Today I decided to break apart few video cards. There was box of old nVIDIA and ATI video cards. With various connectors and RAM sizes. Here is the collage from GPU images:
To prove that it is broken apart cards, here it is the small photo of GPUs cut off the cards:
As I remmember the cards were:
ATI: Radeon 9600 XT, R360…
nVIDIA: Geforce FX, FX5700LE, Geforce 6500, Geforce 6600…
The guillotine scissors (tinsnips) cut both manufacturers card in the same way. Maybe it was harder to cut ATI radeon 9600 cards- it was because of the RAM chips placed on both sides of PCB.
The heatsinks were very easy to remove- just place screwdriver under it and pull. Some low power ATI cards with passive heat sinks were glued to GPU. But using strong screwdriver can solve everything- just more strength, and heatsink is flying across the room.
The photo contains only the part of video GPUs I removed. I think I just broke apart card of total $1500 value. And now I feel much better