Thinkpads Forum

I have found someone that can reball, change video card and memory over my damaged motherboard, so i would ask if there is a possible upgrade that can be used instead the fx-570m bga chip and if i can change the 256 mb video memory with something bigger: has someone ever done something similar so i can take advantage of his experience?

Thanks

Reballing a bad(?) FX570M chip will not do any good, the chip is gone!
Replacing it? Only if you know where the chip came from and trust the seller.
The Chinese sell a lot of fake ones, beware!
And no, you cannot put on any other graphics chip.
If you don't really need the discrete graphics, replace the motherboard with an Intel graphics one.

Mine t61p made at 08/08 has that gpu g84-950-a2 that Appear to be a fx-1600 and over this site i see compatibility with other gpu
http://www.reballing.es/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=3222

aldimeola81 wrote:Mine t61p made at 08/08 has that gpu g84-950-a2 that Appear to be a fx-1600 and over this site i see compatibility with other gpu
http://www.reballing.es/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=3222

You would also need the GPU to be supported in BIOS, and that's not going to fly.

My biggest is why you would touch a 08/08 GPU to begin with?

Because that 08/08 motherboard is dead as the older t61p ones

aldimeola81 wrote:Because that 08/08 motherboard is dead as the older t61p ones

From a *confirmed* GPU failure? Now that's a rarity...

Nevertheless, your T61p's BIOS will not support any other GPU...

The defect was: no screen output, and no beep, only led act, if i heat the gpu with an air heater, the pc start normally.

aldimeola81 wrote:The defect was: no screen output, and no beep, only led act, if i heat the gpu with an air heater, the pc start normally.

OK...confirmed it is, then.

What size is your T61p, BTW? 15.4" I presume?

I have an older t61p motherboard with same defect except beep code (one long, two short)

Yes, 15,4, i've buyed used, i don't know if the motherboard was the original ones but i think yes.
But i admit that i've overclocked cpu and gpu very hard and played games for two years

If the planar is dead, you could remove the cooling to check the date on the chip.

aldimeola81 wrote: But i admit that i've overclocked cpu and gpu very hard and played games for two years

Well, that would do it...

I guess you know that yourself already, though...

PowerPC wrote:If the planar is dead, you could remove the cooling to check the date on the chip.

That is the gpu

http://s943.photobucket.com/user/aldime ... sort=3&o=0

0827A2... I believe that means 27th week of 2008, so that would be... a bad chip.

With overclocking and abusing the heck out of it- it's pretty good to see that it lasted as long as it did. However... the situation we're interested in is the one that's going on now, and that's that your chip is dead. Unfortunately.

Medessec wrote:0827A2... I believe that means 27th week of 2008, so that would be... a bad chip.

Not necessarily. The picture is nowhere near as evenly divided into black and white as that...

Anything built from January through July 2008 is a 50/50 shot, with later machines having a significantly better survival rate and most of them having a much better outlook than a mid-2007 T61/p, let's say. This GPU would've likely lasted a lot longer in the different environment...

Hmm! This I did not know about differently dated GPUs. Quite a disappointment it's gone then.

As for the OP- it's going to be difficult for you to track down a FX 570M chip you can use in a BGA rework, that would be suitable to do. It'd have to be post-08/08, preferably far later than that... and I don't think the VRAM needs to be changed, because the problem is just in the chip, correct me if I'm wrong. For the time being, if you get the job done soon, DON'T try to increase the VRAM, unless someone on here can tell you for sure it might be possible. The job needs to be done cleanly and very well, I've seen people with reworked graphics chips in their laptops, that abuse them and still wind up with a beep sequence telling them their video is no good. BGA reworks(removing a bad chip and sodering a new one) takes awhile if you do it right... so you don't want to end up doing it again.

It'd be really interesting to see if it's possible at all to add more VRAM though... by soldering higher-density chips on. I don't think it'd play too nicely though... something somewhere would go "wait... this isn't right" and even if you get it working, there would likely be BSODs and driver/game problems all over the place.

Putting a different chip on(FX 770M, 8500M GTS) would likely require BIOS modding... a lot of work in the end. I haven't seen it tried or done anywhere, so I think everyone has the same thought on it: "It's not worth the effort". Apparently not anywhere near as worthwhile as making a whole new T43 motherboard, or pin-modding a T61 CPU socket to take 1066 MHz FSB CPUs.

ajkula66 wrote:

Medessec wrote:0827A2... I believe that means 27th week of 2008, so that would be... a bad chip.

