Bought in a batch, seller note was simply faulty.
Basic Checks
- Basic appearance very good, clean, a nice example. Passive cooling, decent desktop card.
- Resistances and voltages appear normal.
- Starts into windows, mild artefacting noticed (occasional speckles, rather than horizontal lines or vertical bars)
- Crashed to blank screen in Windows 10, presumably on driver load. However after restart and long pause, the card appear functional without artefacts and was able to be stress tested a bit – so likely unreliable.
- MATS memory test passed.
- GPU GK208-203-B1
- Memory 2 x Samsung K4G80325FB-HC03
Next Steps
- The card appears to be working, with questionable reliability.
- I repasted the card, as the old paste was dry / hard, but the passive cooling doen’t appear to be perfectly level (would imagine overheating has occured at some stage on this card).
- Further testing is recommended, as at first I thought this card had GPU reliability issues (see below).
Longer term (if further problems are detected)
- Being unable to load drivers, passing a memory and some artefacting makes me suspect that the GPU needs either reflowing or possibly replacement. The thermal paste was hard / dry, with only passive cooling, it’s possible that the GPU might have sustained light heat related damage e.g. perhaps some solder joints under the GPU have become unreliable.
- Because this is fundamentally a low end card, I don’t suspect any BIOS moding or overclocking. There are little in the way of power stages.
- This card is may make a good test candidate for practising my BGA GPU reflow using my new PCB PID preheater. If this works (even temporarily) or not, then I could consider replacing the GPU, as new ones of this type are relatively inexpensive. In the worst case, if I completely wreck the card in the process then it’s also not a huge loss.
- If fixed, it is quite a nice example of the GT 710, as it has GDDR5 memory and a box, so would likely sell.
Further Testing
- When starting from fresh (no correct driver), the mild artefacts and blank screens reocurred.
- Once the correct driver has already been setup and loaded the card appears to work correctly. Passed FurMark stress test.