News Micro Center Slams AMD GPUs, CEO Issues Apology

[johnnyboy5520]

I've owned AMD cards for years. Never had any problems. My 6900 XT has been solid. The whole maintenance thing is complete BS. Installing drivers is normal for any card. I had an Nvidia RTX 2070 that I've had to send back for repair as it died within 2 years of ownership. Check the Nvidia forums. Lots of issues with drivers and crashing. All manufacturers can have issues with their cards or their drivers, not just AMD.

 

[kato128]

I can see where they're coming from. My old 6970 had a driver update and they altered the fan curve to be the same as the 280x which was the same part but had a different thermal rating so would run the card at 90C and cause crashes necessitating a custom curve from then on as half a dozen driver updates left the issue un-fixed. I also found AMD required significantly more work to keep it running right. This was things like driver maintenance with specific order of installs, bios settings, fan curves, installing parts in particular slots, replacing thermal interfaces and fans. All of this was simply to run it at stock settings whereas intel was buy it, build it, run it, repeat when it's too slow.

I ran AMD stuff from 99-2013, swapped to an i7-3770k due to sheer frustration and last year came back to a 3700x on a x570 and found it to still be much the case. AMD stuff has great performance for the price and it has improved from the bad old days of via and nforce2 but if you aren't into tinkering with a pc I'd stay away.

 

[ReallyBigMistake]

I am pretty sure Jensen is slipping in some dollars in the microcenters CEOs pockets. I hope the arm deal doesn't go through. Want to see Jensen cry. Please China you already went after bitcoin now block the arm deal!

 

[The Floydist]

I've been gaming on pc for several years now, started with 980's then 2080ti and after getting a new tv i needed hdmi 2.1 to get the most out of it, so i got a 6900 xt. now i might have a dodgy card or something but ive been really disappointed. micro stutter in some games, others black screen and restart the pc. the fans ramp up twice as loud as the other cards ive had and the heat its putting out is crazy.

Just a friendly neighborhood reminder to run DDU whenever switching graphics cards, especially when switching AMD -> Nvidia or Nvidia -> AMD. If you've already done this than disregard this post.

 

[King_V]

im running it on a 4790k, great machine but its showing its age. was going to upgrade end of 2022 start of 23 but now i think i might go for 5900 refresh with the stacked cache.
the fans ramp up at weird times though, i'll be playing warzone and the fans go crazy when its in the menu finding a match but as soon as the game starts they go back to normal.

I was about to ask about how good cooling is in your case, BUT.. the symptoms for the fans going crazy in the menu, but not in game, sounds VERY familiar. I can't remember which game it was (not warzone) but my son used to play a game, and while we'd set Chill to cap at a certain FPS (monitor has FreeSync), for some reason the menu of one game would ignore it, and the card would run flat out. Fans would ramp up, and the FPS counter was at something like 270-ish or so.

Once it would get into the game, it obeyed the Chill settings. I believe we solved that by turning VSync on for that game (normally you don't need to turn Vsync on with Chill). It's been a while, though. It was either when he had the R9 285 card, or the RX 580.

 

[thepersonwithaface45]

Its always so weird to see Micro Center treated like it's some big national chain.

It's not. There are exactly 25 microcenter locations.

There's twice as many Best Buy stores between me and the nearest micro center than there are micro center stores on earth. I say this, knowing that for the first time in my life I finally live within driving distance of a micro center... so long as you consider 4 hours round-trip to be driving distance.

Does Micro Center get so much attention because there isn't anything else? Is America totally depleted of electronics stores? Because best buy doesn't exactly scratch that itch.

I went into best buy trying to buy a display port cable and the assistant had to get his manager, and both of them didn't know wtf I was talking about.

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

Only a few years ago the authors on Toms would take part in the comments, but now they act like it's beneath them to have to deal with the masses

Think you're being a little harsh here. I often see Jared Walton and Paul Alcorn, 'dealing with the masses' as you say.

 

[MMorris666]

I was about to ask about how good cooling is in your case, BUT.. the symptoms for the fans going crazy in the menu, but not in game, sounds VERY familiar. I can't remember which game it was (not warzone) but my son used to play a game, and while we'd set Chill to cap at a certain FPS (monitor has FreeSync), for some reason the menu of one game would ignore it, and the card would run flat out. Fans would ramp up, and the FPS counter was at something like 270-ish or so.

Once it would get into the game, it obeyed the Chill settings. I believe we solved that by turning VSync on for that game (normally you don't need to turn Vsync on with Chill). It's been a while, though. It was either when he had the R9 285 card, or the RX 580.

just had 1 day off.. got to have a play with it some more. i think i fixed the micro stutter in warzone. had hwinfo64 running while i played two games, temps said 75c with 102c hot spot! is the hot spot temp normal for these cards?

 

[King_V]

just had 1 day off.. got to have a play with it some more. i think i fixed the micro stutter in warzone. had hwinfo64 running while i played two games, temps said 75c with 102c hot spot! is the hot spot temp normal for these cards?

That I can't answer, as I have no experience with Navi 2 - I'll leave that to someone who knows about that better than I.

That said, the fan speeds still settle to something normal when in-game, correct? I'd be curious to see what the FPS rate is in the menu (when the fans go crazy) vs in-game.

 

[BeedooX]

I've been gaming on pc for several years now, started with 980's then 2080ti and after getting a new tv i needed hdmi 2.1 to get the most out of it, so i got a 6900 xt. now i might have a dodgy card or something but ive been really disappointed. micro stutter in some games, others black screen and restart the pc. the fans ramp up twice as loud as the other cards ive had and the heat its putting out is crazy.

