AMD sent HD 4830 samples to reviewers with missing shaders

[W1zzard]

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[Solaris17]

Intriguing ill see if we have a sample.

Do you think their were 2 different batches? 560SP for internal testing until they finally decided on a shippable 640SP?

 

[wolf2009]

interesting .

How did you disable SIMD ?

 

[Steevo]

Pushing the big red button. Might get a fix for opening other doors and getting shaders back.

 

[eidairaman1]

well if its a disable bit, i wonder if its hard disabled or just bios disabled, because you could modify the disable bit to get the 640 shaders, but i think this was the bios encoders fault or something.

 

[btarunr]

well if its a disable bit, i wonder if its hard disabled or just bios disabled, because you could modify the disable bit to get the 640 shaders, but i think this was the bios encoders fault or something.

Did you read the article?

The locking mechanism relies on fuses inside the GPU, or on the substrate - a mechanism similar to Intel's multiplier locking. It is not reversible as far as I know. It is however possible to temporarily disable _additional_ fuses to reduce the shader count even further.

 

[ArkanHell]

Wiz, you are the man.

 

[newtekie1]

I am also 100% certain that shipping cards with 560 shaders was not intended by AMD at any time. Why should they make their own product slower?

They've done in the past.

 

[lemonadesoda]

The King of all Wizards.

THANKS FOR THE INFO!

 

[thebluebumblebee]

Did you pull the coolers to see if the chips are labeled the same?

 

[W1zzard]

Did you pull the coolers to see if the chips are labeled the same?

look at the two reviews. i took photos of both gpus

 

[thebluebumblebee]

oops

 

[suraswami]

Any chance Powercolor screwed it up with a wrong bios? If AMD intended to ship with 560 shaders with a reasonable reduced price over 4850 with that kind of performance hit, I think it makes sense. I believe the 4830 is going to be around $150 and 4850 can be got at that price after rebates. If the 560 shader one comes in around $110 then it will be a balanced card.

my 2 cents.

 

[W1zzard]

Any chance Powercolor screwed it up with a wrong bios? If AMD intended to ship with 560 shaders with a reasonable reduced price over 4850 with that kind of performance hit, I think it makes sense. I believe the 4830 is going to be around $150 and 4850 can be got at that price after rebates. If the 560 shader one comes in around $110 then it will be a balanced card.

my 2 cents.

why would amd state 640 shaders in their product brief then and risk to be exposed?

 

[suraswami]

why would amd state 640 shaders in their product brief then and risk to be exposed?

that part is bit shady. Had they said 560 and kept the price down with excellent media center capabilities I will jump on this.

 

[newtekie1]

I'm sure it wasn't intentional, really. The 560 SP cards were more than likely early samples, that probably just got mixed up when sending them out to reviewers. They certainly wouldn't intentionally send out the lower shader cards to the reviewers. I just hope none of them got sent out to retail channels.

Any chance Powercolor screwed it up with a wrong bios? If AMD intended to ship with 560 shaders with a reasonable reduced price over 4850 with that kind of performance hit, I think it makes sense. I believe the 4830 is going to be around $150 and 4850 can be got at that price after rebates. If the 560 shader one comes in around $110 then it will be a balanced card.

my 2 cents.

The HD4830 is already available on newegg for $119 after rebate, or at least it was yesterday.

Edit: The PowerColor one is actually available for $114.99 after rebate.

 

[Kreij]

why would amd state 640 shaders in their product brief then and risk to be exposed?

When I added shader count reading support to GPU-Z yesterday

They didn't think you would get GPU-Z to figure it out so quick?

 

[Polaris573]

They didn't think you would get GPU-Z to figure it out so quick?

When any product leaves a factory, in this case GPUs, an in depth analysis in not performed on every single unit rather a single unit is selected from that batch (production run of indefinite length) and only that unit is tested. This is generally enough to insure the quality of a batch of product, but if the manufacturing process is for some reason incorrectly producing 1 out of every 4 units a tester can easily miss that when only testing one unit from a batch. These are common quality control procedures, and while I do not know AMD's precise QC procedure I'm sure a scenario like similar to what was mentioned above is conceivable. When dealing with corporations there is a tendency for many people, without thinking about the situation, to jump on the "guilty until proven innocent" bandwagon. While it is entirely possible that it is conspiracy, it is more likely that when producing thousands of units a bad batch escaped.

 

[Kreij]

My comment was meant to be tongue-in-cheek

I do not think AMD is trying to pull a fast one.

 

[suraswami]

I'm sure it wasn't intentional, really. The 560 SP cards were more than likely early samples, that probably just got mixed up when sending them out to reviewers. They certainly wouldn't intentionally send out the lower shader cards to the reviewers. I just hope none of them got sent out to retail channels.



The HD4830 is already available on newegg for $119 after rebate, or at least it was yesterday.

Edit: The PowerColor one is actually available for $114.99 after rebate.

oops I didn't see that. hmm I checked yesterday for 4670 but don't remember seeing this. oh well.

 

[dwarf]

Hey, this is Kevin from Neoseeker. I wanted to report that my ATI review sample HD 4830 is missing the shaders.

When I started work today I was sort of surprised when glancing over some other reviews stating that the HD 4830 kicks the 9800 GT's ass. That wasn't what I found. Now it makes a bit more sense.

Sort of nullifies my review, which sucks. Ah well; so it goes.

Great work W1zzard, investigating this. You are the man.

 

[davidletterboyz]

I noticed that all the early reviews (that shows GPU-Z screenie) that received HD4830s from AMD have 560sp. If u google a bit for reviews with GPU-Z screenies, those HIS and Powercolor samples have 640sp. I guess it's a human mistake from AMD's side, packing the wrong samples? LOL

 

[W1zzard]

bump for updated bios in article

 

[Wile E]

Was it AMD that released the BIOS? Or did a third party mod the BIOS? Just curious.

 

[alexp999]

So if I'm reading this right. All HD4830 GPUs are hard locked to 640SP, but for some reason the ati cards shipped with a bios locked to 560SP?
So a simple flash sets it back at 640SP?