How-to: Pencil mod your HD 3870!

[DavyGT]

Don't RMA it so fast. Take the cooler and all the stickers off (take pictures of where the stickers go so you can put them back for RMA if needed) and get a bottle of 70% or higher concentration of isopropyl alcohol (if you don't have any, head to your local pharmacy) and some cotton balls. Give the entire card an alcohol rub-down, while being careful to watch components like resistors and capacitors (don't break them off). Just dabbing them with the alcohol-soaked cotton swab is enough. Then dab it dry with more swabs, and let it air-dry for about an hour (alcohol evaporates much faster than water). Then, put everything back on, and try to boot up. It saved my seemingly-dead HIS 3870 a few months back.

If not, RMA that sucker, and better luck next time!

That seemed to have fixed it! It did have have some issues with the artifacturing in ATiTool but that was at stock speed. Strangely, if I underclock it to 533mhz or 688mhz, it's fine but not at stock.
The cleaning gave the card an overclocking comeback- it managed 769mhz on stock cooling, no pencil mod, @75C, though I think the drivers had something to do with it as well (8.6). I will let it artifact test overnight to see if it is stable. Formerly, it struggled to do 700mhz.

 

[DanishDevil]

That seemed to have fixed it! It did have have some issues with the artifacturing in ATiTool but that was at stock speed. Strangely, if I underclock it to 533mhz or 688mhz, it's fine but not at stock.
The cleaning gave the card an overclocking comeback- it managed 769mhz on stock cooling, no pencil mod, @75C, though I think the drivers had something to do with it as well (8.6). I will let it artifact test overnight to see if it is stable. Formerly, it struggled to do 700mhz.

Woohoo! Another card brought back from the grave!

Glad I could help

 

[Dr. Spankenstein]

Glad to have been of help.

 

[8bit_terror]

I have read the thread and no one mentioned anything about the compatability of the bioses with asus platform. My card is ASUS EAH3870 TOP ediotion and there is no much time since i have a lot of problems with it coused by unproper bioses, in that time i used ones dropped by you and the result was that in post system informs me that the power cable is turned off which was not true. Well now I am with ver010.078........here's it http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/10124/Asus.HD3870.512.080121.html
and there are no problems even though i was able to clock th gpu to 864 and the ram to 1260. My question is if there will be problems to overclock my gpu beyond 864 after the MOD and if yes where i could provide myself with the unlocked and proper asus bios from or how could i mod the existing bios to clear this 864 border. Thank you!

 

[thoughtdisorder]

I have read the thread and no one mentioned anything about the compatability of the bioses with asus platform. My card is ASUS EAH3870 TOP ediotion and there is no much time since i have a lot of problems with it coused by unproper bioses, in that time i used ones dropped by you and the result was that in post system informs me that the power cable is turned off which was not true. Well now I am with ver010.078........here's it http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/10124/Asus.HD3870.512.080121.html
and there are no problems even though i was able to clock th gpu to 864 and the ram to 1260. My question is if there will be problems to overclock my gpu beyond 864 after the MOD and if yes where i could provide myself with the unlocked and proper asus bios from or how could i mod the existing bios to clear this 864 border. Thank you!

I got nothing. Bumpity-bump. Anyone?

 

[8bit_terror]

it seems that hd3870 produced by f....ing asus is a completely other stuff i was unable to find where is r1222 resistor, i look everywhere by a scope and nothing..., somebody help?

 

[Random Murderer]

as stated many times by myself on this forum and others, there is no pencil mod(or hard mod for that matter) for asus cards until the specs for their proprietary chips get released. sorry. buy a reference card next time.

 

[Random Murderer]

sorry about that. i had a bad day at work.

i realize you probably did not sit and read all 38 pages of this thread.
the asus cards use proprietary parts that have yet to be figured out by anyone other than asus techs, so until asus decides to release the specs, we're shit outta luck. it upsets me, because i love asus. i can tell you which chip is the pwm but not which pin is the feedback pin(the one needed for a pencil or hard mod), since that i do not know. if you're up to it, you can just randomly shade resistors around the pwm until the desirable effect happens, but you may kill your card in the process. then again, you may figure out which pin is the feedback pin and be a hero.

