Origin PC no longer sells AMD GPUs due to overheating, other technical issues

AMD has contracts to supply the APUs for the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 so they're not going to starve. Since I've never used one of their GPUs for gaming I can't comment on that but the bad driver situation is real. Some of the workstations at my job use Radeon HD cards and the older drivers were horrendous (maybe not so much now).
 
Well, I was really talking about the stuttering and stuff but the heat is a huge issue that sets the 7990 back.
Driver issues will almost always be forgiven, both by the end user and system builders simply because driver teams are fallible regardless of who cuts their paycheck, and the software environment is in a state of near constant change.
The bigger issue would be how well the IHV and the OEM's communicate and what systems are in place to catch support issues. Cost, staff cuts, and company reorganization/restructuring won't be helping I wouldn't think.
Lol I see what you mean, but we have to see how AMDs next gen competes before we can jump to conclusions that AMD stinks versus nVidia (most of the comments suggest this xD).
AMD's hardware products are generally fine and certainly no worse than Nvidia's. Consoles aren't really their issue either since Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are responsible for overall design and implementation. AMD's Achilles heel has always been the software infrastructure (or lack of). How much determination they put into this side of the business will be a determining factor when hardware reaches the state of diminishing returns - both from the end-users need for upgrade, and fabrication process cost.
 
"Origin says AMD's extremely relaxed attitude towards stability and driver updates on both desktop and mobile GPUs is also part of the problem."
I concur with this. AMD support attitude to rubbish drivers is a bit underwhelming. They released the following 13.9 WHQL and when people complained about substantial perf issues were told to upgrade to the beta or downgrade. They didn't really care.
 
AMD has had a reputation for hot and loud GPU's (with stock coolers) for years everywhere, both forums and review sites. I have countless graphs with them at the top (both idle and load), from the 5xxx series to the 7xxx series. It is mentioned they run hotter (sometimes over 80C) in just about every review I have ever read. Not as bad lately though.
Using the word magical to describe a known trait shows complete and utter shameful bias and renders (see what I did there :D ) such a comment useless.
Oh yea your one to talk about biased... Hot and loud, ill give you the loud because the 6990's were louder than any GPU I have ever heard in my life. The aspect of the singles being hot and louder than the equivalent Nvidia however, is a complete farce, my 580's were just as loud as a 6970 or if there was a different it was minor. Your comments are literally just summed up as "AMD sucks, Nvidia is better because my logic says so". Any card is loud and most review shows them to be about on par at max fan speed.

A driver won't be able to alter the laws of physics unfortunately. Dual GPU cards produce heat in prodigious quantities, and the HD 7990's cooler just isn't up to the task at the performance level set for it. It is the prime reason that the card throttles down and has minimal overclock headroom. TUL were well aware of this, hence the triple slot cooler. Note that the only other retail HD 7990's are also triple slot or liquid cooled (Ares II)

The triple slot coolers were the best yes, but the dual slot ones were fine and most tests showed better overall temps than you and most people give credit. So saying the temps were horribly is beyond me because it clearly shows some pretty low temps compared even to the titan and other single GPU cards (The lowest in that test showing to be the 7950).

Obviously Falcon Northwest, Maingear, iBuypower, and Origin lack your expertise. It's a wonder you aren't a household name.
"Rolls eyes" oh yea mister expert please enlighten us, so explain to me how This works just fine. Honestly, if your spending already lets say 1400 bucks on GPU's, I would hope at least some thought would go into cooling the computer. The cards run fine next to eachother, the only issue was that some of the exhaust could wind up in the top GPU 0 on card one from the lower card. If that became an issue, put a fan in to help, if your already planning on running a QuadFire of Quad SLI setup, why wouldn't you consider your options on cooling. The Reference 3 fan design from AMD was fine and did its job just like it was supposed to. The "Tul" designed cards and Ares 2 were better options overall, but the reference one was just fine and could be run without much worry.

