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When baking doesn't work

zero2dash

Supreme [H]ardness
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Oct 23, 2007
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Just wanted to share my gpu baking experience...try to make this fairly short and sweet.

Found a used "dead" 260 here on the forums a few weeks ago; actually by now it's probably been almost a month. Figured a baking would fix the card. Was told the card was a folder bought second hand, would crash while folding. Fan would spin up ok, so I knew it wasn't a dead "bricked" dead card.

Get the card, find out it was a refurb EVGA 260 216 (via the model#). Instantly take it apart, clean the gunk, toss it in the oven. 385 degrees, 10 min. Wait 1hr, apply AS5, hook up, try Furmark. Get various full color crash screens (pink, brown, black). Full power down required. Take card out, take apart. 400 for 10 min. Wait 1hr, more AS5, hook up, Furmark again. More pink/brown/black etc. Take a few days break.

Come back, try bios flash. Notice the volts are low in NiBiTor for the stock bios the card comes with compared to my bought new 260s (have 1 stock, 1 SC model). This "dead" card was already flashed to SC clocks, BTW. Fart around with new flash, have a few trials/errors, finally figure it out and get a perfect flash, SC clocks, raised juice for the Extra/3D VID, figure that will solve the crash problem. Wrong. More pink/brown/black.

I did notice the card seemed to run moderately kinda OK with fan @ 100% so I wonder if it's a heat issue.

FF (fast forward) to earlier tonight. Just bought some OCZ Freeze last week, decide I'm going to scrap the garbage TIM pads, grind down the spacers (so that TIM pads are not necessary and regular compound can be used for the ram and everything else), apply Freeze to the gpu core + all the sinks and see if that fixes my problem. Before doing so - why not throw it in the oven a 3rd time. 385, 12min. Cool down, apply the Freeze, hook up etc.

Basically at this point I've also ran memtestg80 (from PG), if I run the fan 100% I get less errors, but I do get errors. With the ram @ SC (1350mhz), if I try to fold on the card, I get NANs, f@h quits, retries, and rinses/repeats. If I downclock the ram to 1000, it does not NAN. So then I wonder....maybe the ram is shit, but maybe it'll run at 1000. I use Precision, downclock ram to 1000, try Furmark again. Granted, it goes above 70c for the first time without the pink/brown/black screen crash, but not much higher...I think it high 75/76c then it went pink on me.

Long story short - no amount of baking is saving this card. It's clear to me there's bad memory on this card, baking won't fix that. No warranty, it's not going to get replaced. Granted I didn't spend much on the card, that's the only reason I gave baking a shot. (cost me $30, I figured why not give it a shot)

Just a friendly fellow [H]orde member thought though to keep in mind guys....baking doesn't always fix 'em. :( Just wanted to share my experience, that's all.

Oh well, at least it's another EVGA card put out of it's misery. Haha :p
 
Well, sometimes it just doesn't work. It's nice when you can fix a card by baking it, but of course there's no guarantees.
 
I always downclocked my RAM and Core on my GPUs when i folded on them. It hurts the PPD a lil bit but it saves heat and electricity, and was more than made up for with a slight shader OC.
 
Kinda in the same boat. I got a 285 back from an RMA for a 280, so that was cool. But it was artifacing and crashing out of the box. I can't send it back either, because it's a BFG card and it was registered to Dookey since I bought it off him, so I didn't want to put him through the RMA process for me again.

So I just tried baking it the other night @ 285 F for 10 mins. It seems to have stopped artifacting after that, but the screen flickers/freezes after playing a game for about 15 mins and then gets more frequent while playing. So I think it might be a temp related issue now, even though it's staying in the mid 70s. I haven't tried downclocking it yet. It's an OC edition card so I'll try backing down the clocks to stock speeds first.

Thanks for posting this, I like to see what other people try with their dead cards. I might try flashing it to a stock 285 too. I've never tried flashing a card before.
 
So my obligatory Bake It statement didnt work this time.....

/waves farewell to another card, biting the dust.
 
Zero2dash, You want to sell your broke 260??
 
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