Diamond Multimedia ATI Video Cards Fail At High Rates

[Apoptosis]

I just got my hands on some very interesting confidential reports from some computer manufacturers that state Diamond ATI video cards have a rate of failure that is higher than the companies acceptable values of failures at manufacturing site and/or field incidents. Anything above 1% failure calls for a shut down of production at companies like Alienware and it seems their Diamond Radeon HD 3850, 3870, 3870 X2 and 3870 R2 are failing at rates between 3-14% based on the Initial Field Incident Rate (I-FIR) in the report that we were handed. It seems that Alienware has dumped Diamond as a vendor as a result of this and sent back thousands of cards they didn't use.

It seems the problems between Diamond and companies like Alienware go back a long time as the report has a page with the title of 'Intermittent Problems' and talks about 100% failure rates on Diamond Radeon HD 2900 XT video cards.

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The failure rate in the field (customers) is 13.42% for the months of March and April. The line reject rate or failure in manufacturing is about 6.18 % for the past 13 weeks. Both rate are extremely high and unacceptable. Lower quality resistor in Diamond card causing failure, not on original reference design which we signed up for. Diamond cards again changed without notifying us [the system builder].

[Apoptosis]

Following a conversation with Diamond Multimedia president Bruce Zaman, I was sent a detailed picture that shows where a Zero Ohm value resistor needs to be added to the board to resolve the problem the Alienware systems are seeing. Bruce assured Legit Reviews that only Alienware systems are impacted by this as they had a sku that was different from the retail graphics cards. Diamond Multimedia has been very open about the issue that was leaked out recently and I really like how they have handled the entire situation. Diamond knows what is causing the issues and has fixed it. If you have an Alienware system that has a Diamond Radeon HD 3870-512MB DDR4 you might want to check it and make sure it has a resistor where the arrow below it pointing. If it doesn't you should contact Alienware and get it RMA'd.

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[Alathald]

Wow, kudos to them for handling it like adults.

[gwolfman]

...a Zero Ohm value resistor...

So basically that's a wire?