Defective Radeons slip past AMD

AMD is facing a recall on many Radeon cards, following up their detection of a glitch in diagnostic software. The glitch seems to have let their software “validate” certain Radeon HD units in the 2400 and 2600 series that were actually defective, resulting in the units being shipped out to vendors despite having flaws. Some of the vendors included Asustek, MSI and Gigabyte, whom have all supposedly reported the issue.

The cards are salvageable, but will still be facing a recall due to the process involved in repairing them:

Although the problem can be easily solved by reapplying the BIOS, because AMD's software did not detect the defect before shipping, the cards will now need to be returned to the makers to be restored. One first-tier maker has recalled over 20,000-30,000 units already, noted the sources.
Luckily for everyone involved, the number of cards that reached retail shelves and customer machines was very limited, the defect having been caught quickly and vendors being notified before it was too late.

For AMD's sake, let's hope this was an isolated incident.