I believe almost anyone on here could easily make a computer that would just be fan cooled and could cool off any configuration of cards in a machine, if the companies are selling inferior machines that are some how incapable of doing this, that's their fault. Who do I blame for my Dell XPS M1513 with the Core 2 Duo and 8600m for overheating problems on the GPU. Do I blame NVidia for the overheating GPU, or do I blame Dell how not compensating to up the build quality on their laptop and keep everything cool.

As for the stuttering issue, I once again flip the keyboard because im not even going back into that debate whether it was a big deal or not because its just going to be that same song and dance repeated.

AMD's hardware products are generally fine and certainly no worse than Nvidia's. Consoles aren't really their issue either since Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are responsible for overall design and implementation. AMD's Achilles heel has always been the software infrastructure (or lack of). How much determination they put into this side of the business will be a determining factor when hardware reaches the state of diminishing returns - both from the end-users need for upgrade, and fabrication process cost.
I will give you most of that, in the past AMD/ATI has been slow as *&!% when it came to releasing driver updates and such. However, since the HD 6XXX series, they have done nothing but shoot up and fix issues with that with even driver updates that have totaled to about 4 in the per 2 months since around 13.8.

The fact is though, this announcement is right before the R290X GPU has come out, and oddly enough they were not willing to wait to at least try it before stopping which means something up because from a business standpoint, that makes no sense.
 
You know what, I am just going to wait to see if there are any heating issues with the next-gen...
 
Has no one looked at the timeline of announcements, AMD announces their new line of Cards, Nvidia launches their 4K gaming initiative, people go, okay but AMD's new cards are going to be faster and better in every way, lets wait. Nvidia gets nervous, thinks of ways to undermine AMD, lets starts false rumors based on freak occurrences and get someone on board, maybe Origin, yeah. And voila Nvidia is shipping systems again... Shows Nvidia is nervous about AMD's announcement more than anything else in my opinion. Besides, who the hell cares about the current gen cards having issues when they're being replaced in a matter of weeks... And for the record, my 5870's in CF have never had any issues other than being a little loud, easy fix, space the cards out and add a fan in my drive bays. How is this not obvious to more people.
 
Has no one looked at the timeline of announcements, AMD announces their new line of Cards, Nvidia launches their 4K gaming initiative, people go, okay but AMD's new cards are going to be faster and better in every way, lets wait. Nvidia gets nervous, thinks of ways to undermine AMD, lets starts false rumors based on freak occurrences and get someone on board, maybe Origin, yeah. And voila Nvidia is shipping systems again... Shows Nvidia is nervous about AMD's announcement more than anything else in my opinion. Besides, who the hell cares about the current gen cards having issues when they're being replaced in a matter of weeks... And for the record, my 5870's in CF have never had any issues other than being a little loud, easy fix, space the cards out and add a fan in my drive bays. How is this not obvious to more people.
Another right on the money argument, exactly the point.

I'm the same way, I have not had any issues with my cards, a lot of this turns into just rumors started by the fanboys.
 
"Rolls eyes" oh yea mister expert please enlighten us, so explain to me how This works just fine.
Why would I need to enlighten you? The review link you've posted explains it perfectly......you did read it didn't you?
Our test system uses the ultra high end Asus Rampage IV Extreme. We installed both HD7990′s in adjacent slots on the motherboard. There were no problems initially however the fans on the top card quickly began to work overtime when we started the testing. The backplate on these cards does get quite hot under load.
In this configuration, the three fans on the top HD7990 were directly sucking in warm air radiated from the back plate on the lower card. The bottom card was working as expected, but the top card was running at around 93c under load. We needed to space the two cards out.
Tested configuration in a Lian Li PC-A77FR with three front fans and only two hard drives...and the cards spaced 4 slots apart - two clear expansion slots between the cards.
2-cards-spaced.jpg


Honestly, if your spending already lets say 1400 bucks on GPU's, I would hope at least some thought would go into cooling the computer
...and presumably a motherboard that allows that kind of separation between cards
The cards run fine next to eachother,
Yup, 93C is real comfortable.
 
