Origin PC Was Paid, Handsomely, To Remove AMD GPU Options.

[bluedyguard]

And of course people with 780s just scrub this off. Is nVidia sitting comfortably on top of you? 

[Exotath]

Because gamers live around the idea that gpu companies battle to the death in a thunder dome rather than conduct business like everyone else. Neither company is going to die or go anywhere for a long time. Both have survived flops and follies several times. Lately around here a company releases a new product and everyone jumps to a conclusion that the competition is immediately dead and screwed. Just gets old...

[Bluejay0]

Well looks like I was right. It was a partnership in place with Battlebox and marketing tactics

[Valinor]

If Origin was paid to drop AMD GPUs then that's something which I don't really like but I can understand why they'd do it, considering how small they are as a company. But if that's the reason then they shouldn't come out with stuff like this:

 

"Primarily the overall issues have been stability of the cards, overheating, performance, scaling and the amount of time to receive new drivers on both desktop and mobile GPUs," said Alvaro Masis, a technical support manager at Origin.

 

Being paid to exclusively use one companies GPUs is one thing, but being paid (possibly, or perhaps this was an attempt to hide the real reason behind the GPU switch, or maybe they'd had some really bad luck with AMD GPUs) to completely trash their competitor's GPUs is very different.

[Bob]

This is called business. 

[nokturrduk84]

Good job Nvidia!

[LifesCompanion]

This thread has turned into AMD vs. Nvidia now... why does it always happen?  :mellow:

[Art Vandelay]

Well, I was worried until I read that Semiaccurate did the article. They are the least trustworthy and by far the most sensationalist tech news website I have seen.

[Focux]

Jonathan Fatal1ty Wendel I detest u now! Why u let ur company do this!?

[winny3141]

I absolutely disagree, I think you get that vibe because of their powerful marketing, architecturally speaking AMD & Nvidia are neck & neck.

They're tied in gaming performance, AMD has 3X better compute performance but at the cost of slightly higher power consumption.

Nvidia is behind on compute because they chose so, to reduce power consumption.

If you give Nvidia & AMD exactly the same amount of space & time to work on a new chip, both will come out with chips that perform exactly the same per watt & per die area.

Architecturally speaking, your right. Driver wise, Nvidia is far superior. Just look at Rage that released a few years ago, it took amd 5 months in order to make it playable on AMD. Also, it is important to note that AMD has horrible frame latency in a crossfire set up, and that lack of frame pacing leads to sometimes worse frame latency on the single gpus as well, look at crysis 3 having a 6 ms frame latency on the u 7970, compared to 0.7 ms on Nvidia Geforce GTX 780, and that was when Crysis released only 3 months before those benchmarks were taken. You can argue until you are blue in the face that AMD is going to perform better than nvidia in next gen games, because AMD is making the hardware in the next gen console and because of this many developers are teaming up with AMD, making there games perform betrer on AMD hardware better so that when they port it down from PC it will perform better on Consoles. However, as Linus pointed out in his 1500$ build guide, the cpu is the crust and the gpu is the filling. Will you get the most out of a Titan graphics card if you pair it with a Pentium 4? Of course not, and this analogy is similar to how AMD cards work. Yes, AMD has better hardware specs and perform better in games in terms of FPS when compared to NVidia, but their drivers are horrible. Hardwaere is only as good as the software that drives it, and AMD might have greeat filling (hardware), but NOT good crust to go along with it (drivers).

Benchmark source:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-780-performance-review,3516-9.html

- winny3141

[Warcony]

Hm Origin PC sounds almost as bad as the Origin software.

 

Also their systems are overpriced.

[iWearKiltz]

hah thats funny.

 

its interesting to hear that nvidia doesnt have a safety card and so has to resort to this

[Shreddie]

Hm Origin PC sounds almost as bad as the Origin software.

 

Also their systems are overpriced.

 

All system builders overprice, Origin and companies like Digital Storm and Maingear all overprice by $400-500.

