ati 6970m keep reading comments about some problem they had?

While browsing the forums i would occaisonally come accross a comment here or there mentioning some kind of problem(s) that the radeon 6970m had or has? They didnt really ellaborate on it. Does anyone know what kind of problem(s) they might be talking about. I was going to buy a laptop with one it it...but now im not so sure.

 

re read the threads, there is nothing wrong with the card. Im actually tired of posting the same things over and over again

 

If you can get it, go ahead since it's become rare now that the 6990m has been made available.

 

Kobalt computers (in UK) apparently withdrew the card in question (6970M) from their customized laptops due to high failure rate.

At least that's the explanation as given to me by another forum member who's usually a strong advocate of Kobalt computers.

Either way, I cannot verify or deny this claim.
It apparently came from Kobalt itself... however, I cannot know for sure if they withdrew it due to those reasons, or some others (perhaps they did it due to 6990M coming out - but again, that's mere speculation)

 

not that the kobalt affirmation makes any sense either, since if there were that high failure rates, dell or apple, by far much larger would be constrained to stop sending 6970m, thus its highly doubtful that really happened.

To add that it was never mentioned again in their forums, nor here. Even with these kinds of threads popping out again and again

 

Actually there was an argument on Sunday on the 6990m thread on Kobalt's forum about the 6970m, someone attacked the company's claim for false information and the company's representatives had to defend themselves.

As already mentioned, it's one company which made the decision to stop shipping the product because of high failure rates. Other resellers stopped stocking the product without stating their reasons though presumably this was to do with the 6990m coming out to replace the 6970m.

 

and thats that? its just too small aint it? Since some of the resellers stopped stocking the card (not all) and I never heard comments about it from dell nor apple.

Im not calling them liars or anything like that. but its one though thing to swallow that history

 

You're not the first one to question the company about its decision, but the fact is they received a larger than average number of GPU parts which failed their testing standards. It seems they saw a similar phenomenon in the 5870m cards but the problem wasn't severe enough to stop them from selling altogether (high heat temperatures were one symptom apparently).

If you're not questioning their integrity, what is your beef with them? Fact of the matter is, they and several other resellers have stopped selling the 6970m albeit for different reasons. They've come out publicly on their forum and announced their rationale for discontinuing the card while others have not.

 

simply because statistic is against them. Simply because it doesnt make sense.

Simply because such thing would receive attention from the media, and for several other reasons.

Its one though thing to swallow, really though

 

I don't think they would outright lie about it. Why would they cite reliability problems when they could easily say that it would be replaced by the 6990m?

It was probably a combination of both, but they chose only to give one reason, possibly because they didn't want to announce the 6990 prematurely.

 

A good scapegoat to throw at people who had already been waiting months for their 6970M equipped orders.

You know... hypothetically and all.

 

Months is exaggerating it if all you know from the company is bad news from the forums. If my records aren't inaccurate the 6970m was retailed for less than 2 months before the recall came, even then some users already had their 6970m equipped machines delivered.

To the OP's question: Yes a small number of resellers pulled the 6970m from their lineups citing quality issues, however a larger number of Clevo resellers simply stopped stocking the card without giving a fair reason leading to the presumption that the card was discontinued in favour of the newest ATI top-end card (6990m).

 

it actually isnt.

fixed for you, the sarcam is just for joking purposes, but you get the gist, if what kobalt said is true, several certifications, not to mention statistic theory are going to be in a dare need of change. One of the backbone from production QA is going to fall.

 

Yeah, I thought of that, but wouldn't it be equally undesirable to say there's a high failure rate?

I mean, I'd rather be told "your card is slightly outdated" than "your card is defective", after those bad Nvidia memories.

I think there was some grain of truth in what they said or they would have said something less likely to worry their customers (e.g. "we're out of 6970s and we don't know when we'll get more") or stayed silent altogether like some other resellers.

May they got a bad batch or something?

 

As already mentioned, it's not unheard of for one company to get a bad batch. I'm not sure why you're hell-bent on trying to prove that one company is being made out to be fraudulent liars simply because they are the only ones to stop shipping the card because of quality issues. Pushing out fancy terms like ISO certification (I see enough of this at work) doesn't impress me since as you've already stated just one supplier getting a batch of cards doesn't prove on a reasonable scale that the whole set of cards is inferior.

