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ATI Says You Won't Have Relability Issues With Mobility Radeon

Posted 08/04/08 at 08:32:13 AM  by Chris Moody

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Okay, so maybe AMD/ATI has earned some crowing rights with it’s 4870 Radeon videocard. It’s not on top in terms of pure performance, but its price point is closer to the sweet spot than Nvidia’s top card and the upcoming 4870 X2 will beat out the single GPU GTX 280 for about the same money. AMD however, is choosing to crow about the reliability of its ATI Mobility Radeon saying that it won’t suffer from faulty packaging like the problems Nvidia mobile GPUs suffered from recently.

Xbitlabs quotes a statement they saw from AMD, “In the past couple of weeks there has been considerable media attention regarding product reliability of certain notebook GPU die/packaging material failures. AMD is pleased to reassure our customers that our ATI Mobility Radeon GPUs are not experiencing any such abnormal field failures”

ATI chose eutectic in its ASIC packaging process, because the alternative high-lead bumps were known to be more fragile and subject to field failure issues if not implemented correctly.

“Package reliability is a matter of overall design and implementation. Factors such as the power distribution in the design of the ASIC, bumping process, bumping material and the techniques used to adhere bumps to the wafer all play an important role in the reliability of the packaged part.” AMD’s statement goes on to say.

Nvidia has remained mum on AMD’s statement. Xbitlabs says Nvidia didn’t choose to comment on the story either.
 
ATI's statement is pretty concerning overall. Is Nvidia still using high-lead bumps and if so, what steps have they taken to ensure that we won't see a repeat of the issue? I hope they will choose to respond to ATI's statements and either own up to the problem and tell us they fixed it, or tell us what is really going on. The ostrich approach of burying their head in the sand and hoping it all goes away is only going to hurt them in the long run.

It’s beginning to sound like Nvidia has a bigger problem on their hands than was first supposed. Can we expect them to make this right for those users with the screwed up GPUs in their laptops or will they put the screws to them and let the users take the hit?  Sound off below!

Nvidia Screw
COMMENTS:3
TAGS: amd, ati, news, nvidia, hardware, Statement, Mobility Radeon
COMMENTS
avatarNvidia care about customer satisfaction?

Submitted by chipwatcher on Tue, 08/05/2008 - 7:04am

 Will Nvidia put the screws to those users with the screwed up GPUs in their laptops and let the users take the hit? 
 If Nvidia's past actions and stated policies are any indication, of course these end customers are going to take the hit. All one has to do is to review a number of actions they took when they used IBM as their fab partner.
     * In the initial design and layout wafer layout stage their designers tried to get IBM to forgo the implementation of a crack stop on the chip die so that more die could be fit on wafer. They were agitated that IBM would not use the chips ground strap as a crack stop.
     * Their chips were all designed to withstand only 50 mil amps of static electricity where IBM and most of the rest of the industry used 100 mil amps as the low end mark. Why? Because they could save money both in design and manufacturing costs.
     * When concerns arose over static electric ( caused during the wafer manufacturing process in the street areas ) blowing out parts of ( the IBM insisted upon ) crack stops and on through the ground strap, Nvidia insisted that those die that had said damage be shipped as acceptable as long as the visual observed static damage did not reach any other active metal areas and the chips passed the electrical die test. When IBM s voiced concerns over the long term viability of those chips their reply was 'These chips only have to last 6 months. After that the end customer is expected to upgrade to a newer product anyway.'

Does Nvidia show an evenhanded balance between long term customer satisfaction and the need to make a profit? 
 No way.

The number one consistent motive to all of Nvidia's policy's is to maxi mis corporate profits and to let all other issues that might interfere with that take a back seat.

chipwatcher

 

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avatar See that big ol screw

Submitted by gatorXXX on Mon, 08/04/2008 - 2:51pm

 See that big ol screw through the graphics there?? SCREW NVIDIA!!!

Don't like it? Piss off!!

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avatar I sure hope Nvidia can

Submitted by jacob.sorensen on Mon, 08/04/2008 - 6:13am

 I sure hope Nvidia can get their act together about all this.  I still think that their products are some of the best out there.

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