[TechFan@ic]

Architecturally speaking, your right. Driver wise, Nvidia is far superior. Just look at Rage that released a few years ago, it took amd 5 months in order to make it playable on AMD. Also, it is important to note that AMD has horrible frame latency in a crossfire set up, and that lack of frame pacing leads to sometimes worse frame latency on the single gpus as well, look at crysis 3 having a 6 ms frame latency on the u 7970, compared to 0.7 ms on Nvidia Geforce GTX 780, and that was when Crysis released only 3 months before those benchmarks were taken. You can argue until you are blue in the face that AMD is going to perform better than nvidia in next gen games, because AMD is making the hardware in the next gen console and because of this many developers are teaming up with AMD, making there games perform betrer on AMD hardware better so that when they port it down from PC it will perform better on Consoles. However, as Linus pointed out in his 1500$ build guide, the cpu is the crust and the gpu is the filling. Will you get the most out of a Titan graphics card if you pair it with a Pentium 4? Of course not, and this analogy is similar to how AMD cards work. Yes, AMD has better hardware specs and perform better in games in terms of FPS when compared to NVidia, but their drivers are horrible. Hardwaere is only as good as the software that drives it, and AMD might have greeat filling (hardware), but NOT good crust to go along with it (drivers).

Benchmark source:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-780-performance-review,3516-9.html

- winny3141

AMD's drivers are top notch, alleged pre-release benchmarks are not to be taken as facts, both Linus & Elric from Tech of Tomorrow said that these exact alleged benchmarks are off by quite a bit.

I also wouldn't want to go into a frame-latency debate, we've proven time & time again that AMD has better frame times in single GPU solutions, the 7970 was even smoother than Titan in BF3.

https://teksyndicate.com/forum/gpu/amd-single-gpus-do-not-have-latency-issues/139321

Latency has been discussed to death already, it has already been dealt with by AMD via HeartBeat™ .

Dynmaic V-Sync via RadeonPro was already pretty effective, even though PCPer ignored to test it out, Tom's Hardware did & it was smoother than Nvidia's solution.

[kizoku_95]

Cheap tactics implemented by such companies is what is making the market crappy.

All companies want to be on the top but non of them want to lead by introducing some awesome product that destroys the competition but all they do is to degrade the competition's market share and do shitty stuff to show themselves as the leaders ! 

[NoVaGuy]

NVIDIA's always been a douchey company.

[ComputerNoob]

Oh shit, i guess its a premade pc? I thought that you would not be able to play ea games on an amd card..

[mgsstar]

I think they just hurt themselves imo because people who would want Radeon gpus wouldn't buy these PCs. Origin might wait for Maxwell to release before allowing Radeon cards.

[LAwLz]

That's not true at all, his articles in fact are 100% reliable, you can go back 12 months past & you'll find that every "prediction" he made was in fact 100% accurate.

Charlie used to work at a different website, can't remember the name of that Linus used to read everyday because it would make accurate predictions about upcoming GPUs & CPUs.

They're not really predictions , he just has inside sources... everywhere.

Charlie? Reliable articles? Ahaha good one. I can make very bold statements as well but unless I got a source they are meaningless, just like Charlies statements (do I have to bring up 1.7% yield? Or woodscrews? Or any other bullshit he has said in the past).

Look at any old forum with knowledgeable users and most of them will just say Charlie is borderline religious about his hatred for Nvidia (from what I've seen he hasn't written a single positive thing about them since they burned him for violating the NDA). That guy on Hardforum said it pretty well when he said "Honestly, if anyone says "nVidia fucked up" every time, a few times they'd be right. That's really all this guy does with nVidia and Microsoft. Say it 100 times and a few times its true. Big damn deal.". People also only tend to remember things he was right about, and forget all the stuff he got wrong. It's the same with all rumors sites really. If you make like 10 predictions about the next iPhone and one of them turns out to be true, other sites will go "yeah that's a reliable source, they were right about the next iPhone being X and having a Y".

 

I am not saying that Nvidia didn't bribe them, but what Charlie is doing is just accusing them for it without evidence (no saying "I got a source" is not evidence). I live by the rule "innocent until proven guilty" and that applies to this situation as well.

[R4STABAN]

Charlie is like a broken clock with an AMD logo stuck to it. He talks **** about nvidia all day, twice a day he's right.

[James_McKeane]

You don't have to bribe someone to make them consider ditching AMD like a bad casserole, but it helps.

[carolkarine]

You don't have to bribe someone to make them consider ditching AMD like a bad casserole, but it helps.

hoooo, damn. mind backing that up?

[afa7336]

So, I haven't read any posts, except the OP, and the link. The article doesn't really put me to have much faith in the reporting. Its pretty much a bash piece. Could it be true? Maybe, but let me state why I have trouble with believing this hit piece.

 

Dumping a manufacturer of GPUs isn't a big deal? Uhhhm, yeah it is. We all know the issues AMD GPUs have, but the writer seems oblivious to them. And AMD CPUs and GPUs are different parts of the computer, each with their own issues or lack there of. But the author seems to think that if Origin was serious, they should have dropped both and not one. Hey, thats not how the real business world works.