 

[8bit_terror]

hehe it will be funny doing it as drawing on sheet of paper but won't risk it for now and i think that 860/1260 is reasonable speeds for now, thank you

 

[8bit_terror]

...just want to mention that my previous card was ASUS EAH3850 OC GEAR and with this card I was able to play CRYSIS with approximately 25-32 fps using 2xAA 1280:1024 and everything on HIGH details, my current card as I said before is ASUS EAH3870 TOP and with this s...t the same game is worst playable at 1024:768 everything on high without AA,,,,,,,,,,IS THERE SOMEONE WHO COULD GIVE ME SOME EXPLAINATION FOR THIS, PLEASE????????????????????????????????????????????????????

 

[Dr. Spankenstein]

A correctly done pencil-mod can get you up to 1.6V, if you want. I get over 1GHz core with that voltage. 100% fan on stock cooler and temps hover around 70c.

Worth it...you betcha!

 

[Dr. Spankenstein]

The softer pencils (4h) you might have to get at an art supply or drafting store. Softer just makes it a bit easier to lay down a good, even amount of graphite.

There is always the pencil-mod where you "create" a trace between two pads by roughing the surface of the PCB then you pencil the new trace you made. Seems better for higher volts, but a bit figgity to get accurate voltages. Upside is that is seems less prone to losing it's grip. The resistor shading needs to be protected (so that the graphite doesn't fall/blow off) or re-applied frequently.

That's why I broke out the soldeing iron. BOOF! Done.

 

[Dr. Spankenstein]

Here is the "alternate" pencil-mod marked in yellow.

This is the hard mod.

 

[Random Murderer]

cheese's chrisp @ hardmod

lol, "cheese's chrisp"

 

[Random Murderer]

potenziometer ?

trimmer, aka trimpot, a very accurate, multi-turn potentiometer in a small package.

 

[Dr. Spankenstein]

Zero resistance would be the same as bridging the connection=bad for card. Fun while it lasted (1 min, maybe.) and uber-xtreme, but not very practical.

Still wanting to do this? You're in the right place...

 

[Dr. Spankenstein]

Firstly, from your max 843 to my max 1020 is more than 100mhz (177 to be exact.)

Stock reference cooler with fan @ 100%=cool, loud and 75C (70C is for my 24/7 setting of 970core) 1.6V.
Ambients are almost always around 23C.

My max before mod was the same or less than yours.

I'm not sure why your temps are such with water...

 

[sneekypeet]

Firstly, from your max 843 to my max 1020 is more than 100mhz (177 to be exact.)

Stock reference cooler with fan @ 100%=cool, loud and 75C (70C is for my 24/7 setting of 970core) 1.6V.
Ambients are almost always around 23C.

My max before mod was the same or less than yours.

I'm not sure why your temps are such with water...

I have to agree....65*C load on water?...something isnt right. Irealize this isnt way overclockd or overvolted, but... http://forums.techpowerup.com/showpost.php?p=559113&postcount=1

I had my card pencil modded to 1.55V at one point with the stock cooler at about 75% and was keeping your water temp.

I really dont think overvolting my card would have put an extra 25*C into my loop.

 

[sneekypeet]

I had it on the loop for a bit, but it brought my CPU up 4* under load, so I ended up going back to air to finish the mod. I had 1.45V to the core and the card maxed @50*C

 

[JrRacinFan]

Thanks RM. I am going to try this soon guys so wish me luck. Speaking of which, if I up the volts via bios does it truly change it? Also, is a DMM really needed for this? I don't have one.

 

[dark2099]

I would say a DMM is a good idea, don't wanna push that many volts and not know it. Changing the volts through BIOS is do able on some cards I think, but you would need a DMM to be 100% sure. That IceQ cooler should be able to keep the temps down better than the stock coolers.

 

[JrRacinFan]

Thanks for the information mono & dark.

 

[sneekypeet]

no it doesn't change, I tried many times, DMM is the only way to measure, and the only way to be sure not sure if it has a voltage sensor in it, but as far as I know it doesn't

Bios voltage will change if the PCB has the archetecture to allow it...thats why w1zzard started the tread on it!

 

[JrRacinFan]

Hmmm so does the ICEq3 Turbo allow it then?

 

[sneekypeet]

Hmmm so does the ICEq3 Turbo allow it then?

you need to verify the position of a resister on the PCB....looking for the thread now.

EDIT: http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=53220