I'm not disagreeing that the 6970m is still available from other channels, the key point is the OP has not stated where he/she intends to get the laptop from. If it's a Clevo configuration then it's not going to be as easy to come by since it's been restricted in quantity for various reasons, if it's an Apple or Dell machine then the OP is perfectly capable of getting the card from those outlets without too much trouble and won't have to worry about a widespread quality issue.

 

The problem is that you are too hell bent to believe that there is a bad batch and that only kobalt received that. And kind of implies that this extends to all the cards, however in your last post you sort of remedie this, stating that the 2 major OEMs that sell the cards are going to give him trouble cards, which dont make sense at all. For this simple reason:

If a company that small received that much of bad cards, the probability dictates there is something awfully wrong with the card, and that is the point that you dont seen to understand. Its a matter of sampling

Since Kobalt buys from a distributor, its actually hard to believe that a company that small received a bad batch that big.

Since when ISO is a fancy term? jesus.....

 

It is possible for Clevo/Sager to have a high failure rate on their cards while Apple, Dell, and desktop cards do not have a problem, but the fault would have to exist somewhere besides the AMD GPU die.

The "bad batch" myth isn't plausible...the probability of faulty GPU shipping en masse, but only to a single notebook manufacturer, is just too unlikely. If Clevo had a high failure rate on their cards the more likely scenario was because they skimped on one of the other components on the cards.

 

With the arguments back and forth, the only thing the OP has to worry about (who incidentally hasn't bothered to take sides) is which notebook manufacturer to select for the card in question.

If Phinagle's stance is reasonable, then perhaps Kobalt's distributor for their cards messed up somewhere resulting in higher than average number of bad cards. If either poster above knows exactly what supply route they used, that might resolve most of the speculation put forward.

I stand by my earlier post, if it's a non-Clevo machine equipped with the 6970m then the OP has nothing to worry about. I don't see how this is incompatible with one Clevo distributor reporting problems with the card.

 

the argument still stands, its still highly unlikely that there were such high failure rates in those cards.

We have several clevo and sager resellers, none have made any type of comment regarding this

And its not talking about taking sides, its about ISO and probability. One is several standards of quality and the other serves its purposes very well. Unless you think differently regarding both

 

You'd better look through the whole thread carefully and quote exactly where I stated the 6970m had high failure rates, all I mentioned was that they were noted for ONE SUPPLIER, I have not once claimed that one reseller's decision to stop retailing the 6970m was symptomatic of a larger problem across all segments.

The OP asks about problems he's read about the 6970m, you claim there are none at all because of the lack of general news/complaints/claims across a large spectrum of retailers. I state the fact that one reseller has stopped retailing the card because of their observation of a high number of failures reported on their shipment of cards.

I do not see how my stance contradicts yours, I have never once claimed to the OP that there is a widespread problem with the 6970m, only that there were problems which have been isolated to one reseller only.

As mentioned before by Phinagle, not all resellers/companies buy direct from AMD's manufacturing plant for their cards. Most likely have to go through 3rd party channels for their parts before selling them on to customers. If that is the case, this is a perfectly logical explanation for why one reseller has reports of bad cards (since they have no other recourse for GPU parts) while others don't report problems.

ISO certification doesn't convince me, you can still qualify so long as your ppm ratios meet the required targets. If it's 50-100 bad cards vs a production run going to the millions, show me the statistical significance of such a failure rate. I don't see how "statistical probability" is an issue since one supplier out of dozens retailing the card reporting faulty parts does not imply a widespread general problem, which I never stated in the 1st place.

 

What we are discussing is the statement from kobalt. Since it doesnt make any sense.

Because if one reseller states that there is a high failure rate, it spreads to all the resellers, since they buy from the same source, either clevo or sager. Thus it would lead it to being a high failure rate across the board.

Off course bad cards would be there, certifications or not, its the amount of those, as you said, that makes you get the pertaining ISO, but you are only focusing on the bad cards, its extremely highly unlikely, due to probability, that an entire batch off bad cards would be sent to one reseller, its abysmal the probability of that happening to only one, and not spreading across the board.