...and presumably a motherboard that allows that kind of separation between cards
Yup, 93C is real comfortable.

My point was still there, I read the article and that putting them next to eachother without some sort of fan pushing some of the air they get warm. The cards are still next to each other, spacing out the cards is good for the temps, if your spending 1400 bucks on GPU's, why would you not think about cooling. If spacing helps the GPU's out, why wouldn't you do that. Also these people were able to do it with ease, so why cant these supposed big name companies do this if they were really having issues. Under the easy change of moving the cards, they ran cooler than the equivalent NVidia cards. I reiterate, I hope you would at least think about cooling cards of this magnitude before just slapping them into a system since your spending at least 1400 bucks (Actually 1200 with recent price change).

If were speaking of boards that don't support the extra amount of spaces, then heres the next solution, put a fan moving the air over the GPU's.
 
My point was still there,
What point? That you agree they run hot?
You will argue to the end of the earth and back then argue some more, when it comes to AMD you can just never admit it.
And don't waste your time calling me an Nvidia fanboy, I've already loudly and proudly stated that I am but at the same time I will admit to their shortcomings and believe me they have their fair share.
 
What point? That you agree they run hot?
You will argue to the end of the earth and back then argue some more, when it comes to AMD you can just never admit it.
When it comes to NVidia, your only argument is they are great because you said so, and unlike you, I actually own both sides and can prove it with ease.

They don't run hot, they run cooler than the equivalent card (IE 690). Tests prove this... you just wont admit it because it does not follow your fanboy logic.
You mean shoving hot air into a GPU makes it run hotter, no way!!!!! Try any GPU and start venting hot air into its intake and see what happens. The fact is, this tech review site managed to do something easily that supposedly all these computer companies are "Struggling" to do.
 
I had a HD4890 from powercolor and my mom has an Nvidia GTS250(still working). I have had issues with AMD HD4890 from powercolor. The cooling was best but just it's stated here, the drivers SUCKED. It's as if AMD sells you something, but after that, they are leaving you to hang out there. Nvidia has had issues but my moms card never failed. I'm not biasing, but I'd buy Nvidia as soon as possible if I could. The only thing that's holding me back is the price as I need the money for something better. Still I'm gathering anough money to buy it though. And AMD has let me down when they announced that their CPU's would be faster or just as fast as intel, but ultimately they were slow after all the marketing hype that was made. Who's not to say they would do the same with the new graphics-cards? AMD has recently only been working with a few software companies to optimize there performance to the cpu's and gpu's. Considering that NVidia is on par with the raw performance without extensively working together with those companies I'd say Nvidia is absolutely doing their best
 
They don't run hot, they run cooler than the equivalent card (IE 690). Tests prove this...
Actually, all the chart shows is how PowerTune throttles under Furmark. The HD 7990 is noted for its aggressive throttling under what AMD refer to as a "power virus".
If you're going to make a comparison, then either state that AMD card X runs cooler than Nvidia card Y under Furmark, or note the difference between loading for games and a synthetic benchmark.
My point was still there, I read the article and that putting them next to eachother without some sort of fan pushing some of the air they get warm. The cards are still next to each other, spacing out the cards is good for the temps
Except that Origin PC, like most other boutique system builders also includes PCI/PCI-E RAID cards and sound cards limiting options in both card placement and airflow.....there is also the consideration of stacking 3 or 4 reference design enthusiast class single GPU's (both options that Origin PC carry)- and OEM's invariably procure reference designs made by the IHV's principle ODM.
 
Actually, all the chart shows is how PowerTune throttles under Furmark. The HD 7990 is noted for its aggressive throttling under what AMD refer to as a "power virus".
If you're going to make a comparison, then either state that AMD card X runs cooler than Nvidia card Y under Furmark, or note the difference between loading for games and a synthetic benchmark.

