[engadget] Origin PC drops AMD graphics options due to feedback, support woes

[YBS1]

Isn't this because Origin buyers have close to zero skills related to hardware and software?

Yet oddly enough, the nVidia solutions worked for those very same people. Strange....

 

[AdamK47]

I've bounced back and forth between AMD and nVidia (and 3Dfx when they existed) over the years and I've found that nVidia does their due diligence on the software side. I've had three 7970s for a year and would always expect AMD to bungle something in the drivers when a new game hits release.

 

[Teizo]

I've bounced back and forth between AMD and nVidia (and 3Dfx when they existed) over the years and I've found that nVidia does their due diligence on the software side. I've had three 7970s for a year and would always expect AMD to bungle something in the drivers when a new game hits release.

Off topic...I looked at your sig and just about choked on my Coke Zero.

 

[akugami]

Yeah, I had the same thought at first. How could EA's Origin drop support for Radeons, especially when EA has their arm elbow deep into console gaming's buttocks?

You're not the only one thinking EA's Origin...after reading that it's some small time OEM, my next thought was "who cares?"

EDIT: Further research leads me to conclude that this is more of a marketing campaign by Origin in alliance with nVidia than any real issues.

 

[Paratus]

The one time I tried AMD back in the day I had a ton of issues. Two Asus HD 4870 Dark Knight video cards in Crossfire.

Flickering textures in the Witcher and Neverwinter Nights 2 and GPUs not down clocking in desktop was what forced me to return them. Also, I could only get one of my cards to overclock in Crossfire mode, instead of two.

Needless to say that left a bad taste in my mouth. But that was a long time ago, so I'm sure AMD has improved a lot since then..

However you can't convince me that AMD has the same support as NVidia. The fact that Crossfire has been broken for so many years is proof of that imo..

AMD needs to change their image, and even though Origin PC isn't a big PC vendor, this doesn't help at all.

Interesting. I on the other hand have never use Nvdia in my gaming rig as they have never had a compelling product when I was looking to buy.

In 04 I got a 9600XT when the FX5000 series crapfest was going on.
In late 06 NV refused to sell any decent card with AGP so I bought an X1950Pro.
In early 10 I could have bought an overpriced DX10 GTX285 instead I got the faster DX11 HD5870.
Finally last year I upgraded to a 7970Ghz although technically that was a gift. It still was the fastest single GPU at the time.

 

[KingFatty]

Wow, anything negative toward AMD just brings out the paranoia. Seems logical to me that a small manufacturer would simplify its manufacturing and support by going with only one vendor. Personally I have an AMD card and have had no problems with it, but nvidia's multicard setup tends to be more trouble free and optimus still trumps AMDs switchable graphics in mobile. Dont really see any justification for a bribe here. You can always make up stuff if you want I guess.

What raises my curiosity is the odd wording used to make this announcement.

If you assume Origin wants to bring in the most customers, then they would probably not make statements that anger/inflame AMD customers. I'm thinking like they would be so politically correct and just stick to the 'we no longer offer AMD' type of approach.

But instead, they stuck their necks out, and they characterized what it means to have a good computing experience. They made an opinion-based statement that is not true for every user. Why would a company ever deviate like that?

I just think that if you were streamlining your product line, you would use neutral factual terminology, in the hopes that you can not insult potential customers? So, by violating that principle, do we assume the company is completely stupid and not interested in maximizing profit? Or do we assume the company has a competing motive toward maximizing profit by other means?

 

[RussianSensation]

It took Origin 15+ years to collect feedback on ATI/AMD based GPUs? In other words, a firm that sold high-end PC hardware put up with customer complaints and spent financial resources to maintain more customer support/technical staff for that long and finally they threw in the towel?

Do some of you realize that small firms are run by entrepreneurs that are very much in touch with their business. A small business owner would analyze their cash outflows and look at the cost/benefit analysis every single year in very great detail because small firms can't withstand economic downturns and declines in profitability as well as larger firms can. If the cost of dealing with technical issues from both a financial and labour point of view was very high, the management would have been taking steps to minimize these costs a long time ago. There is just no way they would have waited 15 years.