I have a Liquid Devil 6900XT and just after I bought it, it started black-screening on me; really annoying. I'd pulled the DP cable out and plug it back in, and sometimes this would bring the picture back if only for a short while.

I eventually went out and purchased a VESA compliant DP cable and I've had no problems since.

 

[-Fran-]

I don't know what you all do to your cards, but I just took an old R5 250X that was covered in dust and with spider webs from a box and cleaned to put in an old PC to just see if it worked. It did, with no issues. It is now being used in a kid's PC somewhere just fine (I gave away the PC).

I also know my old 7970Ghz is working in someone's PC. I'm almost certain even my old HD4890 would still work with no maintenance at all on them. If I still had my old 1800XL and HD4850, same thing.

And let's not forget the 3080 shenanigans when launched, please. Some people has really short term memory. Much like with the RX480, the 3080 had its fair amount of gremlins.

Regards.

 

[MMorris666]

That I can't answer, as I have no experience with Navi 2 - I'll leave that to someone who knows about that better than I.

That said, the fan speeds still settle to something normal when in-game, correct? I'd be curious to see what the FPS rate is in the menu (when the fans go crazy) vs in-game.

i have the game fps counter on all the time, if i remember correctly when searching the fps is low like 60 or 70, when a game is found and you are loading in, it jumps up to 500 - 700 ! game starts and im 70- 140 hovering around the middle of that. yes i'm running it unlimited, it feels smother like that with my old hardware. but yeah, fans are normal in game, never ramp up.

 

[MMorris666]

I have a Liquid Devil 6900XT and just after I bought it, it started black-screening on me; really annoying. I'd pulled the DP cable out and plug it back in, and sometimes this would bring the picture back if only for a short while.

I eventually went out and purchased a VESA compliant DP cable and I've had no problems since.

i'm using hdmi, have it plugged in to a lg c1. the cable is certified hdmi 2.1

 

[TheAlmightyProo]

just had 1 day off.. got to have a play with it some more. i think i fixed the micro stutter in warzone. had hwinfo64 running while i played two games, temps said 75c with 102c hot spot! is the hot spot temp normal for these cards?

I read that for a 6800XT the hotspot is good up to 110C. Shouldn't think it'd be any less for a 6900XT. Further to that, my 6800XT (at 3440x1440) has exceeded 90C hotspot only once, reached and stuck at 104C even at lowest graphics preset playing a TBS demo (Warhammer 40K Battlesector) that was more than likely poorly optimised pre release run up. This bears out with main temp in that game at 85C when even Days Gone, Control and RE: Village stick under 75C, and hotspot maybe 20C higher at most.

I've had only one (minor, if annoying) issue. A driver one... the latest 21.6.1 update (the FSR one) introduced some screen tearing in Days Gone. Fixed it by capping fps down from 100 (game averages about 90) to 60. Will mess around to see at what point that begins. Other than that, all copacetic and I find old myth claims of AMD GPU's and software being bad just isn't the case either now or against Nvidia's record overall.

 

[TheAlmightyProo]

What manufacturer? Perhaps their design and thermal solution is <Mod Edit>, because the AMD latest are the cooler cards.

The one thing that screws all vendors on fans and temperatures is if you leave uncapped frame rate on games.

Unless you’re playing on tournaments and have adequate cooling, the cards will use 100% GPU to increase the frame rate, so if you cap the frame rate you’ll get better results.

This, definitely.

I tend to run a game's benchmark first (or failing that, look at a few review averages... they tend to be on ultra etc) then, after tweaking settings and running again, take the average and use that as a cap.
I first learned to do this by necessity using a gaming laptop for a while. They are so thin nowadays that even undervolting aso can't save high heat and noise. The same follows for desktops tbh though the margin isn't as great.
Some games that don't even necessarily need competition or shooter level fps (newer Total War games for example, which are greedy beasts) I cap even harder to smooth out the inevitable under load/heavy action drops.

 

[King_V]

i have the game fps counter on all the time, if i remember correctly when searching the fps is low like 60 or 70, when a game is found and you are loading in, it jumps up to 500 - 700 ! game starts and im 70- 140 hovering around the middle of that. yes i'm running it unlimited, it feels smother like that with my old hardware. but yeah, fans are normal in game, never ramp up.

Hmm, in that case, I'm not sure what to say. In my son's case, ramping up of the fans coincided with the frame-rate going sky high.

 

[MMorris666]

good news, after sorting out warzone i had a look at doom. when i start doom the game would run great for 30 seconds then my pc would restart. i was thinking maybe it was ether overheating or a power problem.
back story, my first pc i had two 980's in sli. they used 2 x 6 power connections. when i upgrade to a 2080 ti the 2080 came with two adapters, it was to 2 x 6 inputs to an 8 out (power). so i used the adapters. when i installed the 6900xt i just plugged in the same cables and added one 6+2. Jayz video on daisy chaining power cords i decided to swap out the cords. now the red devil says 900w minimum for psu but i read people saying a good 750w psu would be fine.
So i happened to have a platinum 850w psu spare. put that in and changed up the gpu cables. not sure if it was the psu or cables but now. i played warzone for several hours over the last couple of days, fans didn't ramp up once! the fps frame times are much more stable, more than i expected and doom and fallout 4 which were restarting my pc all work fine now! now everything is running like a dream. chuffed.
thanks for the help guys.