They were in plain white boxes, stated as refurbished (by ATI, I believe they said). The company was in Glasgow I believe, but we can't find them now!! I think it might be this seller on eBay... but not certain. This seller had a Dutch buy it now auction that ended this morning with 8 cards.... so they obviously have lots!!
My nvidia cards have had square ram on them. example clearly just repurposed memory, and not a gpu sized chip.
...Lol, so maybe they were originally nVidia boards, which ATI butchered to plonk on their own bit's? :smt043
well il let u no how i get on as i am contacting them this week as i want thae cards changed any way as they seem to all be going wrong, one buy one, i have 16 in total and i have 9 that have gone wrong so far,
can anyone make out that serial number on the one chip, in the high res photo? well lets see..made in china.....yea, thats bout sums it up
The FX5200 gpu is not even that small. The Videocard makers, usually use samsung, or hynix, for memory.
Erm, guys, can't you read? That chip says "GeForce FX GO 5200", i.e. it's supposed to be for a laptop graphics board, which makes even LESS sense! This is certainly the dodgiest PC hardware I have ever seen! XD
Quite, Zilog! The Go range is indeed for laptops! Interesting quirks... one says 32M the other says 64M. The RAM doesn't appear to be running at the correct speed for a 9700 pro. And yeah... 9700 pro with heatsinks? The company was in Scotland, not Glasgow, though. They have been contacted, and said they would offer a refund or switch for 9800 pros! ATI have yet to respond properly.
ATI's response will probably be something like, "Sorry you bought pirated boards mate, but we didn't make em and we didn't sell em. Next time buy from an authorized distributor." -hl718
...Well, you have to respect who ever made it, the very fact that it boot's up and runs (for a short time) is quite a useful experiment result in itself. ...I wonder if you developed a specific driver for it whether it would last longer/perform better/blow up quicker?
My guess is that the boards are probably cobbled together from rejected parts. GPUs that failed the batch test. Memory that didn't pass muster, etc. Since the resulting board doesn't meet spec it's only a matter of time before it dies (probably overclocking the GPU and memory chips even when running at "stock" speeds). You wouldn't need a special driver as the GPU is still a Radeon GPU. The heat sinks on the memory chips on the back of the board were either put there to cover the fact that the chips were pulled from a rejected GeForce batch or because the chips can't keep speed and were overheating (or both). About the only way you can probably get those board to work semi-reliably is to clock them down under "stock" speeds--at that will still be a crap shoot. -hl718
Well, I believe they were sold as refurbished...although the invoice says new!! They have locations in the UK and US, so watch out!! I think it is basically a board that has been refurbished, with "new" RAM put on. Unfortunately, they put laptop GeForce RAM on that doesn't run at the correct speed! The same goes for a board that we found without nVidia RAM - it was hynix (not stamped) for a 9700... so it was underclocked. As such, it IS a Radeon, runs off their drivers, but it has been poorly remade and so will (and did) die again!!