Except that Origin PC, like most other boutique system builders also includes PCI/PCI-E RAID cards and sound cards limiting options in both card placement and airflow.....there is also the consideration of stacking 3 or 4 reference design enthusiast class single GPU's (both options that Origin PC carry)- and OEM's invariably procure reference designs made by the IHV's principle ODM.
I keep pointing directly to the review of this site, either way what I said was that comparatively, the GTX 690 ran hotter than the HD 7990 in the tests I mentioned above. But this is way off topic now at this point.

On the note of Origin PC and sound card/PCIE raid controllers, a Sound card in most cases is either USB, PCIE 1x, or PCI. A normal Motherboard that you would buy and get this video card like this has a PCI-E 1x above the graphics cards slots just for that. On the note of raid cards while I cant account for every situation off the top of my head, but if your referring to something like this, I don't see how having that space between them would interfere because even in the pic you showed with plenty of room to put something in between.

If were speaking about 4 way configs or 3 way on cards on air, neither solution is going to have a problem running in SLI/CFX right next to eachother in the reference designs, ive seen plenty. Though in all cases, you still have to put some air moving around the cards or else it may become an issue because that much heat from any cards all sitting around does tend to cycle.

But anyway, either way you want to look at it, Origin should not have any trouble with "Temps" and "Overheating" no matter which brand of card it is. Almost any tech person on this site could find an easy solution if heat became an issue. So if they were releasing computers with overheating problems, that's their own fault and not the GPU's because it means there was a lack of testing before hand (This is assuming of course they are telling the truth).
 
I keep pointing directly to the review of this site, either way what I said was that comparatively, the GTX 690 ran hotter than the HD 7990 in the tests I mentioned above. But this is way off topic now at this point.
It most certainly is.
The point isn't necessarily, cooling...nor drivers...nor hardware. The point I was, and am making was that OEM's complained publicly about AMD's hardware and support. OEM's would not voice publicly unless they were dissatisfied with AMD's initial level of support of their situation, therefore the public face is the tip of the iceberg of the relationship between the IHV and the OEM.

BTW: There is an update and clarification of comments made today:
"The decision to take AMD GPU’s off the web was made based on support. More Specifically, support from AMD to Origin, and Origin to our customers.
Take their last chipset announcement for example. It was another hardware representative that informed us of the new Hawaii chipset. AMD never told us anything about it, nor shared a road map outlining its future integration. When we did get with our AMD representative, we were told that there was a new chipset launching, and we could watch the event live and get answers to our questions.
We also asked for samples to start our research and development process, something that is standard in the industry for bleeding edge integrators, and we were met with resistance there... When they did agree to send samples it was for [two] R9 270’s, rather than the R9 280's or 290's that we would be more likely to offer...
Moreover, this wasn’t the first time AMD had done something like this to us. Support from AMD to Origin hasn’t been where it should be or up to par like we get from other vendors. In my opinion it's due to our size. We don’t move enough AMD product for them to worry about us. You would think they would work with us to help grow the Origin-AMD business relationship."
and Puget Systems failure rate analysis would tend to add credence to the claims:

Jon Bach, president and founder of Seattle’s Puget Systems, provided a cornucopia of reliability data culled from testing of 5698 units. Here’s what he had to say via email:
”It is hard to quantify customer experience, but one thing I can quantify is reliability. How many have failed? Here’s a report from the last 3 years.​
  • Nvidia: 5.36% total failures (in our testing + in the field)
  • AMD: 8.89% total failures (in our testing + in the field)
But more important than failure rate is how many failed in our customer hands? We do a lot of testing here to weed out as many bad cards as possible in our build process. Here’s how many have failed in the field over the last 3 years:
  • Nvidia: 2.42% failures in the field
  • AMD: 3.23% failures in the field
Here’s that same info, over the last 1 year only:
  • Nvidia: 4.95% total failures (in our testing + in the field)
  • AMD: 7.79% total failures (in our testing + in the field)
  • Nvidia: 1.02% failures in the field
  • AMD: 3.25% failures in the field
So yes, AMD does have a higher failure rate, but nothing that puts up such a big red flag that I would want to drop their product.”
Bach also wrote that he believed Nvidia’s marketing team is superior to AMD’s, as is its engineering and sales support for resellers.
 