What Im saying is this, imagine a recall for cars, they have bad air filters, off course not all of those filters are bad, but enough are, deeming it as a bad batch. It will affect all the models that used it.

What you are saying to me is that kobalt bought a really large batch (not something that they would be capable of doing) and that the buy was so large that caught all the bad batch of cards on their own. Voiding the other resellers of buying that bad batch, or in any significant quantities.

There is another problem that its highly unlikely to send the afore mentioned bad batch to only one reseller, since stock is controlled by the method of first in first out, imagine if 2 resellers place the order on the same day or across a week (not an unlikely scenario), the batch would be divided regarding the volume of the orders. Leading it to not be a localized issue.

A bad batch scenario would be more likely to happen to OEMs that buy large batches, and their cards have some specificity to them. Much like the apple 6970m.

And apple is not being quiet about recalls either, the newest recall is regarding the imac 2011 using large HDDs.

 

Since you are implying that kobalt lied about the high failure rate, would you be so kind as to reveal to us what you think their motive behind doing so might be?

 

if other clevo resellers reported the same thing, its possible they are telling the truth, but honestly kobalt comes up with any excuse to explain delays now days its hard to tell if its true or not.

You guys are better off trying to get info from the other resellers to confirm if its true or not. On the other hand clevo/sager hasn't really ever been very ati friendly.

 

Two assumptions you've made in the above post:

1. All resellers get their cards directly from Clevo/AMD manufacturing plant. (Please provide some proof, do you work in the supply business? Am I wrong in assuming alternative supply sources for cards for different resellers).

2. Kobalt failure rate for 6970m reported at 100%. (They reported roughly 40% of their cards being not up to standard during testing, of which one card was still released to a paying consumer which they had to recall).

3. Delivery of GPUs done via FIFO basis (Your arguments keep implying that you work in the reseller business, if you don't then I'm curious where you're getting your facts from).

Nice try, you've been pushing to add them to the list of dubious business practices sticky on the Clevo forum for the past few months now.

Assuming both posters above believe everything from the North American resellers at face value and adopt the stance that Kobalt are nothing more than bare-faced liars, then the 6970m is a completely problem-free card that is now difficult to find and is being flogged off at bargain basement prices because of the upcoming 6990m.

My stance: I do not dismiss what has been announced by Kobalt, I do agree that the 6970m is hard to find now because the 6990m is due to replace it. I do not believe that the card is completely problem free, however that would not stop me from recommending the card to the OP because my conclusion is that the GPU problems for the 6970m are a localised incident that have no bearing on other resellers. What seems statistically impossible is not always the case.

The Kobalt bashing brigade has been rubbing its hands with glee over the past few months dating back to 3Q 2010, I don't see how this is going to change much over the next few months since none of the catcallers seem to consider more than one facet of the situation.

 

Right, I am going to keep this brief as the majority of this thread is speculative at best.

Some points to note...

We are not the only builder to stop selling these cards, If you check our forums we have decided that we will not be selling the 6990 until it has passed extended tests due to the unreliability of the previous generation of cards. If in our opinion and our opinion alone they are not up to standard we will not sell them.

Let me make one thing clear: We have made this decision in the best interest of us as a business and our customers. We have internal data cataloguing the issues with AMD. This information will not be made public, end of debate.

We have sold a number of 6970's and we contacted customers who have them to offer them the chance to swap out to one of the Nvidia cards,

At end of the day we are free to chose what products we retail to our customers, I have at least 8 dead AMD card on my desk at work that just decided to fall over during testing. When you are a small business and do not have the simple case of returning them for a quick RMA you have to make decisions regarding the viability of support.

Scenario :

We do let a customer buy a 6970, it fails 2 month down the line, by then we are not holding 6970's in stock and we have to RMA the card with the manufacturer, this invariably takes time and a lengthy delay to the customer for getting their machine back. Not good.

Some companies will keep spares in stock for such RMA's however our concern was that we would have to hold so many in stock that it would become impracticable.

