Origin PC drops AMD graphics options

My impression is that AMD has been very slowly closing the gap with Nvidia in their driver support. So I find this news surprising. Anyway, folks with a modest degree of technical skills get a better bang for the buck with AMD. Non-techies are better off with Nvidia or console gaming.
 
Lol.... their choice...

I'd guess they're getting "improved" discounts on other hardware for issuing this statement.

/shrug
 
If they had just dropped them without saying anything it would seem more normal but the pr from this article is kind of shady.
 
As much as I've never experienced these same issues with either myself or my customers, I hope this gets AMD to focus even more attention on thier driver teams. The quality and urgency of their software has improved greatly in the last ~two years, I hope to see it keep improving. Criticism never feels good, but it is never a bad thig.
 
biggles said:
Anyway, folks with a modest degree of technical skills get a better bang for the buck with AMD. Non-techies are better off with Nvidia or console gaming.
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That's probably the most false/fanboy statement I've ever read.
 
I wonder if the big PC makers like Dell that use AMD products have similar complaints, or it is just those high-end botique makers that would see the complaints based on expected performance? I put 7950's in all of my friends gaming computers and they haven't had any problems yet, they aren't the most tech savvy either.

biggles said:
My impression is that AMD has been very slowly closing the gap with Nvidia in their driver support. So I find this news surprising. Anyway, folks with a modest degree of technical skills get a better bang for the buck with AMD. Non-techies are better off with Nvidia or console gaming.
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What does this even mean? What a nonsense statement.

fightingfi said:
cough * nvidia pay off * cough cough :rolleyes:
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And AMD didn't just pay millions for game deals? Pot, meet kettle. That is assuming things actually happened with money involved like that.
 
KazeoHin said:
As much as I've never experienced these same issues with either myself or my customers, I hope this gets AMD to focus even more attention on thier driver teams. The quality and urgency of their software has improved greatly in the last ~two years, I hope to see it keep improving. Criticism never feels good, but it is never a bad thig.
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I've seen their (ATI and AMD) driver quality go up and down repeatedly. It is obvious that this is a result of changing management within ATI/AMD.

Back in the original Radeon days, their card was competitive and had great features, even better quality than the competing Nvidia card at the same performance level, but their drivers sucked bad. Things started improving by the third generation Radeons and by the time the 9700 came out, they were pretty great.

When the 9700 came out, the competition from Nvidia was the horrible 5800 series. Nvidia tried and tried to get some decent performance out of it, but never really succeeded. ATI started slacking on their drivers, cutting costs to milk the market, to the point that the X series sucked badly simply because of their drivers. Nvidia followed up with their 6800 series and won back the crown for best cards.

ATI then improved things again to the point that the 4800 series was again a good card with good drivers. They were in a dead heat with Nvidia's 7800 series for top notch, and their drivers were again good quality and allowed for good competition. However, when they released their 9.12 driver, everything went to heck in a handbasket, fast. The 2010 drivers were among the worst I have every seen from them. I'm thinking that's when AMD really started interfering with the ATI driver team, pushing for more features while disregarding quality.

We're just seeing another upswing in their driver quality, but if things repeat the past, they'll start going downhill before they actually manage to really fix things and get to be top notch, or they'll get there and screw it up again. After I got rid of my 4870X2, I swore I would not buy another of their top notch cards.

I do still, however, buy their low end cards and APUs, as they seem to do a better job supporting those than the higher end stuff. I built my Dad a FX4130 box with a 6450 video card and my Mom an A4-3400. Mom does little more than web surfing, and my Dad uses quite a bit of Office stuff, but nothing demanding on the graphics card, so they do fine with these little machines. AMD does low end well, but kinda fails in the higher markets. Figure them on being the A-10 of the graphics world. Funny they'd have an APU with that designation.
 
PRIME1 said:
One card is hardly a new lineup.
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We all know you're not the smartest crayon in the box, but I sort of expected you to be able to do basic arithmetic.

PRIME1( | { R9 290x, R9 290, R7 260 } | ) = 1?
 
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dgingeri said:
I've seen their (ATI and AMD) driver quality go up and down repeatedly. It is obvious that this is a result of changing management within ATI/AMD.

Back in the original Radeon days, their card was competitive and had great features, even better quality than the competing Nvidia card at the same performance level, but their drivers sucked bad. Things started improving by the third generation Radeons and by the time the 9700 came out, they were pretty great.

When the 9700 came out, the competition from Nvidia was the horrible 5800 series. Nvidia tried and tried to get some decent performance out of it, but never really succeeded. ATI started slacking on their drivers, cutting costs to milk the market, to the point that the X series sucked badly simply because of their drivers. Nvidia followed up with their 6800 series and won back the crown for best cards.

