ATI Radeon 3870 Cards Reported Failing

Nvidia's failing cards made it to the headlines for a good period of time, and its competitors couldn't have been happier. Yet, things seem to take a sudden turn, as some ATI based cards have been reported to be failing at higher than expected rates as well. The graphics boards in discussion here are 3870, first and second revision, the 3870 X2, plus some 3850s. Unlike the case of the Santa Clara-based company, it seems that the responsibility does not go to ATI now, but to others.

According to the Inquirer, the story involves ATI, Diamond, Alienware and GeCube. A large amount of Diamond cards were shipped to Alienware, and the failing rates went from two percent up to over ten percent. Three causes were identified: a wrong resistor, a questionable BIOS, and a PSU delivering different wattage. Symptoms included dead cards, cards that would artifact, BSODs, and Crossfire that simply didn't work.

The story seems to be a little more complicated than what we see at first glance. The idea is that Diamond is not making the cards by itself, but gets them from other board makers and, in this case, from GeCube. And Diamond sold these boards to Alienware. The blame may go here either to GeCube, for shipping sub-standard boards, or to Diamond, for installing a substandard BIOS. The fact is that the boards which went to production were different from those Alienware had qualified.

The questions that arise here include the assumption of a possible production change that GeCube operated without notifying Diamond. The situation is unclear right now, but its detrimental effects can be seen. The cards are failing both at burn-in/power-on testing, and in users’ hands. The number of the possible affected cards rises to 10,000 or 20,000, yet only five percent are expected to fail. This means that about 1,000 cards are faulty.

Considering these numbers, the problem does not seem to be that serious, yet over one million 38xx parts were sold, and some say that they are close to two million. Thus, the percentage of bad cards raises a lot higher. What is interesting is that these cards are not the reference design made by ATI. Something was changed somewhere, and that caused the whole situation. No other vendors reported similar problems, and, at the same time, the stock parts are fine.

Diamond announced that it takes full responsibility and that any owner of such a card should contact them to straighten things up. The possibility of owning such a card is a really small one, as only ten percent of the entire number of cards is affected.