[Bug 105425] 3D & games produce periodic GPU crashes (Radeon R7 370)

[bugzilla-daemon at freedesktop.org]

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=105425

--- Comment #13 from iive at yahoo.com ---
(In reply to MirceaKitsune from comment #10)
> Created attachment 138438 [details]
> Screenshot of the Blender window glitching
> 
> I should add another detail to the discussion. I know this may be a separate
> issue which might have nothing to do with the crash, but at the same time I
> wouldn't be surprised if it does: Glitched graphics often indicate something
> going wrong with the display, such as corrupt textures in video memory,
> which may ultimately lead to just such a lockup.
> 
> On occasion, certain programs (namely Firefox and Blender) glitch out and
> draw broken rectangles all over the window. Some of those glitches are just
> boxes of random colors, others contain pieces of past images (for instance I
> saw patterns from my lock screen background). Sometimes they quickly
> disappear on their own, at other times I have to restart the program as it
> becomes illegible and unusable. If I move anything the squares flicker all
> over the place. The glitches continue even after I disable desktop effects,
> thus KDE compositing should have nothing to do with it.
> 
> Attached is a screenshot of the glitch happening in Blender, showing its
> window covered in the corrupt squares. I'm curious what your opinion is.
> Again I know this may be an unrelated issue, but I'm wondering whether it
> indicates some video storage corruption that's also leading up to the
> lockups.

I think you should try running your hardware under Windows.

You might also want to check if you still have warranty on the card
and act quickly if it expires soon.

I do suspect that it is a common hardware fault that happens with most video
cards over time. I also had it on my very old HD5670, but with some help I did
manage to salvage it, for now. My first symptoms were problems with RAM, that
could be "workaround"-ed by lowering the memory frequency to half of the
nominal frequency.

The problem is in micro BGA (Ball Grid Array). The GPU chip is the size of a
fingernail and is placed on a "pad" that is usually about square inch size. The
chip and the pad are connected with microBGA. The pad has a normal BGA on its
other side that is soldered to the GPU card. With thermal expansion and
contraction the soldier of the micro pad fractures and starts to misbehave.
It's common to point out that lead-free soldier is not as reliable under
temperature changes.

You might have heard about solutions like baking the card or re-balling the
BGA. I do not recommending trying these. Baking the card might damage other
components on it (capacitors, everything plastic). Re-balling changes the
soldier of the normal BGA, but it is very expensive manual labor that is not
even fixing the BGA which causes the problems.

All these "solutions" work because they also heat the small GPU chip and melt
the microBGA soldier.

If you are sure that this is your problem, you can find somebody who knows how
to use a hot air soldering station and heat just the small GPU chip with
200-250C for about 2-5 minutes. These the the temperatures and duration used
for manufacturing the card, so they should be safe.

Good luck.

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