ATI then improved things again to the point that the 4800 series was again a good card with good drivers. They were in a dead heat with Nvidia's 7800 series for top notch, and their drivers were again good quality and allowed for good competition. However, when they released their 9.12 driver, everything went to heck in a handbasket, fast. The 2010 drivers were among the worst I have every seen from them. I'm thinking that's when AMD really started interfering with the ATI driver team, pushing for more features while disregarding quality.

We're just seeing another upswing in their driver quality, but if things repeat the past, they'll start going downhill before they actually manage to really fix things and get to be top notch, or they'll get there and screw it up again. After I got rid of my 4870X2, I swore I would not buy another of their top notch cards.

I do still, however, buy their low end cards and APUs, as they seem to do a better job supporting those than the higher end stuff. I built my Dad a FX4130 box with a 6450 video card and my Mom an A4-3400. Mom does little more than web surfing, and my Dad uses quite a bit of Office stuff, but nothing demanding on the graphics card, so they do fine with these little machines. AMD does low end well, but kinda fails in the higher markets. Figure them on being the A-10 of the graphics world. Funny they'd have an APU with that designation.
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I definately see your point, but AMD is under new management and so far that new crew has done some awesome things. AMD has a reputation for bad driver support: I know this because I talk face-to-face with customers on a daily basis on what graphics setups they want in their new gaming systems. There is a significant lean towards Nvidia because of the perceived quality difference. Though I don't agree with the quality difference myself, Nvidia have done an amazing job of building up this perceived superiority. The new management at AMD are not blind to this. They have changed the driver team, the marketing team, and hell, they even changed the naming scheme they've used for nearly a decade. I hope this all culminates into a significantly more competitive market.
 
A press release gets their name in the news, while a silent update to their website / storefront will attract a random post or two.

Are you guys really this naive to marketing?
 
DarkStryke said:
A press release gets their name in the news, while a silent update to their website / storefront will attract a random post or two.

Are you guys really this naive to marketing?
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I'd say that was the point.
 
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rinaldo00 said:
Well, well, take a look at this article from 3 days ago.

Origin PC Partners with NVIDIA to Provide Official “Battlebox” 4K Gaming Desktop
http://www.legitreviews.com/origin-...e-official-battlebox-4k-gaming-desktop_125362

Convient huh? ;)
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OMG! :eek: These people have no shame!

Aren't they the old Alienware guys? How low they have fallen...

That's just bad business... partnering up can happen, but dissing somebody like that.... it'll catch-up with you eventually...
 
This decision was based on a combination of many factors including customer experiences, GPU performance/drivers/stability, and requests from our support staff. Based on our 15+ years of experience building and selling award winning high-performance PCs, we strongly feel the best PC gaming experience is on NVIDIA GPUs.
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yap, agree with them.
 
I have a feeling that Nvidia's bank account is now a little smaller. Just a hunch. ;)
 
rinaldo00 said:
Well, well, take a look at this article from 3 days ago.

Origin PC Partners with NVIDIA to Provide Official “Battlebox” 4K Gaming Desktop
http://www.legitreviews.com/origin-...e-official-battlebox-4k-gaming-desktop_125362

Convient huh? ;)
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So its fine when AMD does it but not Nvidia? Who cares who they pay off to use their products, use the one you like. I personally wish AMD would secure more deals/exclusives, they seem to be working it pretty well right now.
 
LigTasm said:
So its fine when AMD does it but not Nvidia? Who cares who they pay off to use their products, use the one you like. I personally wish AMD would secure more deals/exclusives, they seem to be working it pretty well right now.
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It is one thing to "donate" R&D resources to a development house to make sure their game/engine works as well as possible on your [H]ardware..This has been standard from every GPU/API maker since, well ever..

It is completely different to basically refuse to carry a companies product for some "vague reasons"..It reeks of a payoff, just like Intel did when Dell was set to go completely vertical with ALL AMD CPUs..If AMD did this, I would call them out too..
 
Good move by Origin PC builders lets hope they have enough customers to keep afloat :) .No one will will ever suffer problems with videocards again since Nvidia drivers are perfect some people say that when they got their Nvidia card and the new drivers all good things in life will happen to you.

The girl of your dreams win the lottery a very blessed existence from the point you buy Nvidia
 
Kind of makes them look bad doesn't it? They sell their systems with amd graphics while there are crossfire issues, then the problems are resolved for the vast majority of people (non eyefinity users) and origin stop using amd. Either shotty management, ignorance or nvidia puppeteering.
 
ccityinstaller said:
It is one thing to "donate" R&D resources to a development house to make sure their game/engine works as well as possible on your [H]ardware..This has been standard from every GPU/API maker since, well ever..

