I'm currently cleaning my video card (7800 GT) because it's really dusty. Well anyway, I was taking the fan + heatsink enclosure off and I noticed the video RAM (those little black chips) had these white things on them. They rip apart really easily and they're sticky. I'm wondering what these are? Since a few of them are ripped apart due to my workings should I replace them? Can I put thermal compound on in their place?

What little white things? Could you take a picture? It sounds like they ARE thermal paste, lol.

was the heatsink also covering the memory chips as well? could easily be thermal tape/adhesive if so.

Yeah, I found out it's thermal tape. I just put a significant amount of thermal compound in place of one of the pieces of tape because it was all ripped up.

Computer still runs after a 12 hour marathon run of graphic intensive games so!