Diamond Multimedia Radeon 3800 Woes.

[HaZ]

If you can read this text your card has not failed. On a serious note – AMD partner Diamond Multimedia is reporting that it has shipped 15,000 up to potentially 20,000 Radeon 3800 series cards that suffer from an apparent ‘design / manufacture’ defects.

Diamond Multimedia Radeon 3800 Woes. : Read more

 

[invisik]

its not alienware fault. 750w is enough for 3 3870's.

 

[estreetguy]

I think he meant the power supplies themselves being sub-par or "cheap" - not the wattage you dingdong.

 

[ira176]

I bought a Diamond HD 3870 around february, and installed it, and it wouldn't output a video signal. I sent it back to Fry's without any hassel. I did try to get on Diamond's site before I sent the card back, to see if there was any help, but it was non-existant. I ended up buying an MSI HD 3870 which installed and worked flawlessly.

 

[zenmaster]

I doubt the AlienWare PSU was substandard for a moment.

If it was, then AlienWare would be replacing the GPUs and the manufacturer would not have accepted the returns.

Especially since AlienWare cut business ties. So accepting the return was clearly not a means to save the relationship.

The response by GeCube was simply BS.

 

[megamanx00]

Yeah I don't think I'll be buying any GeCube cards. Man I hope that doesn't affect my ASUS 3850

 

[Guest]

I bought a 3870 X2 from Fry's in April and haven't noticed any major problems...

My PSU is only 550 watts too.

 

[neiroatopelcc]

Even a poor quality (q-tec and the like) 750W psu should be able to pull a 3850, and they had a 8% failure rate too, so it's definetly not the psu. And with the pricetags on alienware mashines I think they could afford a proper psu anyway....

I wonder who covers the costs though? the manufacturer or diamond?

 

[monsta]

My 3850 gave me nothing but trouble so I threw it out, never to buy ATI again.This just validates it for me.

 

[neiroatopelcc]

Demonhorde while your post is completely useless, it's also filled with typos! Anyone with mediocre or poor knowledge of english, is bound to fail, when trying to understand it!

It doesn't matter who's fault it is, that the cards are failing.
At least not with regards to invisik's claim that a 750W psu can handle 3 3870s.
"extreme power supply calculator lite 2.5" returns 727W when I selected a high end desktop system with a 9950 cpu overclocked to 3ghz and 2x 3870 x2 in crossfire (it didn't have 3cf options, which require LESS power). I also picked 2 ddr2 sticks, 2 7.2k drives, a dvdrw and 4 120mm fans along with front lcd, fan controller and cardreader. Oh and I set aging to 10% (roughly 1-1½ year old psu). So you're the biggest dumb whatever-it-is-the-stars-mean!


And monsta merely stated that his ati card has only given him trouble. He didn't mention who's fault that is. And probably he's right. My x800 pro was rubbish when I had one. Fast but with poor drivers. And my current hd4870 broke my vista and forced me to run xp (8800gtx ran vista just fine for 1½ years). So I second his suggestion to stay out of harms way by not picking amd/ati. But I am not going to say who's at fault for the problems we poor ati users experience. That must be up to experts, of which you aren't one.

 

[wavebossa]

Demonhorde does have a point. If one ati fails you and you decide to never buy from them again your only real choice is Nvidia. Ultimately, one Nvidia card will fail you down the line (it happens). So if you apply the same standards, you'll just be a whiner without a graphics card.

Obviously this is Diamond's fault and they are to blame, but anyone who has been around hardware long enough will tell you that when you buy your own parts, this will happen sometime or another.

Don't buy from Diamond again, but shutting out ATI completely because of this is ludicrous

 

[hellwig]

When I bought my Alienware back in 2000 (when they were making the things in their freakin basement it seems) my wonderful Elsa Gladiac GeForce 2 GTS failed after about 6 months. I sent it back and received a wonderful VisionTek (read: cheap) GeForce 2 GTS which also failed a few months later. Around the time of the second failure, my entire computer failed. They accused me of overclocking it (back then this was frowned upon) and did nothing except give me another new VisionTek. A little over a year into my warranty (luckily I purchased the 3-year) the computer failed again, and this time they finally replaced the faulty motherboard (was MSI, now Asus). The computer was finally stable, and I only ended up replacing the second VisionTek with a new BFG 5200 FX Ultra when the fan died towards the end of my warranty. Since the graphics cards were continuously under warranty, it never dawned on me to switch from NVIDIA to ATI (which I only did recently with the 4850).

Long story short, I don't trust Alienware, and I also know that components unrelated to the graphics card can kill it. Not saying that's the case here, just that Alienware is a company looking to make money, and some things get trampled in the long run.

 

[warezme]

Nothing changes, ATI fanbois rally to ATI's defense and attack when its an Nvidia card..., (sigh)... and vice versa.

 

[KT_WASP]

For people who are saying ATI is at fault for this, they need to re-read the article.

This is purely a GeCube / Diamond issue.The cards from this vendor have defects on the board itself and it has nothing to do with the actual GPU provided from ATI.

For you people that think Nvidia's hands are clean...

