Capacitors on graphics cards...

Ok, so I have a couple Leadtek WinFast A280 LE AGP 8x VIVO 128MB GeForce
ti4200's. I bought them for my machine and my girlfriends (back when I had
one) and they cost over NZ$300 each new. They were a significant investment
at the time, costing twice as much as the T'bredB Athlon XP CPUs they ran
with.

My ex's card failed before we split and I put it on the shelf and bought her
a 7600GS to replace it. Mine failed not long afterwards and also went on the
shelf. I couldn't bring myself to throw them away considering what they
cost. Actually, only one is VIVO, the other didn't need to be VIVO and was
~$40 cheaper.

The other day I was having one of my periodic clean-outs and I had a good
look at them. One of them had a capacitor that was lifting off it's plug. I
replaced it and now it'll boot in a machine but periodically the machine
crashes. I'm considering replacing all 7 of the non-solid caps and am
seeking opinions.

Interestingly, it seems that Leadtek must have been going through a rough
patch when these cards were produced. Leadtek enjoy a large market presence
in New Zealand so consequently I have a few of their cards around from over
the years. The oldest is a PCI S3 Trio64V+ with 1MB RAM on-board. The newest
is a 7800GT with 256MB RAM. I also have a Leadtek GeForce 2 MX400, an FX5600
and an FX5700.

Here's the interesting bit. The old (and I mean 15 years old) PCI card has
all solid conductive polymer (CP) capacitors. The GF2 has all ali can (AC)
'wet' caps but was made before the great capacitor swindle at the end of
last millenium and is still going strong in daily usage.

Both of the ti4200's have a mix of CP and AC caps but, interestingly, the
mix varies from one card to the other. (They were bought 4 months apart,
right after the public furore over the bad caps scandal.) Also
interestingly, one of them has two caps replaced by one, bridging from the
+ive of one cap stencil to the -ive of the other. (There are two caps on the
other PCB.)

All three of the later cards I have are fitted with all CP capacitors.

Now, I'm thinking that, with the ti4200's, it might be worth replacing the
AC caps with new ones and hoping that the cards are fixed. Correct me if I'm
wrong but it's unlikely that any other components would have failed causing
the cards to fail. They've always been in well ventilated cases and have
never been overclocked. Am I right? Silicon gates and resistors should still
be fine, chances are, if I replace the AC caps then the cards will work and
become reliable again?

I only ask as I'm not a rich man. Quite the contrary in fact (LOL, you
probably guessed that when I said I didn't throw these ti4200's out ages
ago.) Anyway, it'll cost me ~$20 to replace the caps on one card. About the
same as I'd pay for a working ti4200 on an on-line auction site. However,
it's not just the value of a working ti4200 at stake here, it's also the
huge (for me) original investment I made in the cards, (together they
actually cost more than my car at the time) and the satisfaction I'll get if
I can ressurect them.

They're quite fully-featured cards, with monitoring chips on them that tell
Speedfan on-die temp, a thermistor between GPU and HS temp and fan speed.
They also have a series of three LEDs that tell if they're running in 4x or
8x mode and if there is an AGP slot problem. They've also got some pretty
impressive lumps of aluminium on both sides of the cards and the fans are
still working and not excessively noisy.

So... What do you think? It's not *so* much about the money really, it's
more about keeping them out of a landfill somewhere and also justifying the
outlay in, ummm, 2002 or so. I'd be quite bummed out if i mail-ordered the
caps, fitted them and still had a dead card (or two, the postage on the caps
means it'd be more sensible to buy enough for both...)

Cheers, and TIA for any input.
--
Shaun.

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