More likely than not they are just making higher margins on NV's products since now NV's flagship cards sell for much higher than AMD cards -- $650-1000. If you are a boutique PC builder, your goal is to sell your products for as high as possible and to maximize profits. It makes no sense then to ditch 780/Titans and keep selling HD4870/4890/HD5870/6970/7970s if you can sell $650-1000 GPUs in SLI bundles. This decision was likely made before they knew AMD would price R9 290X.

Being sponsored by NV for BattleBox also implies they likely get a very nice discount on 780/Titan SLI systems, something I bet AMD isn't providing with R9 290X cards to them. This might have been the final blow.

From Origin's point of view:

1) Keeping all systems to NV's cards simplifies their technical support
2) Keeping all systems to NV increases their ASPs/revenue and likely profit margins
3) Supporting point #2, now that NV carved out a new $1000 niche GPU pricing segment, this is unlikely to go away while AMD publicly stated they will not make $1000 GPUs in the near future. If you are Origin, this alone is incentive enough to move away from AMD entirely and push $1000 Titan/690 and their 20nm successors.

Another point, if AMD/ATI's GPUs were so broken for 15 years, why is it NV had faced so many issues (and that includes IQ problems for tri-linear textures / anisotropic filtering) during FX5000 series generation against 9700/9800 series and ATI destroyed them during X1900 vs. GeForce 7 showdown? For anyone who had a chance to use both during those eras, it is impossible to make any case for NV. GeForce 7 also had inferior IQ to ATI, especially AA. Finally, if AMD's GPUs were so broken, how did they gain market share during HD5000 series generation?

I can probably guess that 90% of the people who used NV hardware have used GeForce 5 and GeForce 7 despite those 2 generations ATi/AMD having superior product without a single doubt from both a performance and IQ points of view. What's consistent over the years is that NV having IQ issues, SLI also having scaling issues as tested by Computebase, GameGPU, Xbitlabs and other sites over the years, these are very often dismissed by NV users.

I still remember switching from ATI to 6600 and to 8800GTS and being in shock at how awful NV's 2d IQ was.

I think this decision was made mostly for profitability and ASP prices and Origin's business strategy much more aligned with selling $1,000 flagship GPUs that AMD does not provide. They cannot state this publicly which is why they made up another reason, but I do not believe it's the primary reason they are switching.

This is actually no different than Alienware selling flagship NV cards in their notebooks. If you can sell GTX780M for $400-500 more than HD8970, as a business you will want to do this. Why would you want to sell a product with 85% of the performance but has substantially lower profit margins? You have a lot less incentive to do that.

 

[Pariah]

How many times are you going to misquote the 15 years of experience statement that Origin PC made in one post? That statement in no way implied that it took them 15 years to identify a problem that has existed the whole time. The main problem with AMD cards which pretty much everyone in the industry is familiar with now, is with multi-GPU setups. This issue only surfaced in the last couple of years, which by your own description of small businesses doing yearly reviews of their financials, would make Origin's announcement well within an expected time frame.

I agree with most of your other analysis, but it was largely negated by your persistent misuse of Origin's 15 year statement.

Why would you want to sell a product with 85% of the performance but has substantially lower profit margins? You have a lot less incentive to do that.

Because the increase in volume will balance out the lower profit margins. Business 101.

 

[sandorski]

Who?

 

[SPBHM]

Isn't AMD GPU the choice of all the current consoles?

I think there is a huge difference, it's AMD IP, MS and Sony have control over manufacturing the chips, and software.


anyway, I'm not surprised, Nvidia clearly have better quality support/software, just look at how AMD have performed on more unusual conditions, like OpenGL (remember Rage?) or some DX9 games, multi GPU/monitors...

a lot less reports of "flicker, corruption and stutters" from the other side..

but from my own experience I had a lot more hardware failures with NV (their 2007-2008 cards were extremely bad for me)

also if you are trying to sell overpriced PCs, the Nvidia brand helps.

 

[3DVagabond]

I think there is a huge difference, it's AMD IP, MS and Sony have control over manufacturing the chips, and software.

No. They are APU's w/86 CPU's in them. AMD can not license someone else to make X86 CPU's. AMD sells the chips to M$/Sony. They don't license the IP.

