AMD accused of "Golden Sample" on 290X given to reviewers, retail bought cards throttling

[andybird123]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-r9-290-review-benchmark,3659-2.html

http://techreport.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=90345


Enjoy ;D

 

[andybird123]

...snip..

So because 2 reviewers got duds at retail and one site got lucky, that means there's nothing to it?
Even of not golden samples, at the very least people are having issues with throttling, which people should want to know about for RMA purposes, no?

AMD have said the retail copy that toms have is faulty, hence the issue, so we should stick our heads in the sand and not make people aware about a potential for getting a faulty card and what to do about it?

 

[andybird123]

All I can say is we had two press samples.

One did 1160 core region, the other 1175-1200, both with Asus BIOS flashed. Memory wise they both did 6400-6600MHz.

Sapphire (Asus BIOS) R290X did 1200 core easy and 6400MHz RAM.
Asus R290X did 1200-1220 core and 6600-6800MHz RAM.

Both better than press samples.
None of our cards experienced throttling in testing even with all cards in quiet mode at stock.

This isn't about overclocking, obviously results will vary when they are pushed... the reviewers are saying that the samples on stock settings attained 1ghz and stuck there on stock settings, take it out of the box and it runs all day at 1ghz... retail bought, same test, throttles to 700mhz

Note to all; *I'm* not accusing AMD of anything... 2 reviewers are, and they are asking for consumers help to do a wider test to ascertain what the chances of getting a problem card are

So based on your massive sample of 3, you think there is something to it?

Not my sample, just relaying information as it was given to me by the media, people are free to infer their own conclusions

 

[andybird123]

Well said.

Andy forgot this part as well.



If anything Toms probably had a faulty card.

Which I already posted
Nice try matt

 

[andybird123]

doesn't unique mean 1, so 2 would in fact not be unique, by definition

and being unique, you decide to issue a patch just in case there are other unique cards out there

 

[andybird123]

The thread had one intention and it's mission accomplished as far as I'm concerned.

There was no outcry when it was picked up on Kepler ages ago.

It's getting tiresome as well when opinions differ to individuals that the forum is labelled as Amd fanboy bias.

oh come on tommy

the kepler boost / throttling was jumped all over on this forum at the time

and the same people leveling insults at me purely for posting a link, with the exact same thread title as it was presented to me, are the same people who positively jump with glee when they get to post links about nvidia

the hypocrisy is pretty funny

 

[andybird123]

Nvm, fair enough Petey

 

[andybird123]

Steam stats attempt to show the breakdown of GPUs in peoples PCs and it has a massive margin of error. On board Intel GPUs and even APUs are recorded as the primary gaming GPU when in fact they aren't. Unless anyone wants to argue that intel has a 16% market share in gaming GPUs?

Lets face it, a lot of the games on steam are not very demanding, it would not surprise me if about that many people are using integrated graphics to play some of these games

 

[andybird123]

The whole "fine for Nvidia, terrible for AMD" thing is tedious and daft. Third party cooled 780gtx's massively outperform default 780gtx's, they throttle less at stock, they overclock further, they are quieter and the keep the temps down. Why is this fine for Nvidia but AMD make a cooler that has all the exact same attributes(while also not massively overcharging you for the same performance level) and it's terrible?

it's not apples for apples though, the AMD cooler is much louder than the Nvidia one at equivalent (e.g. non-throttling) speeds, and the Nvidia card throttles less than the AMD one at stock speeds

in the same vein, lots of people here, who attacked nvidia for throttling or for hot and noisy cards (e.g. the 480, reference 670) are now regurgitating AMD's line about 95C being fine and cheap loud cooler is ok because card is cheap, and throttling is ok because just put up with the noise if don't want throttling

you can't have it both ways, people are entitled to voice their opinion, throwing insults at people for doing so is not ok

 

[andybird123]

Actually, thank you Andy for bringing this to our attention.

Sorry that these people are pointing fingers at you - making us aware of those articles *from two different sites* was really appreciated.


I hope that we can see the performance gains now that AMD have worked on it, I think in time the results should bring the performance back on par to press sample. Don't like that the cost of that is higher fan speed but to be honest, I am thinking of getting two and throwing it under water and that'll sort it out!

you are welcome, if this has been in any way useful to people in knowing a potential pitfall before buying then it is worth it, I wish someone had done the same thing for me before I bought a 7970m

the same problem with the 670 reference was well documented so a bit surprised that people have been so hostile in getting the same news about the 290/X
edit; wrong choice of words, not surprised, par for the course on this forum

I'm quite sure that the custom cooler cards won't have this issue, or as you say, just throw them under water and problem solved