Mysterious Hercules Prophet III GeForce 3 findings.

[Lower]

Ok, got my GeForce3 today, and although I haven't popped off the heatsinks (too scared, and have nothing to put them back on with), I came across this while checking out my new toy in SciSoft Sandra.

Mysterious picture

Two possible explanations:

1) Hercules has done the unforgiveable and shipped the A3 version of the cards out to consumers.
OR
2) All GeForce 3 cards report through Sandra this way because they are too new of hardware to report correctly.
3) ??? (Any other possibilities out there?)

Can anyone else run the same thing through Sandra and capture their results?

Incidentally, as covered here, I did check my CHIPID DWORD, and it comes back as a5 00 00 02 00 00. Can anyone confirm or deny this as well please?
(BTW, I should also state that the board itself does say A5 in several of the stock numbers, which really lays doubt to the Sandra findings -but it's strange, so hey... I thought we could chat about it and compare findings.)

 

[nitrousninja]

I've heard around these forums that even the A5 labeled ones read A3 by Sandra which is a Sandra issue and not a G3 issue

 

[Dark4ng3l]

A few companies did ship A3 stepping on their cards. Hercules in the main one.

 

[oldfart]

<< A few companies did ship A3 stepping on their cards. Hercules in the main one. >>


I've never heard that. All shipping cards from all mfgrs should be A5. Sandra is wrong in its reporting.

 

[Dark4ng3l]

I read this at rivastation.com. They even compare resistor diferences on A3 and A5 stepping cards.

*EDIT*

here is the axact quote from the site


&quot;Normaly only GeForce 3 cards with A5 stepping chips should be available. But there are reports that some early GF3 cards were shipped with older A3 versions. I was not able to find any performance differences between both steppings yet but I received information from some manufacturers that A3 is less stable. There is rumor that the yield of A3 was only about 30% and there shall be some issues regarding video overlay features.

I have different GeForce 3 cards with A3 and A5 stepping. So I was able to find a difference between A3 and A5 without removing the fan. Additional info: The board revision was also changed for A5 cards.&quot;

page
You need to scroll down it's in the midle of the page.
Hmm the news is dated 5/09/01 and youll have to look through the archive manualy since I cant lnk there for some reason.

 

[oldfart]

The Herc cards just started shipping. I highly doubt that they use A3 chips. It looks like the latest Powerstrip will report the stepping correctly.


<< News on read out the GeForce 3 steppings by software. I asked the developer of the display tool PowerStrip on that (All tools showed A5 labled chips as A3):

Not *any* tool.. Beginning with Build 143 of PowerStrip 3.0, A5 revision silicon is ID'd as such.

But I know what you mean: ASIC revision is typically determined by software by reading PCI configuration register 0x08 [7:0], and this reads out as 0xA3 with both the A3 and the A5 steppings. Because so many people are concerned about the GF3 ASIC revision they have gotten, I changed PS to work around what must be simply an oversight by NVidia.

The newest beta version (Build 143) now shows the correct revision number A5 on A5 cards: >>

 

[Dark4ng3l]

did you look at the article i quoted from?? their a3 cards are hercules cards.

 

[gunf1ghter]

Ahhh, the fun of being an early adopter....

think I'll wait 2-3 months for things to settle down and then grab a card for $250.

 

[Lower]

Well, if powerstrip reports right, chalk another up for ALL hercules being A5, as it reports:
Device ID: NVidia Generic, Rev. A5
Why all? Because I ordered mine on 5.14 at 7:59am... -probably one of the first web orders to go through, and definately a card from the first batch.

 

[Lower]

Screw it. It's only a manufacturers warranty -who needs it.
*peels off BLORB*
A5, BINGO!

Check it out, here

The RIVA Station article, (which can be found here, under the heading 5/09/01 GeForce 3 steppings ) strangely enough shows that the A3 revision have a 3 capacitor 1 resistor line above the right heatsink. That was the configuration I had, so I was really worried -and decided there was only one sure way to know. The Hercules BLORB is placed on by two well designed clips, but there is no thermal tape. Instead they opted for thermal grease which was fine by me, because it gave me the chance to put some AS2 down in its place.

At any rate, if you've bought a Herc, there shouldn't be any worries. It seems that they all may have the A3 &quot;sign&quot; from the RIVA Station article, but they should be A5.
And now I know for sure. (Whew!)

Now: Who's got a first batch Herc card that wants to yank off the heatsinks to check the RAM speed? LOL.

 

[Dark4ng3l]

Okay thats great. Manufacturers were not suposed to ship A3 chips anyways. So how the card?? Wanna send it to me so i can &quot;evaluate&quot; it's performance . I promise i'll send was within 24 months

 

[GrumpyMan]

On Powerstrip make sure you get build 143 on up, anything lower and it mis-dentifies the stepping of the chip. It freaked me out too when I tried build 138 I believe it was and it stated A3. I went to the Powerstrip site and downloaded the newest version of the 3.0 beta build 143 and to my relief it identified the chip as A5 stepping correctly. I love my Visiontek by the way. It kills the Geforce1 it replaced!