It most certainly is.
The point isn't necessarily, cooling...nor drivers...nor hardware. The point I was, and am making was that OEM's complained publicly about AMD's hardware and support. OEM's would not voice publicly unless they were dissatisfied with AMD's initial level of support of their situation, therefore the public face is the tip of the iceberg of the relationship between the IHV and the OEM.

BTW: There is an update and clarification of comments made today:

and Puget Systems failure rate analysis would tend to add credence to the claims:
Well heres my opinion on that matter:
Many have claimed issues to the "Problem" of the 7990 overheating and most claims when found are saying that the First GPU (0) is the one that gets hot. The problem is that most sites like ibuypower said they could not find a solution when even review sites found it a relatively easy fix IF they had the issue. Saying that overheating was a primary cause for this from Origin is complete garbage (Keeping it G rated).

As for what you have shown below, it seems by THEIR testing, there seems to be a higher failure rate of up to 3% difference. Not much to say the least of course, but there seems to be a difference. However, I don't see that any company would drop an entire GPU line simply because of a 3% at most difference in failure rates.

The OEM support and the whole not showing them of an R90x or anything above R70 GPU is not that crazy a thing. I mean they have been keeping this GPU under wraps for awhile, letting the OEM mess with them and possibly leak out information is always a concern as both sides only like to leak what they want to be leaked.

The timing for this is too much and just adds the cherry to the top of the sundae, the fact is no matter what anyone says, the R90X and R90 GPU have bolstered tons of publicity and many enthusiasts are anxiously waiting its release. Dropping an entire GPU line right before its release and saying we will no longer offer those is going to be a heavy hit only to them as people wanting a computer with these GPU's will look elsewhere. There has to be more to this than meets the eye and honestly there feels to be at least SOME NVidia persuasion involved as dropping half the GPU market is a giant leap no matter who you are.
 
If Charlie is right, looks like someone will be fired at NVidia sales and marketing department... at least as a scape goat.
http://semiaccurate.com/2013/10/07/nvidias-program-get-oems-like-origin-pc-dump-amd-called-tier-0/
Ummm what? They actually got caught and called out on this...
godot-spit.gif

Wow that's an interesting ummm turnabout... I mean if this article is accurate...
Either way, this just got very interesting... (Im laughing my &%$ off at two specific posters on this part).

So basically, its as follow, apparently NVidia devised a plan to give a bonus to vendors who would drop AMD products from their line up and to bad mouth AMD components to discredit AMD and damage its reputation if I am reading the article correctly. Wow...

Although, there should not be a scapegoat as I doubt that this one individual was totally responsible for this whole thing.
 
Whoa that was straightforward statement, either bold or stupid if I may say. I've been using both nvidia and ati/amd and both are problematic. my gt520M got toasted just from regular gaming and my hd7770 died out of no reason.

I think both are the same since they're both are mortal thing
 
Wonder how much it cost nvidia to 'win' the business... Reminds me of intel's 'practices' when AMD was on top.

I do not know if nVidia payed-to-win but the issues described above sum up very well my experience with AMD and before that ATI.
I am currently on the market for a new GPU and I will give AMD the benefit of the doubt and see what they come up with their high end cards. But if they don't get their act together when it comes to drivers I will get another nVidia card.
 
