News - Origin PC systems to be powered exclusively by Nvidia GPUs

[HEXUS]

Firm drops AMD GPU options due to customer feedback, overheating and stability problems.

Read more.

[Cog]

How long will it be until EA sues this company for trademark infringement?

[tealsuki]

Iirc, AMD powers both of the new consoles (and the Wii, if you want to lump that into this generation), so I don't think they're gonna hurt TOO badly.

[OilSheikh]

Never heard of them. Don't give a s**t about them.

[TrevorNT]

SteamBoxes are all going to use NVIDIA because AMD hates open-source software and SteamOS (what all the boxes will run on) runs on Linux, which is open-source. To be fair, NVIDIA doesn't seem to like open-source much but when SteamOS was announced NVIDIA suddenly decided to devote more resources to Linux devs. AMD shrugged. NVIDIA's closed-source Linux driver works great and their open-source driver...well, that one is a work in progress. AMD's open-source driver is at about the same level as NVIDIA's but their closed source drivers pretty much suck too. So between that and the complete lack of reaction to the SteamOS and Linux news, why would Steam even want to assemble AMD-based Linux machines?

[Medallish]

Seems odd they're having issues so badly they've decided to drop AMD, afaik it's not an issue you see in the public.

[MrFawlty]

This is not bad PR for AMD, it is bad PR for Origin. The fact that they are now limiting what they are offering to their customers is a BAD thing. Not that I was going to buy from them anyway (Which I am sure they are most upset about!!)

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Its probably down to the Nvidia Battlebox programme:

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardwar...ia-battlebox/1

Origin PC are part of the programme:

http://www.maximumpc.com/origin_pc_n...g_machines2013

They were the first company to produce the Battlebox in cooperation with Nvidia.

Edit!!

Supposedly,Nvidia offered bribes to smaller PC companies:

http://semiaccurate.com/2013/10/05/m...n-pc-drop-amd/

Interesting,if true.

[ET3D]

SteamBoxes are all going to use NVIDIA because AMD hates open-source software

You must be living in an alternate universe. AMD has been supplying chip specs to the open source community for years. AMD supported several open source projects (such as Bullet physics), and offered Linux tools for years. That's contrary to NVIDIA which has been close source and provides its own closed solutions (PhysX).

The problem isn't AMD and open source, it's that open source drivers tend to be inferior to closed source ones, and NVIDIA is dedicated to providing good closed source drivers. Valve isn't a real open source proponent, it's just using what's available for free.

[theanalyzer]

Iirc, AMD powers both of the new consoles (and the Wii, if you want to lump that into this generation), so I don't think they're gonna hurt TOO badly.

A while ago this wouldnt seem like an issue. But nVidia seems to be doing their own work, with steam PC, its linux drivers and the like.

[hiyayhi]

It actually makes sense, with all of the stuff about micro stutter and frame pacing AMD's multi GPU set ups don't make sense but that is soon to change.
I am an AMD user with a multi GPU set up soooo, yeh.

[DemonHighwayman]

Something doesn't seem right here. I find it difficult to believe that all current AMD cards run hotter than all Nvidia cards, and announcing this when AMD's new stuff is just around the corner - untested !
Just seems like Nvidia has bribed them in some way.

[edzieba]

Something doesn't seem right here. I find it difficult to believe that all current AMD cards run hotter than all Nvidia cards, and announcing this when AMD's new stuff is just around the corner - untested !
Just seems like Nvidia has bribed them in some way.

Remember that, barring the R9-290x, R7-260x and R7-250, the cards appear to essentially be rebadges, and the 'new' cards are not using a new architecture or fab process, but are up-sized or downsized versions of the existing lineup. It's reasonable to make prediction of performance/watt based on the previous generation because of this.


From personal experience supporting Nvidia's Quadro and AMD's Fire cards, I can see why they chose one company over the other. AMD's professional drivers are a real pig to work with and will go unstable if you look at them funny, so I'd hate to see the state of their consumer drivers. The only problem we have with the Quadros is the passive models cooking themselves in workstations, but that's more down to inappropriate speccing we had no input over (and poor desk ventilation).

[Kumagoro]

I first read this on the hexus facebook page. What I actually found interesting is the difference between what people in the forum say and the comments on the facebook page. So many people there saying how nvidia are just better etc.

[DemonHighwayman]

I only noticed CAT-THE-FIFTH's comment after I posted but his last link basically sums up everything I suspected

http://semiaccurate.com/2013/10/05/much-nvidia-pay-origin-pc-drop-amd/ [semiaccurate.com]

edzieba you seem to be more familiar with both brands than me, I can only go on personal experience and my current setup is a single AMD card which never lets me down. I'm not an AMD fan boy by any means though, my 3 previous cards were all high end Nvidia cards and I didn't get any problems from them either.

This all seems like another of the Intel-AMD Sleezefests that went on back when AMD had the better CPU's and Intel threw money at vendors to keep using there inferior CPU's.

[tekgun]

So what they're really saying, is that they've struck a deal with Nvidia for a few extra beans, and their support staff are incompetent.