ATI cuts Radeon warranties to one year

Updated:01:01 AM CEST Sep,23

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Gameguru Mania News - Sep,29 2005 -

ATI cuts Radeon warranties to one year - tech
(hx) 07:12 PM CEST - Sep,29 2005 - Post a comment / read (8)
A member of the Extreme Overclocking Forums noticed (thanks TechReport) that ATI has dropped the warranty period for its consumer graphics cards from three years to only one. It should be noted also, this new warranty rule counts on ALL ATi products, not just videocards, with the exception of the FireGL cards which have a 3 year warranty.

Purchased after august 31st, 2005...

ATI warrants to the original purchaser of the hardware product, that the product is free from defects in materials or workmanship under normal use and service for a period of one (1) year from the date of purchase at retail. If this product is a Workstation product such as ATI's FireGL or FireMV family of products, ATI warrants to the original purchaser of the hardware product, that the Workstation product is free from defects in materials or workmanship under normal use and service for a period of three (3) years from the date of purchase at retail. All cables and accessories provided with an ATI product are warranted to be free from defects in materials or workmanship under normal use and service for a period of for (90) ninety days from date of purchase at retail.

Purchased BEFORE august 31st, 2005

ATI Technologies Inc. warrants to the original purchaser of the hardware that the product is in good working condition, according to its specifications at the time of shipment, for a period of one to five years from the date of original purchase. The warranty term depends on the product. RADEON 7000 and newer products have a three year warranty. DV Wonder cards have a two year warranty. The Remote Wonder has a one year warranty. All other ATI products have a five year warranty.

last 10 comments:

Nosferatu	(09:06 PM CEST - Sep,29 2005 )
It may seem they have some issues that make them shorten the warranty. Still HDD companies had to take exactly the same steps a while ago, though I didn't notice avalanche complaints on early demise of hard drives. How long is Nvidia's warranty period by the way?

Sabot

(10:26 PM CEST - Sep,29 2005 )

HDD manufacturers did indeed cut warranties, but they were for the very low end drives. Western Digital Caviar Special Edition drives -cheap as buttons- are 3year.
Although some Seagate drives -pretty basic- are on sale in PCworld with **5 YEAR** warranties emblazond on the boxes!!

Graphics cards are expensive compaired to HDD now, so cutting warranties down to something that is THEE most expensive part bought on a PC -apart from a high-end CPU- is dreadful, doesn't win them any friends either.

The Outlaw	(10:44 PM CEST - Sep,29 2005 )
Well already ATI is not the most popular brands and ppl dont miss any opportunity to curse ATI, Nvidia owners might be laughing away to glory now :x

lmer

(11:34 PM CEST - Sep,29 2005 )

When Maxtor cut the waranty from 3 to 1 a few years back the DiamondMax 9 series began to click away just 3 months after it expired. They were dying more often than one of the famous IBM series (now hitachi). I hear series 10 isn't laging far behind either. Oh and DiamondMax9 was no low-end drive. When i got my 80GB DM9 ATA133 8MB a few years back, it was top of the line (ATA), and the performance strongly prooved it.

So let's see. CPUs haven't got any room left to boost the CLK so they're going after multiple cores. There's a bit more pressure on the GPU manufactures which constantly try to up the performance, but how much can those wafers take? I hope they're cutting the warranties for a reason. A flawed series wouldn't do ATi much good if taking into consideration their current position on the market. :twisted:

Bert

(12:43 AM CEST - Sep,30 2005 )

From a end-user point of view, the reduction of the warranty suggests
ATI is being cheap no matter what drove the change.

However, from an electronics manufacturing point of view, errors in
design, workmanship, and the manufacturing process found by
the end-user would be discovered well within the first year of operating
the card in the computer. Usually within the first two months.

Problems after the first year may arguably be caused manufacturing
defects or stresses put on the card by the end-user. ATI in order to
save what they consider unnecessary costs may be drawing the line
on the usefullness of a three year warranty. Be interesting to hear
what their post-production quality statistics imply.

xxxx

(02:41 PM CEST - Sep,30 2005 )

All it really means is ATI doesn't have to concentrate on compatibilty in their drivers anymore giving them more room to leave more problems and not have to address them, now they have an excuse for poor drivers. With 3 year warranty they have to make sure drivers come out and work with their products. All you 9x00 users, good luck getting any further drivers! lol. Now you really have no choice now but to upgrade. :roll:

Bert

(05:37 PM CEST - Sep,30 2005 )

Possibly, however there is a difference between the legal requirements
of a warranty and after-market support. Game compatibility and the
provision of driver updates are a grey area and may dwell with how much
ATI supports "legacy" products. I doubt you'll find may unsatisifed
customers of the Radeon products. Most gamers rarely keep a video
card more than two years. It remains to be seen what ATI is going to
do but I doubt they'll want to risk their market share to NVIDIA by
lessening product support

The Outlaw	(04:59 AM CEST - Oct,05 2005 )
well i disagree on this, I dont think that most gamers get rid of their vid cards in a yr. Also if we agree about that as a reason to limiting warranty to one year still it has a negative impact psychologically(dont mind the spelling if its wrong)