I guess Origin PC just confirmed to the rest of the world that they can't build PC's as I don't see anyone else with such complaints...
System builders weren't particularly happy with AMD's (non) handling of the HD 7990's issues. So this has probably been brewing for a while. While the HD 7990 is a niche product, it also represents the (supposed) pinnacle of the GPU market. What looks like a glaring lack of support from AMD towards both their halo product and likely their biggest customers is not generally sound business practice, especially with these cards being these OEM's bread and butter.
The folks at iBuyPower chimed in next, reporting that dual Radeon HD 7990s are not available due to driver issues encountered during qualification. Additionally, they drew the same conclusion as I did in my launch coverage: 7990s are simply not designed to play well with other components in the same enclosure.
Kelt Reeves of Falcon Northwest sent out the third (and most detailed) feedback message, stating that Falcon hasn't qualified single- or dual-card Radeon HD 7990 configurations because they failed on the bench. His response warrants a quote:
"For single-card, the issue had to do with the cards warping after heating up, causing their cooling fans to rub on the shroud and creating an awful racket. We don?t know if that issue was limited to our samples, and that probably could?ve been fixed with a retention bracket we asked AMD for.
He [Chris Morley, CTO and VP of technical marketing at Maingear.] did acknowledge that there's an airflow issue, that Maingear isn't particularly happy with AMD's design from an integration standpoint, but that the company welcomes the opportunity to address problems like this.
[Source]

FWIW's AMD could have avoided the issue by simply going with the TUL triple-slot design for the card, but AMD's need to retain the dual slot format, and desire to retain brand commonality and recognition with the pro cards overrode the practical considerations.

Occam's Razor or a OEM/Nvidia conspiracy....Knowing how the internet works, I'm stocking up on tinfoil before the shelves are empty!
I thought it was common knowledge that AMD cards are substandard - what part of "you get what you pay for" is so hard to understand for most people? AMD themselves obviously agree, since they've dropped the prices of all their cards to reflect market value. The main reason to use an AMD card is to hit a certain price point while claiming a certain level of game performance - the fact that the card runs hot, has driver issues, or outright fails should not be a big surprise since YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR. Can't wait to see how fast prices fall on their "new" series of junk. Thanks for the great post...
 
I thought it was common knowledge that AMD cards are substandard - what part of "you get what you pay for" is so hard to understand for most people? AMD themselves obviously agree, since they've dropped the prices of all their cards to reflect market value. The main reason to use an AMD card is to hit a certain price point while claiming a certain level of game performance - the fact that the card runs hot, has driver issues, or outright fails should not be a big surprise since YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR. Can't wait to see how fast prices fall on their "new" series of junk. Thanks for the great post...
OMG, there are people out there with common sense! AMD is a second rate GPU and price their products accordingly. It's ok AMD fanny's, everything will be ok. You get what you pay for. 2nd rate hardware that runs hot & loud, skips around and crashes due to 2nd rate drivers AMD have been working on for 5 years. The end!
Boom goes the dynamite!
 
OMG, there are people out there with common sense! AMD is a second rate GPU and price their products accordingly. It's ok AMD fanny's, everything will be ok. You get what you pay for. 2nd rate hardware that runs hot & loud, skips around and crashes due to 2nd rate drivers AMD have been working on for 5 years. The end!
Boom goes the dynamite!
Yea its almost as bad as this...oh wait thats a GTX 590.
Your not worth my or anyones time, just keep sucking on the green sucker your accustomed to.

It seems this debate is getting more and more interesting, the fact is that theres this new info about the whole debate, I guess we will have to wait till more information comes to light, but depending on what we see will change the outcome significantly.
 
I thought it was common knowledge that AMD cards are substandard - what part of "you get what you pay for" is so hard to understand for most people? AMD themselves obviously agree, since they've dropped the prices of all their cards to reflect market value. The main reason to use an AMD card is to hit a certain price point while claiming a certain level of game performance - the fact that the card runs hot, has driver issues, or outright fails should not be a big surprise since YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR. Can't wait to see how fast prices fall on their "new" series of junk. Thanks for the great post...

Highly debate "junk". Most of the cards of the last 2 generations do not suffer from heat issues particularly in single GPU configs. The drivers are flakey but you know what? The latest WHQL NVIDIAs tanked perf for BF4 beta on a GTX 680 so are they junk too? That was only about a week ago?

I'm happy to put up with AMDs flakey drivers than put up with NVIDIAs monopolistic BS practices like this (bribing suppliers) and them disabling physx when non-NVIDIA GPUs are present.
 
Back