Question Is this Karma that hit AMD?

[mjbn1977]

Considering how they ridiculed Nvidia for the the 12pin connector issues at their December RX7000 reveal event:

AMD's Graphics SVP Confirms Radeon RX 7900 XTX Thermal Issues Related To Vapor Chamber Coolant, Offering RMA To Affected

AMD finally confirms that the Radeon RX 7900 XTX reference graphics card has a faulty vapor chamber that causes overheating & will offer RMA.

wccftech.com

AMD Allegedly Has No More Radeon RX 7900 XTX Reference GPU Stock To Fulfil RMA Requests

AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX reference graphics card stock has allegedly run dry as the company tries to fulfill RMA requests for overheating cards.

wccftech.com

Also they kinda downplay it and say it is only affecting a small amount of cards. But Igor got leaked info from some sources that this might affect 4 to 6 production batches which can easily be in the 5 digit (or even 6 digit) numbers.

Hotspot problem of AMD’s Radeon RX 7900 XTX (MBA): Even several batches of the vapor chamber affected, replacement of thousands of cards starts | igor´sLAB

I deliberately waited until I could get congruent and plausible information through various information channels, which can now also shed some light after two to three weeks. While AMD’s support…

www.igorslab.de

RMA wave freezed: Is AMD now running out of cards? The warehouses of the Radeon RX 7900 XTX are yawningly empty | igor´sLAB

I had already reported recently that AMD, even without an official statement about the actual causes, has been offering both a return of the graphics card and an RMA with an exchange for a working…

www.igorslab.de

Not even mad at AMD that something like that happened. Things like this can happen...supposedly it is a supplier problem and maybe some rushed QC. But the fact that they were really quick about pointing the finger at the competition about the 12pin problem (a new industry standard AMD also signed off on, had no issue with the tech back then), and try to downplay and hide the problem (supposedly AMD is aware about the vapor chamber issue for at least 3 weeks) is not good business behavior and worthy from the manufacturer of "The Most Advanced Graphics for Gamers and Creators".

And Nvidia, you not much better neither. Money and price aside (which really sucks) you also had your fair issue of questionable decision making.....remember when you sold me a 4GB Vram GTX970 and it turned out to be only a 3.5(0.5) GB GTX 970????

 

[drivinfast247]

Maybe

 

[Eximo]

Different situations really. I don't think the connector itself is a problem. It will be refined subtly to make it more safe for the next generation and we will call it a footnote since such a small percentage had this actually occur.

There is an overall flaw in that Nvidia let the power requirements go so high that the coolers had to be so massive, which makes a lot of chassis not leave enough room for the connector coming out the side. (And they could have put it on the back. Given the cost of these things, I wonder why they don't put two sets of power connectors on it, some of the PCBs even have the spot for them)

With AMD, we have a situation where nothing really incorrect was done. Just a mis-firing fluid injector or something on a manufacturing line. Correcting it is costly, but it is basically a recall on a specific model, and probably a limited run.

With the power connectors, there really isn't a good way to recall them. They do work, and it is from every vendor both PSU and GPU that would need to be looked at.

Nvidia's equivalent would be more the 30 series self destruction in extreme FPS scenarios (ie game menus and such). So those cards had to be replaced because they bricked. Or the memory overheating issues of the 3090.

In AMDs situation there are just going to be a whole bunch of refurb cards on the market in a few months. Just the cost of shipping (cross shipping) and new coolers, as opposed to new PCBs.

 

[hotaru.hino]

I've never been fond of RTG's marketing or public facing side. To me it just reeks of this dude bro attitude with a "we can do no wrong" or "lol get a load of what the other guy is doing"

 

[mjbn1977]

I've never been fond of RTG's marketing or public facing side. To me it just reeks of this dude bro attitude with a "we can do no wrong" or "lol get a load of what the other guy is doing"

who's RTG?

 

[hotaru.hino]

who's RTG?

Radeon Technology Group. Basically AMD's GPU business unit

 

[mjbn1977]

In AMDs situation there are just going to be a whole bunch of refurb cards on the market in a few months. Just the cost of shipping (cross shipping) and new coolers, as opposed to new PCBs.

AMD has their customer on the hook for the return shipping cost if you return for refund. No fair. Also the numbers seem to be higher than what they admit. Now they sending out messages that no replacement cards are available, they probably overwhelmed by the replacement RMA requests.

 

[mjbn1977]

Radeon Technology Group. Basically AMD's GPU business unit

Thanks for clarification. Yeah, but Nvidia marketing is not much better. Nvidia is making such amazing tech, why do they work so hard to leave such a bad aftertaste caused by their stupid marketing and pricing? Cut the BS, Nvidia and AMD....grow up.....

I bet Jensen and his marketing team are all twitchy right now and would love to comment on AMDs cooler problem.....probably better if they don't....LOL

 

[hotaru.hino]

Thanks for clarification. Yeah, but Nvidia marketing is not much better. Nvidia is making such amazing tech, why do they work so hard to leave such a bad aftertaste caused by their stupid marketing and pricing? Cut the BS, Nvidia and AMD....grow up.....

I bet Jensen and his marketing team are all twitchy right now and would love to comment on AMDs cooler problem.....probably better if they don't....LOL

I feel that NVIDIA's position is that, as you say, pushes out a lot of amazing tech, but the problem is that there's so many buzzwords surrounding it and not enough testing against the layman to make sure that everyone else knows what the engineers are talking about. Like when ray tracing was announced, people thought it was going to be only an RTX thing even though it was released alongside Microsoft's DX12 update to support a standardized way of doing ray tracing for games.

Product naming definitely could use more work, but I guess if you want to confuse people, don't use numbers if you can get away with it. Use cryptic sounding letters or something.

As far as pricing goes, I mean, it's a combination of factors. You could always attribute corporate greed but I mean, that's an easy out and AMD isn't any better. I'm sure AMD would love to charge $1300 for the 7900 XTX if they thought they could get away with it.

The other thing that bothers me is that NVIDIA announces a lot of things in conferences where the target audience isn't the consumer. Things like the Games Developers Conference or SIGGRAPH (which is geared towards people in the CGI industry). So people tend to take what is said there out of context or try to apply what was meant for developers and people in the industry to consumers. Like when Jensen said ray tracing "just works", it's not towards the consumers, it's towards developers to instill confidence that they didn't have to completely rewrite their rendering engines or change their workflow. They just flip on a switch and "it just works." (of course I'm probably going to find someone now who's going to go "but blaaaaah" but I'm getting tired of arguing with those people)

 

[Eximo]

They did grow up, they got themselves a board of directors and shareholders...