If we were confident that the 6970 had no problems then we would happily be retailing it but you have seen yourselves that people are having problems with these cards.

Heck, I am still having to deal on a weekly basis with failed 5870's...

And so far since release I have had 1 failed 460, 0 480's and a single 485...

You can not compare the reliability and then doubt that removal on sale was both best for us and our customers.

When the 6990 arrives on these shores we will subject it to extended testing before deciding if to offer it for sale.

Any suggestion that the removal of the card for anything other then the above is at best speculation and at worst a poster who just wants to have a dig at Kobalt. Either way its nothing to do with the reason for the removal from sale.

Regards

Pman

Just an addition:

Unsurprisingly this is not my first job in this industry and a previous company I worked for worked simply along the lines that if it passed testing it went out. If it failed change the part and then send it out. No regard for what may or is likely to happen 1/2/3 months down the road. We at Kobalt refuse to go down this road. If we pick something to sell then we need to be confident in its reliability beyond the point of sale.

 

Pro Nvidia.

 

The Norwegian Clevo builder Multicom still sells AMD Radeon HD 6970m but the price difference between that and the HD 6990m is so low.

 

Without those confidential data, that is also how I conclude your company to be. I am running on a Dell-issued FirePro M8900 (6970M OpenGL Edition) and it is probably the most rock-solid GPU I had in years. I always found nVidia to be the company to blame for manufacturing overheating and overpriced mobile GPU's and to this day, they still are.

Like what the others are saying in this thread, I have never heard of any problems with the 6970M and it is unfortunate that your company got a bad batch of them or something but I still don't see how a bad batch would force the conclusion to be reached in such a manner, especially when your competition are having no problems with their batches. Therefore, that is the only way how I can answer such question.

 

Your tiny sample of cards even as a company is actually statistically insignificant when you think about it lol.

Also it's daft to hold a replacement card for most of your customers, you hold a few and then each time you get a replacement then you replenish your stock while you instantly send out one held in stock.

If this is so regular you would think you would set up a quick and reliable returns procedure.

Also people have removed the 6970.... and replaced it with the 6990. Lol.

 

Exactly. Welcome to the world of Corporations and Capitalism. Only the collective whole makes anything significant (or anything above the majority percentile of the product in question).

Kobalt is a small Clevo reselling firm and I know there are tons of reselling firms under the Clevo belt and Clevo is not the biggest majority market share that uses the 6970M (that goes to Dell/Alienware).

So it is pretty insignificant figure that make such decisions against the production controls of the 6970M.

 

At no point have we turned round and said that other parties should be effected by our decision.

It is our decision, we will not be retailing the 6970 due to the problems we have encountered, simple as that.

Star Forge: unfortunately if you want to brand us Nvidia Fan Boys then that is your choice, we will still not release our internal data.

It is what it is, until we at Kobalt have confidence in the AMD cards we cant sell them

Im sorry you guys dont like it but thats the decision we have made

 

I am not saying per se you all are nVidia Fan Boys. The thing is without substantial proof, it is hard for customers to believe your company's reasoning behind the decision. To me, it sound very sketchy and skeptical at the same time.

Nevertheless, I don't live in the UK so it doesn't apply to me, but if I did I would not be a customer to your firm if I knew the reasoning behind it. I often spend my money elsewhere.

My opinion though of course.

 

reread the post that you quoted, you will find the answers there.

btw FIFO is standard.

I dont work at any resellers, its simple economics really.

Pman from what you are saying, you are making me more and more convinced of what Im saying, there isnt anything from what you said that can be used to back up for what accounts to be a misguided statement, its my opinion off course

And its not that Im on a crusade against your company, never cared and probably never will. Its about what you said that intrigues me, and currently baffles me, if you released the failure rates of the ''entire'' nvidia line that you guys use why you can release anything from AMD?

 

I've learnt never to take the words of under-age economics(?) undergraduates seriously when it comes to explaining retail channels, especially when they have the gall to conclude ISO standards and the supply chain to be identical to what is described in economics textbooks. Do you seriously think every company on this planet is equal and works off FIFO shipping?! Reading some of the comments below, it seems some GPU batches are destined for larger customers as a first priority (Apple/Alienware) even if Clevo were first in with their orders. This in itself is of little relevance since you have yet to prove that every reseller of GPU cards on the planet orders directly from the AMD manufacturing plant (which you didn't prove).

