AMD takes the video card war to an appalling new low | Hacker News Reader

AMD takes the video card war to an appalling new low

extremetech.com

19 pointsmaxko8719 comments

I couldn't really penetrate the writing style (something about virtuoso violinists), but the problem is apparently that old cards can't get a new BIOS update that makes the card run faster? This is not an appalling new low: this is what hardware manufacturers have done for eons.

I'm pleased to say that I have no idea how fast my CPU or GPU are. They work. I'll buy a new one in a few years. Relax and do something useful with your computer.

It seems even less bad imho, it's probably that all cards with an AMD reference design will get an update. But vendors with vendor-specific hardware might not provide an updated BIOS that works with those cards?

That's probably exactly it - ATI has usually used Sapphire to make their reference cards and ATI-manufactured cards. Many vendors make specific changes to the bios, use out-of-spec or pre-overclocked parts, etc.

To put this situation in better perspective: If Intel made bioses in addition to their current products, and they released a bios update for their motherboards (with Intel bios and Intel parts). Here, he's mad because he has an Asus motherboard with an Intel bios, and since Asus isn't releasing this bios update, he won't benefit.

Thanks for the clarification, I own a 7970 and the article kind of disturbed me. I hadn't thought about the fact that AMD isn't the only one to use the GPUs.

The fact of the matter is (for me at least) that I paid for the 7970 as it was on paper when I bought it. Of course I'd be mad if performance on it was artificially lowered, then members of the press were given a new BIOS to restore it to normal but that doesn't seem to be what's happening here at all.

There are pretty direct parallels here to Android phones.

If a mobile phone uses 'stock' Android (e.g. the Nexus One or Galaxy Nexus), then it's pretty trivial to get an upgrade to the latest release. If you buy a heavily-customized Motorola phone, however, you may never see that upgrade because of the 'tweaks' that Motorola made, which they might not care to port forwards.

i think you missed the part where amd tied the author's first-born to the curiousity's launch vehicle while laughing at their mother and calling his pet dog names. with that, it all makes a lot more sense.

> I'm pleased to say that I have no idea how fast my CPU or GPU are. They work. I'll buy a new one in a few years. Relax and do something useful with your computer.

Then you're entirely missing the point of this article and of the product it writes about.

This class of video card (Radeon 7970, or Geforce GTX 680) cost $500-$600 each. They cater to those who want the absolute best GPU performance they can get -- and are willing to pay heavily for it.

Your quoted comment characterizes how you don't at all understand the target market of these cards. "I'm pleased to say that I have no idea how fast my CPU or GPU are" is the last thing you'd ever hear from an owner of this class of video card.

>... is the last thing you'd ever hear from an owner of this class of video card.

No it's not. The original statement is exactly how I feel. And how most people who I know who are gamers feel. When I was 10 years younger I cared much more about all of that. But now all my gear is fast enough right now.

I have a quad-core phenom running somewhere between 2.5 and 4 Ghz, 8 gigs of ram and a radeon 6990 (bought it shortly after it was released), from ASUS, I think. I could go find out what everything is running at, but I don't really care about any of that because it all works and is fast for everything I throw at it. When that is no longer the case I'll probably toss in another video card and maybe a newer more-cored phenom.

The article is garbage. There is some legitimate complaint there, but it's worth a paragraph. AMD should be pushing its partners to release the updated BIOS, but there are reference designs for a reason, and when manufacturers stray from those designs the consumers have certain benefits, and associated risks. One of those risks is that your card won't last as long, one might be that it can't receive updated BIOSes from AMD. A benefit might be increased performance over the reference design due to BIOS modifications that the manufacturer is using...

But you are still getting what you paid for when you bought it, you just aren't necessarily getting more than you paid for.

I'm struggling to see a problem here.

I don't see how giving certain users an upgrade could be extrapolated as bad - It's not like they are retroactively crippling people's existing hardware or anything. The reality of the situation is that certain companies are going to have different board/bios configurations on their GPUs and I don't think it is reasonable to expect AMD to provide a BIOS upgrade for all of these variations on their own.

Somethings tells me that the cards that are getting the BIOS upgrade are going to be the ones using reference designs (maybe it was stated as such in the article but the author's writing style is kind of bleh).

The author sounds like a videocard fanboy who's throwing a tantrum. He didn't get the bios update from his favorite video card company that the reference cards got, so now he's calling them dirty names on the internet.

ExtremeTech takes journalistic clarity to appalling new low.

After reading this several times to work out what it meant, it does seem, as others have mentioned, that this is down to differing hardware implementations affecting compatibility, but can anyone find something in the soup where the author makes a stab at positing that or any other explaination as a reason, other than 'AMD are arbitrarily shitting on some people"?

It feels more like, decoding the 3rd paragraph, he's just finished a review of the card with the older BIOS, will now have to redo that review and is subsequently throwing his toys out of the pram about it.

Extremetech has really gone down hill since laying off all of the good people in 2009. They've adopted a more tabloid journalism style, with provocative headlines and overheated articles. I miss Lloyd Case.

You understand that one of the old authors (Matthew Murray) wrote this story, right? :)

No, I did not know that. I still stand by my observation that Extremetech has gone down hill and I will note that writers must please their editors if they wish to get published.

Sounds to me like AMD simply improved the yield in production such that they are confident increasing the clock rate on new chips. An old chip may or may not be good enough to run at the higher rate.

Caveat emptor, and I've always been aware that updates I get direct from the GPU manufacturer may not work on a particular implementation. It is highly likely that they just don't hardware qualify all the vendors that use their GPUs, so cannot state which ones will benefit. Sensible policy that says more about the vendors that integrate the GPU than it does about the supplier.

I really wish sites like these weren't posted. The mobile (tablet) site is absolutely appalling and I don't see how anyone uses it.

I think the author is upset because some of the new cards will only be upgradeable to 110 mega-breathless-hyperbolens/second.

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