Nvidia,on the other hand, Manufactured GPUs with a flaw and sold them even though they knew of the potential problem. Nvidia used a high-lead solder bump on their GPUs even though it was known that it would not react well to thermal fatigue cracking. They did this to save a few dollars on each chip, even though they charge a premium for their products.

It has been known industry-wide that the eutectic solder method that ATI and other chip makers use is a better process and does not have the thermal fatigue problems that the older method has. ATI have been using this process for years now... even though its more expensive.

Nvidia's mobile G84/G86 GPUs are effected by this in the thousands. Their desktop G92/G94 GPUs also used this method. The laptop GPUs are failing at a higher rate because of the poorer air-flow in such a small case, but the Desktops can fail just as easily if there is not enough air-flow inside the desk-top cases.

So.. Nvidia knowingly made and sold bad GPUs and charged the consumers top-dollar for it... yeah, Nvidia is great huh?

This is where the Nvidia fan-boys chime in about drivers....

Do a google search about Nvidia BSOD and ATI BSOD and see how many hits you get... more for Nvidia. Let us not forget that even though Nvidia was first out of the gate with DX10 cards, their Vista drivers were horrible. It took them about 8-9 months to figure it out,and they still have problems... meanwhile ATI's drivers were running fine on Vista... True ATI has had driver problems in the past... but thats just it, it was in the past.. People need to let things go already.

PS, Ive owned Nvidia and ATI cards, and I'm using ATI now because the Nvidia I had was horrible, Drivers problems up the wazoo and BSOD's almost every day. Since the switch, not one single problem.

Stop flaming ATI for this problem... its not their fualt... geez

 

[Guest]

This may shed more light...
Diamond Multimedia President Shows Radeon HD 3870 Resistor Fix
Following a conversation with Diamond Multimedia president Bruce Zaman, I was sent a detailed picture that shows where a Zero Ohm value resistor needs to be added to the board to resolve the problem the Alienware systems are seeing. Bruce assured Legit Reviews that only Alienware systems are impacted by this as they had a sku that was different from the retail graphics cards. Diamond Multimedia has been very open about the issue that was leaked out recently and I really like how they have handled the entire situation. Diamond knows what is causing the issues and has fixed it. If you have an Alienware system that has a Diamond Radeon HD 3870-512MB DDR4 you might want to check it and make sure it has a resistor where the arrow below it pointing. If it doesn't you should contact Alienware and get it RMA'd.
http://www.legitreviews.com/news/5206/

 

[nekatreven]

[citation][nom]Monsta[/nom]My 3850 gave me nothing but trouble so I threw it out, never to buy ATI again.This just validates it for me.[/citation]

lol...yea that makes a whole lot of sense. And when the wheels fall off your lawn mower and the blade flies off and goes through your car window...I bet you'll bitch about the company that made the engine.

 

[Guest]

Hi All,

I'm the VAR/SI business manager at Diamond, and I wanted to clear a few things up about this story.

First, I want to point out that this "leak" is coming from a disgruntled ex-employee who was recently fired, and is basically a massive exaggeration of an issue we had with a small batch of 3870s.

The real story is that there was a problem with a small batch of cards manufactured for Alienware caused by a missing resistor. The number of cards was less than 300 units, and we took them all back. Additionally, the chances of anyone having getting one of these cards is *extremely* low. To my knowledge, this flaw prevented the system from even posting, so it was extremely easy for Alienware to catch.

There are *not* tens of thousands of flawed cards in the wild.

We want to be as transparent as possible about all of this, so if you have any questions or concerns, feel free to give us a call.

You can reach me directly at the contact info below, or call our general line at 818-773-9600

Thanks,

Blake Eggleston
VAR/SI business manager
Tel: 818-534-1414 x132
Email: blake@diamondmm.com

 

[klarkmdb]

ATi Cards are better than Nvidia as what i can see right now. Nvidia still have the old sickness of video card fans going out after a year of use. (for the entry-level of course)

 

[neiroatopelcc]

I'd say Nvidia cards are better at the moment! They're inferior in any performance/cost chart, but at least their drivers are working. Yeah they have caused a lot of crashes in vista before sp1, but then again, almost everyone running vista in the first 6-8 months had an nvidia card....
Anyhow, I currently have an ati hd4870 as my 8800gtx failed (memory cooling issues), and I sincerely regret not going for a 260 instead! Sure it's fast, but I hate the drivers. I have to disable my tv in order to play at my native resolution in games, I need to force tv detection, I need to reset the catalyst settings now and then, and sapphire still hasn't replied my support inquiry because of the excessive noise it makes a minute after booting. Sure it is faster than nvidia if factoring in cost, but I'd really rather have a card that 'just works' for the next 2 years, than one that works for the next 5 if you have the time to fiddle with settings.
And that doesn't even account for the raid issues that surfaced when I replaced the nvidia card.

Anyhow, this is as irrelevant to the actual article as any of the other posts, short of the blake one.

ps "meanwhile ATI's drivers were running fine on Vista... " I had the exact opposite experience. Just like in the old days, the ati drivers are inferior. The auto-overclock feature's cool though.