I've reread your post, your explanation is structured around what you claim to be "simple economics" when you neither work in the sector nor have any proof to back up your assertions (like me a lot of what we've posted is pure speculation).

I'm going to assume everyone here works for a huge multinational corporation and that holding inventory for RMA purposes is a matter of replacing items as and when required, if it's an SME (in Kobalt's case) then holding stock for quality issues is both difficult, expensive on the bottom line and time-consuming since lower priority is given for individual orders of low bulk quantities. This is further exacerbated if the supply chain in question isn't even localised on the same national frontier.

 

Interesting thread. I had noticed a couple of days ago that there was a 6970m option on sagernotebook.com for the NP8150 at least. Right after looking at this thread, I took a visit there again and the option is gone. At least this seems to make my decision of a GPU easier in my next notebook.

 

Look pal, attack the post not the poster.

I have graduated in International Relations and Economics, Im graduating in CS right now. I have worked for IBM when I was younger, I work for Nestle right now.

There are certain procedures that needs to be standard to acquire ISO certifications on whatever form that you want.

FIFO is standard because its the most used. (BTW since you are so sure of what you say, I have made a mistake using FIFO, figure it out what)

EVERY gpu core is from the global foundries or TSMC. The PCB is where the gpu companies enter.

I dont need to prove where the gpus come from, its irrelevant. For 6 reasons:

1) The core is safe
2) There isnt any other reports of failures from other firms to back it up
3) The clevo and sager reseller buy their parts from clevo and sager, and kobalt aint white
4) There isnt any other reseller that told us about failure rates.
5) Kobalt only put out the numbers of nvidia cards, they are irrelevant too, if the problem is so aggravated as they claim, and nvida gpus were offered to customers for swaps, the AMD number is the needed
6) If they bought elsewhere of clevo and sager, they have bought second class parts for their notebooks, this is logical based on their high failure report while the others continued to sell their cards normally

Logic doesnt have to have a thing about speculation.

Since you are in the proving mood, you have yet to prove me that the cards fail so much.

You have yet to prove me why a company so small can get such a large quantities of a bad batch

You know a good way to solve all this? Kobalt releasing the numbers of failed cards, with the number of the cards that they bought.

 

Give it a rest already, you're embaracing yourself keeping this up.

Again, why would kobalt lie on this matter? This is getting ridiculous.

Edit: sorry if I seem a bit rough..

 

He is not embarassing himself. He does bring good points on the situation however....

Kobalt can choose to sell whatever the hell they want.They don't like ATi or they have had bad experiences with them? Well, it's their own thing. Maybe they like nVidia more? Who cares?

All I know is that the chip itself is not bad. If I went on by personal experience, I would never recommend Nvidia over ATi, mainly because the only GPUs that I have used and have been faulty, have been nvidia.

Does that mean ALL nvidia GPU sucks? Not at all.

Do I believe Kobalt in the quality of ATi/AMD? Nope, but I do know that such situation CAN happen and that in the end they can choose to sell what they want. I will still recommend current high end AMD GPUs over the 485/580m mainly due to their value.

 

Exactly. A reseller is allowed to sell what they want but the thing is this. If you don't like Kobalt's selection, pick another reseller. You have a right on where you want to spend your money at. If Kobalt's not enticing, then pick another Clevo reseller.

I had bad experiences with mobile nVidia GPU's and to this day I still don't like the price tag or the reliability of mobile nVidia GPU's (desktop's are fine and I do recommend the desktop lineup). However, the fact of the matter is that the 6970M is not defective and there hasn't been any complaints about it besides what Kobalt is claiming to be. No other Clevo reseller has qualms about it nor does Dell (the only 6970M user on the major OEM bigshots). Therefore, I still recommend the card and such.

If Kobalt wants to be biased and such, let them be. If the customers don't like their decision, take your money to somewhere else and Kobalt will end up facing the harsh realities of something call Capitalism.