 

[SPBHM]

No. They are APU's w/86 CPU's in them. AMD can not license someone else to make X86 CPU's. AMD sells the chips to M$/Sony. They don't license the IP.

well, what I know is that there is a lot of custom design and control from both Sony and MS, something "origin pc" does not have, still makes consoles irrelevant for this discussion.

I thought the new gen deal was closer to the old gen, when both companies licensed IP and had a lot of control over the manufacturing, quality (and the 360 was a disgrace for many years with GPU solder problems or whatever that was lol)

 

[Jacky60]

The fact that Crossfire has been broken for so many years is proof of that imo..

If only I'd known crossfire was broken before I successfully used 4890 crossfire, upgraded to 5970/5870 tri-fire then had three years of gaming pleasure with 6990 quadfire.
I'm just really pissed off to discover this now after all these years enjoying super high frame rates on a broken system.

 

[Jacky60]

They are part of the Nvidia BattleBox program:

http://www.maximumpc.com/origin_pc_nvidia_team_deliver_4k-ready_battlebox_gaming_machines2013

And here we have the real reason for this so called news!

 

[wand3r3r]

And here we have the real reason for this so called news!

This is just a cheap (sponsored) publicity stunt.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Who?

A company that makes custom systems for people who can't/don't want do it themselves got tired of dealing with the many quirks that come with AMD graphics based systems.


Shouldn't be any surprise to anyone here that a boutique vendor's customers have made it possible for them to no longer carry AMD graphics cards due to their lack of knowledge when it comes to PC's in the first place.

Personally I can work around and troubleshoot the problems I run into with my AMD system, but I'd rather not. Now take that and apply it to people who are basically one step above Dell customers and imagine how they feel about having to google for help, or take it to a repair shop, or send it back for warranty service.

Some people except a better product when they pay what could be to them, quite a large amount of money for an entertainment PC.

If I was one of their customers and purchased a system like mine from them for two grand and the drivers were exposed like they were I'd be on the phone for a refund.

 

[Subyman]

I had well documented HDMI issues with my 7970. It required a registry hack to get them working right. Swapped to 760 and haven't had any issues. My 470 and 680 never had issues but I remember problems with my 4870 before those. I'll probably be sticking to nvidia.

 

[Imouto]

Yet oddly enough, the nVidia solutions worked for those very same people. Strange....

And would been even better off with a console.

 

[Carfax83]

If only I'd known crossfire was broken before I successfully used 4890 crossfire, upgraded to 5970/5870 tri-fire then had three years of gaming pleasure with 6990 quadfire.
I'm just really pissed off to discover this now after all these years enjoying super high frame rates on a broken system.

Yep, enjoy your super high frame rates and your dropped frames.. :whiste:

 

[frozentundra123456]

And would been even better off with a console.

Don't see why someone who buys a prebuilt system would necessarily be better off with a console. It might cost more, but after all the end product, if you choose carefully, will be the same whether you build it yourself or get it from a vendor.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Prebuilts are not part of the glorious PC gaming master race and as such belong with the dirty console peasants.

 

[chimaxi83]

Yep, enjoy your super high frame rates and your dropped frames.. :whiste:

Spoken like a truly clueless Nvidia user who's only experience with CF is what he reads online :thumbsup:

 

[Jacky60]

Yep, enjoy your super high frame rates and your dropped frames.. :whiste:

Now I'm even more [redacted] angry. I've been dropping frames as well?
It doesn't say anything about dropping frames on the boxes and I'm starting to feel like a whole 'thread' of my life just disappeared and I was unaware of it!

Profanity isn't allowed in the technical forums.
-- stahlhart

 

[Carfax83]

Spoken like a truly clueless Nvidia user who's only experience with CF is what he reads online :thumbsup:

Location AMD HQ tells me everything I need to know :sneaky:

And I've tried Crossfire, so I'm not simply relying on everything I've read online.

 

[boxleitnerb]

Spoken like a truly clueless Nvidia user who's only experience with CF is what he reads online :thumbsup:

It's no secret that SLI has always been more smooth than CF. Many people and reviews have said this time and again. Most people have no direct comparison, thus they can easily get used to stuff and don't see a problem.

With the at times dramatic increase in playability with the new frame pacing, I wonder how people could have missed the stuttering before.