Not necessarily. The picture is nowhere near as evenly divided into blac and white as that...

Anything built from January through July 2008 is a 50/50 shot, with later machines having a significantly better survival rate and most of them having a much better outlook than a mid-2007 T61/p, let's say. This GPU would've likely lasted a lot longer in the different environment...

I think the problem is not the chip but the welds of bga, I will make a reballing and we'll see if I'm right.
However, I played a lot and made ​​a heavy overclock but the temperature never exceeded 80 ° c, I was very careful because I knew the problem of T61P

If the reballing will not work, I already bought a motherboard with intel gpu, mount it and sell it that way.

Nope.

The defect lies within the actual chip, NOT the BGA...

Eventually I discovered that I was spending more than it is worth the T61P, so I bought the intel card and I put up it for sale.
I bought a used w510 with 6 months warranty lenovo for me, I hope not to be disappointed with the video performance (according wei performance 3d are lower than those of the T61P) and that there are no problems.

A little 'I'm sorry for the lack of resolution of the case but unfortunately I was spending too much ..

aldimeola81 wrote:Eventually I discovered that I was spending more than it is worth the T61P, so I bought the intel card and I put up it for sale.
I bought a used w510 with 6 months warranty lenovo for me, I hope not to be disappointed with the video performance (according wei performance 3d are lower than those of the T61P) and that there are no problems.

A little 'I'm sorry for the lack of resolution of the case but unfortunately I was spending too much ..

Look at benches, not at WEI. WEI is useless, when talking about performance. Thus Microsoft have also removed it Again

That chip does look like it's from a genuine 08/08 machine, but keep in mind that just because it's not from the bad batch doesn't mean it's indestructable. I'd say the heavy use and overclocking was probably more than it could take. Also, it would be rare for the BGA solder joints to detach on one of these. If you do reball the chip it will likely work for a couple months giving the impression that it's fixed, but the reputable shops soon learned that it was the heat that was temp reviving the chips and the reflowing/reballing process wasn't helping anything.

Having personally seen over 200 boards from 08/08 and 08/09 (from special order units) and even a couple 08/10, I've seen chip dates ranging from 0819 to 0834, but the vast majority are 0825 or so. These numbers are nothing more that an etching done at the factory before the chips were packed and there were multiple factories and many production lines in each and I'm convinced that they were retooling the factories for several months as they refined the process. What we do know is that the failure rate sharply declined starting in about February 2008 and virtually stopped in August.

Regarding putting a different chip on the board, that would be nice if it were possible, but it could be a costly experiment and I doubt it would work and finding a reliable replacement gpu would be problematic because nVidia only makes them when they are required to do so by oem contracts. In order for a chip to be profitable they have to be mass produced so every time they make replacements for older equipment they lose money and if you were to buy one online you'd most likely get one with the dates polished off and re-etched. The chinese have been doing this for decades and selling used chips as new and in many cases it wasn't really a huge problem, but in this case it is.

QWERTY Andreas wrote:

aldimeola81 wrote:Eventually I discovered that I was spending more than it is worth the T61P, so I bought the intel card and I put up it for sale.
I bought a used w510 with 6 months warranty lenovo for me, I hope not to be disappointed with the video performance (according wei performance 3d are lower than those of the T61P) and that there are no problems.

A little 'I'm sorry for the lack of resolution of the case but unfortunately I was spending too much ..

Look at benches, not at WEI. WEI is useless, when talking about performance. Thus Microsoft have also removed it Again

That they removed it doesn't mean it was useless. Microsoft also removes things that are very usefull, like the start menu in Windows 8, like direct access to audio hardware since Windows Vista (to please Hollywood, killing EAX in the way), like killing the possibility for two video drivers (Vista), etc. etc.

Yes, the WEI is rather useless. According to the WEI I have a "Secondary monitor resolution" and yet again another "Secondary monitor resolution" on my desktop. Also a 6.0 as lowest score for graphics, although that is a GTX 570, lol. And on my Thinkpad it rates the Intel graphics, lol.