I have a Hercules 3D Prophet DDR-DVI GeForce 256 card. Now, today when a friend of mine was playing Team Fortress Classic, the colors got all funky, and the computer locked up. I opened up the computer to find that the cooling fan on top of the heat spreader had stopped working. I turned the computer on, and it posted the video card, posted everything and went through normal boot procedures until it got to Windows. Now, Windows loaded, but the video was like in Safe Mode. It was in 16 colors at 640x480, with a gray background instead of the normal blue. Atleast it booted, right? It gave some warning window that the driver controlling the way graphics are displayed is damaged, which is not the case. Anyway, I set the properties to HIgh Color 16-bit, and it rebooted. This time, however, right before it got into Windows, the screen would just get static like and flash white dots and lines. So, I went and got a new chipset cooling kit, which had a heatsink with fan attachment, but the holes for it do not line up with any holes on the card. After taking the stock heat spreader and fan off, the thermal paste used was all dried and cracked, real bad looking. Before using any of the tape or glue that came with the kit, I just turned the computer on with my hand physically holding the HSF onto the chip (very strongly). The computer booted up, and this time it worked just fine in high color mode. So, what I did was applied a layer of the thermal paste and tried twist tying the HSF on there. But, that did not work, as it seems the middle of the GPU is lower then the rest of the chip, so the middle of the chip is not in contact with the HSF. This causes extreme heat buildup, and the reverse side of the card right under where the GPU is gets EXTREMELY HOT! I'm talking probably in excess of 200°F (as in it will burn if I leave my finger on for too long). I tried applying a thicker layer of thermal paste, but that did not work. Then, I tried the thermal tape. I pressed down real hard and held it down tight. Now, this time everything seemes to work fine. I booted up, ran 3DMark2001, then 3DMark2000. In 2001, the Matrix demo got a little iffy with bright colors being where they shouldn't. But, it corrected itself and the hole thing ran and I got like 1996 marks. However, to stress the system to make sure it remains stable, I cranked the resoution on 200 up to 1600x1200x16 bit, and in the middle of the helicopter demo at high quality, the colors got all funky and the system locked up. Now, when the computer tries booting, it will boot to Windows with the faulty driver error, but when I try to set up the High Color depth, it gets the static, flashing dot screen before Windows boots. All throughout the 3DMark testing, the backside of the card stayed extremely hot.
Long explaination, but I need help. Has anyone had a similar problem, and what was the fix? Is my card trashed, or is it salvageable? Thanks for any input anyone can give.
"We put the <i>fun</i> back into fundamentalist dogma!"
Long explaination, but I need help. Has anyone had a similar problem, and what was the fix? Is my card trashed, or is it salvageable? Thanks for any input anyone can give.
"We put the <i>fun</i> back into fundamentalist dogma!"
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