AMD forums:

[Bikerdude]

[update]

Spoke to Marcus @AMD UK on the phone and as it turns out a number of complaints have been made against "Spyre". My AMD forum account has been unbarred and my Ip address unblocked!!!

 

Bought a new gfx card for xmas, been having issues with mainly the driver So I though a good place to look for support and polity vent etc - or so I thought

 

My second post got flamed by some smart arse fanboy and then promptly locked, to which I reported the posted asking why it had been locked.. and then my account on there got deleted and my Ip blocked (untill the isp dhcp refreshed etc) so I cant login even with a different account name.

 

I have emailed AMD directly about this as I did nothing wrong according the t&c's and I got no warning Pm or email from the forum mods. Now I've been over at the nVidia forums a long while back when I had the 8800GTX when I was equally frustrated when posting about the driver issue with thief etc, but at no point did a thread get locked or worse my account deleted.

 

I don't have loyalty to AMD or nVidia but depending on the answer I get from AMD next week this card maybe going back and AMD will be added to the list of manufactures I will never buy anything from again.

 

So whats the moral of this story, well take your pick..

 

[update] found cached copies of 1 of my posts

 

Cached AMD frum link

 

Cached AMD forum link2

Edited February 3, 2011 by Bikerdude

[lost_soul]

Wow, this is a bit of a turn off for someone who plans to buy his next CPU from AMD. IP bans are pretty extreme, unless you really did something bad. A few weeks ago, I tried to access the Skulltag forums to get help running it on Linux. The first thing I saw was a page telling me I was IP banned for "posting stupid****", when I had NEVER been there before. Moral of the story, don't IP ban people unless it is absolutely necessary. If you hand out IP bans like candy, you'll inevitably prevent other users from accessing your site.

 

I realize that the guy who did this to you probably doesn't work for AMD, but this is an example of why it is important to be careful handing out moderator privileges. When I ran a game server, I had a simple rule. Anyone who asks to be admin never gets to be.

[New Horizon]

Which forum is this? I wouldn't mind taking a look around.

[Serpentine]

Hah, I saw you venting over on their forums last night or whenever

 

And I expected this to happen really. The two moderators that do stuff are spyre who is a mod and has access to some kind of internal data, he's the 'official' moderator who mostly just bans people or deletes posts which contain 'bad things'. I think he's paid by AMD to moderate, tho he doesnt really do much more than ban/delete posts, he is not officially an AMD employee nor does he work in offices or anything directly related, he's just some fanboy. I've lost about 50% of my posts to his moderation. Most of what he posts is "it works here on my billion displays + some cards" or that "this has been fixed, its in some version of the driver" when the driver gets released the fix is never there.

 

The other one is Gr33nGeck0 or whatever, he's some lackey from Sapphire who has no formal mod powers and runs some crap 3rd party forum which he spams everywhere. If you happen to insult how retarded his posts are he will crywhine to spyre(it seems) and you'll be missing posts or be banned.

 

The forums NEVER have any official feedback or AMD employees posting on them. The only forums that have any officials are the developer relations ones, however they just tell you to make them directly in a PM if they can help/need info. They're actually really good about this, unlike the more public forums.

 

Pretty much the only big problems with the Radeon cards/drivers atm is the horrific profile based powermanagement, which you're also running into with dual displays keeping the cards clocked high. It's a bit stupid that they dont give you absolute control of profiles and how/when they are used as there are so many stupid catches (like the dual display). I myself cant use my card without locking the clocks manually, if they're left on auto/default doom3 or any accelerated application that isnt vsynced will flip the core/mem voltage about 2-3 times per second until it crashes after about 2-3 minutes. Loads of people are running into all of these problems which seem to be related to how/when it detects 3d and which profile it tries to apply. Argh.

[Bikerdude]

IP bans are pretty extreme, unless you really did something bad.

Which forum is this? I wouldn't mind taking a look around.

@LS, Not at all.

@NH, see below.

 

Hah, I saw you venting over on their forums last night or whenever

 

Spyre he's the 'official' moderator who I think he's paid by AMD to moderate.

Gr33nGeck0 he's some lackey from Sapphire who will crywhine to spyre.

 

@LS, I was about to post a copy of the threads I started and posts i made but it seems they have all been deleted - that Sprye is a sad little man.

@Serps, good so there might be some level of accountability. For any use it will be I have already made an official complaint to AMD and will be following up with AMD UK.. So by this time next week we will see one way or another.

Edited December 18, 2010 by Bikerdude

[New Horizon]

@NH, see below.

 

Do you have a link to the section you posted in? I want to observe the goings on there....perhaps make a post similar to your own to see what happens.

[Bikerdude]

Yup -

 

ATI Radeon Graphics

 

Catalyst control center beta

 

Im gonna wait for my IP to change as I already have to other accounts registered and Im gonna makes some posts, screenshots them and email those off to AMD.

Edited December 19, 2010 by Bikerdude

[New Horizon]

Im gonna wait for my IP to change as I already have to other accounts registered and Im gonna makes some posts, screenshots them and email those off to AMD.

 

I was thinking of doing the same thing. lol

[Serpentine]

Im gonna wait for my IP to change as I already have to other accounts registered and Im gonna makes some posts, screenshots them and email those off to AMD.

 

I asked him why my posts kept vanishing, specifically ones that had screenshots of me showing how the power management was completely broken on my combination of harware+win7. This is the gem I got back :

 

Stop posting false information and your posts wont be deleted.