 

Cliffnotes of this thread:

Seriously, if Kobalt doesn`t want to sell the GPU, then let them. They don`t have to show any evidence at all to you. If you don`t want to believe them, fine buy elsewhere. But don`t tell them how to run their business. If they want to lose customers, then let them. But they didn`t do this out of fanboyism, because that would be stupid (in terms of buisness and $$$). In fact Kobalt have told you why they chose to not sell it anymore. Legit reasons if you ask me.

 

From your language capability, I'm going to deduce English isn't your first language. Therefore I'm going to assume both of us have misunderstood some of the points I have put out in bold mentioned by PMan, I'll also reply to a few of your assertions above.

Note that PMan has actually hinted at some of the failure numbers for both sides, 8 AMD cards which fail in one week vs. none for the same period for Nvidia cards is obviously not a statistical concern for large companies, but small ones don't look at the proportion, it's the absolute number relative to their total purchases that worries them. Resellers obviously wouldn't report a problem if they faced the same issue since no one reports a widespread problem when faced with less than 10 failed samples in a week.

Thanks for the brief job resume, it doesn't prove that you are a current employee in this industry nor can I take everything you say about orders for GPU parts as gospel. No matter, it does prove that all you've ever worked for are large MNCs whose rules you've transposed to companies of smaller scale than what you've worked. You have not contradicted my statement that preferential orders to the big OEMs will not supplement orders made much earlier by Clevo resellers in chronological order, regardless of the prevalence of FIFO as an inventory management standard.

Your point #6 has just contradicted your earlier point from which you argued all resellers purchase directly from the PCB, a point you refused to entertain in earlier posts. If you're arguing for the sake of proving the reseller to be liars, would you be more upfront about it?

 

If Im embarrassing or not, its up to me to take it.

And yes you guessed right english aint my first language.

Im not telling kobalt how to run their business nor caring which gpu they use. I dont buy anything larger than 13'' anymore, tried 16'' and was kind of glad that it went the way of the dodo. Thus its not something that Im concerned about.

Although, I have terrible fault, I dont like to lose an argument.

Problematic is the kobalt statement, since it doesnt make sense, and its being used as an ammunition for the constant and tiresome bashing of the 6970m.

Sorry if this is kind of convoluted and harsh, I have separated to try to make the points clear not to be offensive.

PCB = Printed Circuit Board

 

It`s all good. Just a piece of hardware anyway to feed our materialized lifes

 

My mistake then on the earlier post regarding the PCB, at least if some of your points made above are correct, I would have learned something about the supply chain mechanics in the industry.

I do suggest reading this thread from the beginning, if you like you can look at my posts once more. I do not recall at any moment dismissing the 6970m as a faulty card in general, I believe I made it quite clear to the OP that he/she would have few if any problems with the 6970m if it is still available, all I wished to point out was that one reseller had decided to stop stocking the card because of problems they had discovered during testing. As noted by others, the problems they discovered are definitely not representative of the product as a whole, it was purely an internal business decision to stop offering the card as a GPU option. Regardless of the opinion given by others on their stance, it does not change the general consensus that there is no widespread problem with the 6970m, nor was this ever mooted as a possible issue in this thread.

The irony after 4 pages of argy-bargy is that the OP never really bothered giving a reply after the 1st page. I've given my piece and consider the matter closed, further arguments can be taken elsewhere or the thread can be locked to turn the page.

 

To me this isn't an issue of whether or not Kobalt has to sell the 6970 or not but whether or not there is misinformation being put out there about the quality of the 6970 itself.

 

Everyone's beloved SAGER is no longer offering ATI with NP8170 (maybe the other models too).

Could be a sign.....

 

how do ati manage to produce such high performing cards at such lost costs in comparision to nvidia? whats the catch?

 

a sign that its being phased out?

or this:

‪Ace of Base - The Sign‬‏ - YouTube

 

....that the 6990M is about to be offered. It's coming, after Dell's paid for period of exclusivity ends.

 

It's been coming for a while now, but all of the speculation pointed to August being the first dates the 6990m is made available for Clevo machines.

Another point to support the phase out theory is that it's getting harder and harder to find the 485m in configurations.