 

Also, with regards to "Not sure who told you that, but I would definitely like to comment on that because we absolutely do not want anyone to get that impression.” we absolutley do not want anyone to get that impression is a non-denial? Is this guy ever done real PR work? Sure a no way is a simple way of putting it, but this is PR stuff, its a different language all together.

 

Without knowing who these sources are, how can we believe them? Could it be AMD sources, possible? Could it be an Origin competitor trying to cash in on the news, possible. Could it even be the author trying to mess around, possible.

 

was directly proportional to Origin PC’s AMD revenue. I'd like to see how he saw the payments, wouldn't you? Its like me saying "Hey Linus is taking payouts from X company, and I heard its double the amount of what Y wants, so Y isn't given a good review." Everyone, rightly so would want to know what I know, and how I know it. I'd be dragged through the forums like a school bully caught by the bigger guys.

 

There were other terms of the deal not directly involving direct or indirect funding that in theory will give Origin PC a leg up on other Tier 3++ vendors. It would give them a leg up anyway if just about everyone under the sun wasn’t given the same deal but don’t tell Origin PC they were played, I don’t think they are aware of it. SemiAccurate knows two other vendors that already have more than what Origin PC was offered.  But to be fair they are far larger that Origin PC. What other terms, you never mentioned them, what were they?

 

And the belief that AMD is just going to pound Nvidia into the ground is kinda wrong. He leaves out the fact that the new Steam Boxes will be running Nvidia, and I bet money they'll rival console total sales and be very competitive when they come out, AND be 10x better then the consoles, due to the later release AND they won't have a half life of what ten years probably?

 

Edit: And the author forgot I guess to comment on the new Nvidia launch we are looking at coming up on the 16th. Good god, I am sorry I missed that.

Edited October 6, 2013 by afa7336

[Valinor]

*snip*

 

Just a couple of things;

 

First of all, companies do come out and flatly deny allegations which are untrue. They'll say something along the lines of "that's not true" or "no, we're not doing this", not some statement which is kinda on the fence about it like "we don't want anyone to get that impression". Not saying that they would have come out with a flat denial if it wasn't true but I'd have expected them to.

 

Somewhere (either in the article or in the thread) I read that the "payoff" (if it happened etc) could be in the form of discounts on GPUs or improved support from NVidia or the like, so checking for incoming money isn't really going to prove anything one way or the other.

 

Oh, and that point about steam boxes? The first 300 test units will indeed be running NVidia GPUs only. But I'm assuming that there are going to be quite a few more than 300 steam boxes machines in the future and quite a few of them are going to have AMD GPUs in them (not in a "AMD IN ALL STEAM BOXES" way, but in a "AMD GPUs'll be an option for a steam machine).

[afa7336]

Just a couple of things;

 

First of all, companies do come out and flatly deny allegations which are untrue. They'll say something along the lines of "that's not true" or "no, we're not doing this", not some statement which is kinda on the fence about it like "we don't want anyone to get that impression". Not saying that they would have come out with a flat denial if it wasn't true but I'd have expected them to.

 

Somewhere (either in the article or in the thread) I read that the "payoff" (if it happened etc) could be in the form of discounts on GPUs or improved support from NVidia or the like, so checking for incoming money isn't really going to prove anything one way or the other.

 

Oh, and that point about steam boxes? The first 300 test units will indeed be running NVidia GPUs only. But I'm assuming that there are going to be quite a few more than 300 steam boxes machines in the future and quite a few of them are going to have AMD GPUs in them (not in a "AMD IN ALL STEAM BOXES" way, but in a "AMD GPUs'll be an option for a steam machine).

 

*I don't know where you heard it, but I don't want you to get the impression that I am a Nvidia fanboy.

Does that make me, that single statement, make me automatically a Nvidia fanboy? Nope, sorry it doesn't. Same statement basically. I'm saying, I don't know where you heard it from, but I don't want you to think I am a Nvidia fanboy.

 

*I missed that part, thanks for pointing it out. But still, it'd be nice to know the sources and exact terms. I mean, we had sources that Saddam had WMDs, and we know that was wrong. (Though to be fair, there are reports that some were shipped to Syria).

 

*Its telling, in my mind, that NONE of the test units are running AMD. I mean, if you are testing out a platform, you test combinations. They're doing it with the processors and Nvidia graphics cards, trying different combinations.