 

But yeah, til I get my issue looked at, even after I got my AIB guys to confirm that it wasnt normal... I'll continue shitting up the forums and making him work for his pay. Just remember to keep asking for your support ticket to be escalated and thank the support staff that mail... catch more flies that will open an IA case that way I've found

[New Horizon]

Is this guy nuts or something? He shouldn't be able to pull stunts like that!

[Bikerdude]

Which is why I am taking the extraordinary action of talking to AMD in the UK directly about this tosser. Ordinary I wouldn't even waste brain on twats link him, but I know I did nothing wrong and to be treated this way on the official forum when I went there looking for some tech help was completely outrageous.

[stumpy]

He obviously thinks he's god and everyone else is a slug. Peoples tiles under their names like n00B is not something you want on a so called professional forum. Cos there's a chance people going their arn't noobs and when they find out the moderator acts like a jumped up 5 year old then they wont be going back and AMD are going to lose sales.

 

looks like the forum is run by an independant company, may be he works for them or is them.

Edited December 19, 2010 by stumpy

[MoroseTroll]

Either way, this situation of the AMD forums is not acceptable.

[rebb]

Some people just can't handle having "power" over others, or they think because they are official moderators, they have to display their power as often as possible - thinking this makes the boards look "well under control".

[lost_soul]

^exactly

 

That was why I always said "Anyone who asks to be a moderator doesn't get to be."

[Noisycricket]

The day they invent a way to punch someone through the internet is going to be a busy week for hospitals around the world.

 

[qoute]That was why I always said "Anyone who asks to be a moderator doesn't get to be."

I wish it was the same for our leaders.

[rebb]

The day they invent a way to punch someone through the internet is going to be a busy week for hospitals around the world.

 

Only a week ? Sounds more like a "Pandora's Box" kind of deal

[MoroseTroll]

Some AMD's VIPs have a blogs (for example, Nigel Dessau), so you guys can easily inform him about the situation on the AMD Game forums.

Edited December 20, 2010 by MoroseTroll

[7upMan]

Bikerdude, what gc did you buy? Because, if there are driver related problems, you can sometimes roll-back to an older version of the driver. I was getting BSODs at Windows startup with the 10.10 Cat, with the 10.9 everything works like a charm. Once I'll get into an experimental mood, I'll try out the new 10.12, just to see what the new Morphological-AA method looks like.

[Bikerdude]

its a HD 6970 and I had issue with the 10.12 whql driver not detecting the card in win7 x94, so i tired to the 10.12a and it worked, but there are issues with that version, namely you cant disable Ai via the ccc cp - which is a right faceslap for TDM and other games that suffer from the spinning sky issue.

 

- update the first post one a cached copy of one of my posts.

 

Im considering sending the HD6970 back, because the cost-per-performance increase between my 5870 and the 6970 is 11%. Now since I paid £280 for the 6970, would sell the 5870 for £180-£200, thats £80-100 for 11% improvement - now I found insulting to say the least. The previosu upgrade was a perf increase of over 20% for the £100 mark (GTX285-to-HD5870). But I digress, in days gone by when we upgraded the gfx card it used to be a 50% increase, as in the new card was 2x faster than the old one. Amd and nVidia are are on a downward spiral if they think the market can sustain this level of hubris.

 

That said if I nVidia were on crack with their pricing (£400 for a GTX580) I might have considered that card @ at no more than £350 as I have the cash, but even then thats a £150 upgrade for 20-30% perf increase.

Edited December 21, 2010 by Bikerdude

[Noisycricket]

Only a week ? Sounds more like a "Pandora's Box" kind of deal

 

Put that on your brass knuckles.

[New Horizon]

Wasn't able to see the response of the moderator unfortunately...but you should use these posts to prove you did nothing wrong.

[7upMan]

Biker, this really sucks, both, I mean. I for one thought about getting me a HD6950 as a Christmas present, as it is a significant upgrade over my HD5770. However, seeing the current driver state, I will wait a few months before making a decision.

 

Also, you should be aware that the HD69xx cards are in many ways new cards, as Anandtech pointed out (VLIW 4 vs. VLIW5). To be able to create efficient drivers will take time, so buying such a card seems to be more an investment in the future rather than the now.

 

As for the other driver issues, look back at the madness when the HD68xx cards came out. How many Beta drivers did AMD release? Four I think, though I may have lost count along the way.

 

Let's face it: With new gfx cards it's the same situation as with PC games - upon release they are buggy, have crappy performance and are generally more of a nuisance than fun. Wait a few weeks/months, and the major kinks are worked out (either by the game studio or by fans) and it's cheaper to boot. Plus, you often get additional content that would have previously required you to shell out additional cash.

 

 

[Serpentine]

hahah, I managed to help a guy fix some problem which a lot of people ask about. The result? I told one of the mods friends to not defend a bad system and therefor the thread was deleted after two pages of quite civil support in a few minutes

 

I managed to save most of the thread, might upload later for fun.

[SneaksieDave]

I honestly cannot understand why people still buy those heaps. Sounds like all they ever have is "just barely supported" functionality types of problems, there's always some driver issue that fixes one thing and breaks five more, and now crap like this? Return that shit, and tell them where to shove it; tell them it sucks and their support is terrible. Only then will things possibly start to improve. If you're really effective perhaps you can get the mods fired.