The OEM Radeon situation
So why am I annoyed with ATI??? This is a follow-up to my review of the ATI Radeon I did a few weeks back here at Hexus. At the time I bought the card, I was aware that it was OEM, but just assumed that it would be the same card as all the review sites got, minus the fancy packaging. Only while doing the review and trying out Powerstrip did I discover the 166 core/mem speed, not the 183 speed that the 64 meg retail cards have. Back at the time, I thought I just hadn’t done my homework properly beforehand and glumly accepted the lower spec card. Over the following few weeks, I did some trawling round messageboards and picked up on the articles HardOCP did on the subject. There are a LOT of people out there like myself who had no reasonable way of knowing beforehand that they were going to get a slower card. Whether or not the slower card is a great disadvantage is a moot point. I currently get about 300 3DMarks less at 166 than I do when I manage to get it to bench stably at 183. the principle of the thing is what annoys me as much as anything. In an effort to try to sort things out, I fired off an email to ATI’s UK headquarters. Here is the contents of the email and reply: To their credit, they did reply quite promptly: Here is my initial email:I purchased a 64 meg OEM Radeon in the UK and am horrified to discover that it is clocked at 166, not 183. Nowhere in your information sheets does it say that you are putting cheap 6ns RAM in your OEM products, so I naturally assumed that it was 183 speed as per the cards you send out to all the review sites.
While I think it is otherwise a good card, I feel you have ripped me off.I am contacting you first to get a response and hopefully satisfaction for my fellow ripped off customers. While I think it is otherwise a good card, I feel you have ripped me off. I am contacting you first to get a response and hopefully satisfaction for my fellow ripped off customers. I am going to do a follow-up to my review on www.hexus.net/radeon.shtml soon bringing this whole issue to light and not painting a particularly good picture of ATI as a result.
Robert Irwin
And here is the reply
Hi Robert,
ATI have always stated that they will ship Radeon Retail boards at 183 Mhz
and OEM at 166 Mhz. We have made no secret of this. No where on any of the
packaging or any of the literature does it claim to be anything that it is
not.
When we get boards reviewed in the popular PC Press and Web sites we
naturally use the Retail boards as this is what the readers will go to the
Retail stores and buy.
There is a large delta in the cost of the Retail boards against the OEM
boards. This is to reflect the enormous difference in cost between 166 and
183 Mhz DDR memory. It is worth bearing in mind that, at current memory
prices, 183 Mhz DDR as currently 60% more expensive than 166 Mhz. Lets face
it, the 183 board is not 60% faster ! Therefore there is a market for
people who want to take advantage of the outstanding selection of 3D and
Video features that the Radeon bring to them without paying through the nose
for the latest memory technology which only makes a difference to the last
couple of frames per second in the latest 3D games titles.
I am of course disappointed that you feel that you have been 'ripped off'
and would welcome the opportunity to talk to you about it. Please feel free
to call me.
Regards
Mark Holmes
ATI – UK
(Phone number supplied)
Still not satisfied, I fired off the following email in reply.I have again held off putting anything further on the website to see how
the guys in the States are handling the situation. In particular i would
refer you to the following link:
http://www.hardocp.com/articles/video/atoeditorial2/index.html
From my reading, this is a tacit admission that it isn't clear what you are getting as a customer. From a UK buyer's point of view, are you going to be offering any kind of replacement or trade-up scheme for people like myself
who bought an OEM card at 166 to trade it up to a 183 mhz card?
Robert Irwin
Hexus.net
To which the reply came
Currently there is no replacement or trade in scheme in place for this situation. If this changes I will be sure to let you know.
Regards
Mark Comment
Many thanks to Mark at ATI for being so honest and taking time to reply. Having said that, I still feel dissatisfied with the situation. While some people may point out that there are a lot of OEM type (for example) Geforces out there with cheap memory too, the nature of the way nvidia sells its chips to lots of companies makes customers compare specs first. With ATI, who do their own manufacturing of the complete board, there is as I see it less ground for a customer to suspect anything. I still feel it is a good card, just that I didn’t get the card I ordered.