It is completely different to basically refuse to carry a companies product for some "vague reasons"..It reeks of a payoff, just like Intel did when Dell was set to go completely vertical with ALL AMD CPUs..If AMD did this, I would call them out too..
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Haha! Is that what its called now days, "donate"
 
PRIME1 said:
One card is hardly a new lineup.

Hard to deny that AMD has crappy drivers now.
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Exactly, each side has their problems!, no issues that i can see...from 4850's to 5770 to 5850 to a 7950 just sold and no issues i saw with drivers on any of them.
 
I think AMD's drivers the last couple years have been stellar, the only problems I've seen with them usually has to do with crossfire and I think Nvidia has many of the same problems with SLI....so...yea.

I'm pretty sure anyone with half a brain can see this smacks of Nvidia throwing some cash Origin's way. Its pretty common in the computer industry...
 
A company I've never heard of... selling prebuilt overpriced PC's that I would never buy... stops carrying a particular brand of GPU?

Who the hell cares? From the news and that companies dealigns recently, it's pretty obvious someone dropped off a bag of cash in their laps and called it a day.

Who cares about prebuilt high end PC's anyway? If someone was considering buying one, their opinion is automatically discounted to me. I'm [H]ard and build all my own stuff :)

I'm excited about Mantle and the new things AMD is trying with their Radeon line... I'm rather happy with my 7970's but by no means hate on nvidia for what they are trying in the industry. If Mantle picks up and really takes off... it could be an awesome thing for both consoles and PCs. If not, no big deal we still have awesome hardware to run the same types of games we had before.
 
Who buys their overpriced shit anyways. I can build two 3930ks for the price of a 4770k on that shit site.
 
Who is Origin PC anyway.

They share part of a name from EA's electronic store front and not affiliated. That's the only reason this is getting any headlines. If it was Alienware or Falcon Northwest, it might be news worthy.
 
I wondering who is buying the high price boutique computers they sell. Most tech guys would build their own before buying something from them with those prices and regular Joe shopper would avoid them like the plague at those prices.

Who cares anyway because before this press release nobody new they existed and they will go back that way.
 
If they had said this a year ago, I might have been understanding because the 7970s had their fair share of problems especially with CrossFire. But the timing of this makes no sense. And AMD has improved and fixed a lot of their big issues this past year. I really wouldn't be surprised if there are other motives here.. I also find it especially interesting that the Steambox from Valve will only be using NVIDIA for the prototypes.
 
rinaldo00 said:
Well, well, take a look at this article from 3 days ago.

Origin PC Partners with NVIDIA to Provide Official “Battlebox” 4K Gaming Desktop
http://www.legitreviews.com/origin-...e-official-battlebox-4k-gaming-desktop_125362

Convient huh? ;)
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Maybe or maybe not. Was anyone accusing AMD of paying off Origin PC when it partners with AMD (which is still on top of the partners screen)?

It possibly could have been due to a deal with nvidia, but that's not the only possibility. Officially Brian Burke, manager of PR at nvidia, has denied that it made any special deals with Origin PC. It would be a dumb lie to make since it would open nvidia to lawsuits, however remote. I would wonder more about what kind of mix of sales Origin PC customers were buying, and if there were more problems with AMD GPUs as the Origin PC spokesman claims.

Of all places, PC World notes that it is somewhat of a trend for boutique builders to ship nvidia equipped PCs to reviewers:

It’s worth noting that nearly all the high-end gaming rigs that have arrived in the PCWorld Lab lately have been outfitted with Nvidia-based video cards. But that’s merely anecdotal evidence that the boutique vendors think Nvidia’s GPUs are superior. So I decided to reach out to some of Origin’s competitors to get their take. Wallace Santos, CEO and founder of Maingear, was the first to get back to me. Maingear was AMD’s showcase partner at the unveiling of the R9-series unveiling.​

... and goes on to note that AMD equipped systems have won awards, so it's not that AMD GPUs have not been competitive in the past and used for those flagship review models.

It's really easy to use innuendo, but I personally don't substitute it for thinking. :p

Anyways, I think it's dumb to go exclusive, especially at the high end. Those products are usually the most profitable and turning away sales is kind of nonsensical.
 
I don't see this as a coincidence. They just so happen to dump AMD upon the release of their new cards and after they get the Battlebox deal from Nvidia.

I don't care so much though.
 
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