before. And that is "stacking" the ceramic caps. The thing is, that todays are made caps at size 0805 (that means they are 2mm long and 1.25mm wide!) even at 10uF specs for 6.3V (beware of DC bias, at 6.3V the cap has -60% of his capacity, it holt it's specs up to around 2V, on 2.5V it is like -10% capacity, so...) and therefore I try support overclock of this card by this means
From the top side of the card, it was easy. Just push the little cap near the existing one, holt it by small stick and solder quick and carefully from one side (it is 2 x 1.25mm big!) and then from other side and it is done:

Unfortunately from the bottom PCB side, there are troubles. There are in very close proximity, where the side-stacked ceramic cap ended up, soldering points to some PCB layers. Not that will lead to instantly soldering the cap to them also, witch in the end could kill the card, or at very least to make it not working well.
At first I got an idea, that I could add there just for the soldering some pad, that then I will remove after the soldering and I have guaranted that there is air space between the added cap and the soldering point(s). However upon second tough, when I will remove the pad, then it could damage (rip off) the original PCB and cap from it as well... Also when it get bendt back to the PCB by some manipulation, then it create instant card crash... So that was not a good idea.
Second idea looked at first as a very bold move - just place the cap on the top of existing and solder it to it. Hmmm. First problem is, that the stick is notably thickier that the caps lenght are... :lol: Yea, that is fixable Second problem is breath, because even deeper inhale or exhale move the cap and mostly knock it out of the bottom one...

But after a while trying I made it and the caps are added - stacked:

And now the best thing - the card is still working! :lol: I'm amazed by it myself...

 

[micropage7]

And now it is time to get back to this card to test one suggestion - stacking ceramic caps!

First at all, I replaced every caps for a top-spec Nichicon ones:

Gigabyte FX5600XT
----------------------
1x 1800uF 4V Nichicon CK SMD (d10) (5600XT) PCK0G182MCO1GS
3x 1500uF 2.5V Nichicon LE (d10) (5600XT) PLE0E152MDO1
2x 1200uF 4V Nichicon R5 (d10) (5600XT) RR50G122MDN1
2x 1800uF 6.3V Nichicon LG (d10) (5600XT) LG0J182MDO1
2x 180uF 6.3V Nichicon CG (d5) SMD (5600XT) PCG0J181MCO1GS
17x 10uF 6.3V Murata SMD 0805 (5600XT) GRM21BR70J106KE76L

...and then I teied something, that I never did before. And that is "stacking" the ceramic caps. The thing is, that todays are made caps at size 0805 (that means they are 2mm long and 1.25mm wide!) even at 10uF specs for 6.3V (beware of DC bias, at 6.3V the cap has -60% of his capacity, it holt it's specs up to around 2V, on 2.5V it is like -10% capacity, so...) and therefore I try support overclock of this card by this means
From the top side of the card, it was easy. Just push the little cap near the existing one, holt it by small stick and solder quick and carefully from one side (it is 2 x 1.25mm big!) and then from other side and it is done:

Unfortunately from the bottom PCB side, there are troubles. There are in very close proximity, where the side-stacked ceramic cap ended up, soldering points to some PCB layers. Not that will lead to instantly soldering the cap to them also, witch in the end could kill the card, or at very least to make it not working well.
At first I got an idea, that I could add there just for the soldering some pad, that then I will remove after the soldering and I have guaranted that there is air space between the added cap and the soldering point(s). However upon second tough, when I will remove the pad, then it could damage (rip off) the original PCB and cap from it as well... Also when it get bendt back to the PCB by some manipulation, then it create instant card crash... So that was not a good idea.
Second idea looked at first as a very bold move - just place the cap on the top of existing and solder it to it. Hmmm. First problem is, that the stick is notably thickier that the caps lenght are... :lol: Yea, that is fixable Second problem is breath, because even deeper inhale or exhale move the cap and mostly knock it out of the bottom one...

But after a while trying I made it and the caps are added - stacked:

And now the best thing - the card is still working! :lol: I'm amazed by it myself...

you have great skill on that, umm why dont you replace it with single but larger than double-ing it

 

[Bo$$]

You are a soldering god in my eyes. I love your repair logs!

 

[Frick]

Oh gods you don't know when to call it quits do you.

 

[trodas]

micropage7 -

you have great skill on that, umm why dont you replace it with single but larger than double-ing it

Thank you! I tried my best... and not failed
And the problem is, that the biggest capacitance that they are produce at 0805 size with 6.3V (that give acceptable DC bias, so cannot get much lower there) are 10uF. So that is the biggest I could get, therefore the only one possibility to do it better, would be to desolder the original, put a 10uF one there and then add another one.

But I figured out that that would be too much. I already added 17 ceramic caps (!) in total and it was my FIRST stacting attempt ever. So... I was unsure, how it will go and that is why I just did not get to the extreme mod


Bo$$ - thank you very much! Trying my best...


Frick - nah, you are right. I never quit on my HW. When I can, I improve 10 years from now, they might come with 100uF SMD ceramic caps and I might be thinking about getting 5MHz higher O/C, so you can imagine what will happen then

 

[trodas]

Fitting Accelero Mono Plus cooler on Gigabyte FX5600XT card is possible - you just have to tweak the bottom heatsink holder a "bit":

Original looks this way: http://www.dvhardware.net/news/2011/arctic_accelero_mono_plus_2.jpg

...and then it fit:

Next thing - glue the heatsink on this mosfet:


...and hope for even higher overclock that was before