ATI's customer support

***Veridian3*** · Feb 7, 2003, 04:47 PM

HI all,

I wanted to post the experience i have had with ATI's support staff over the last couple of weeks. (please read it all)

After setting up my system with the 9700pro i tried 3dmark and a couple of games only to find that after 1-5 mins in any 3d app the system would freeze, ocasionally it was so bad that the system would freeze and the monitor would go into standby. I tried in vain for about a week and could not get the system stable...i tried everything driver changes. hardware changes (e.g. diff PSU HD etc) BIOS updates OS's but nothing would work. Eventually i came to the conclusion that the motherboard chipset wasnt handeling the power to the AGP slot correctly. I detailed everything i had tried and my theory on the concern in a mail that was at least 2 pages long and sent it off to ATI (via a PM at rage3d and driverheaven to an ati staff member), MSI and SIS.

The only company to respond was ATI, i was passed from Ben Bar-Haim ATI's VP of software to Terry Makedon ATI's senior product manager and then on to engineers and tech specialists within ATI. Each of the guys i spoke to was approachable, enthusiastic, quick to respond and even when they couldnt exactly replicate my concern they never gave up, instead they took a fresh approach to the investigation. Thanks to their determination to solve my concern we have established that there is a concern between the motherboard, Northbridge and the system memory - and that some DDR333 (including my Samsung ddr333) fails under intensive use. (The motherboard is a MSI 648 Max, using the SIS 648 chipset)

Normally as an end user i would be happy with this result and have the motherboard/RAM RMA'd rather than wait for MSI/SIS or Samsung to solve the concern however ATI have gone a step further - they have offered me an exchange of my RAM for some that they have verified is compatable with the motherboard! Yes you read correctly - ATI have offered to fix a concern not caused by their hardware, rather than have me - their end user -inconvenienced. Truly above and beyond the call of duty. Not only that, they are taking the findings from the investigation to MSI/SIS/Samsung so that they can all work together and solve the concern.

Basically, i couldn't recommend them more to anyone looking to buy a new Graphics card - Great customer support, great drivers, great Image Quality and great performance. What more could a user want???

Stu

***Zardon*** · Feb 7, 2003, 05:38 PM

they are doing a great job, and the thing is, they do really care. thats great to hear.

ToshiroOC · Feb 7, 2003, 06:13 PM

I'm very impressed! ATI really seems to be putting out the welcome mat, and I'm sorely tempted r350

Cyan007 · Feb 23, 2003, 03:28 PM

I'm a fan.

gcogger · Feb 23, 2003, 05:37 PM

My experience is totally the opposite.

I've submitted a support request via the web site 3 times now, and each time I've received the same (identical word for word) stock reply. It directs me to the FAQs and says to submit another support request if they don't help. The second and third times I've made it extremely clear that I have read the FAQs and that they do not help. It seems to me that nobody has even read my support requests - they must be auto generated. I've tried responding to their e-mail, but I just get what looks like another auto reply directing me to the web site.

So my experience of ATI support is that there isn't any and, at the moment, I see no way to get a real response from them. I can't find an e-mail address to use, and it looks like the telephone support will be charged (I have a card made by Crucial, not ATI, but you can't get genuine ATI cards in the UK!)

Dyre Straits · Feb 23, 2003, 07:45 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by gcogger
My experience is totally the opposite.

I've submitted a support request via the web site 3 times now, and each time I've received the same (identical word for word) stock reply. It directs me to the FAQs and says to submit another support request if they don't help. The second and third times I've made it extremely clear that I have read the FAQs and that they do not help. It seems to me that nobody has even read my support requests - they must be auto generated. I've tried responding to their e-mail, but I just get what looks like another auto reply directing me to the web site.

So my experience of ATI support is that there isn't any and, at the moment, I see no way to get a real response from them. I can't find an e-mail address to use, and it looks like the telephone support will be charged (I have a card made by Crucial, not ATI, but you can't get genuine ATI cards in the UK!)

I'm very saddened to say that I have to echo this post as far as my most recent email problem report goes.

So far, I've gotten three 'canned' replies from ATi and none of them even hint at dealing with the problem I've written about. Each of my own replies has prompted them to actually, please read my problem report.

I've had very good results with ATi's online support in the past and this is a break from my normal experience with them.

Hopefully, a resolution will be forthcoming that actually shows my problem report has been read.

Dyre Straits

garfield · Feb 23, 2003, 10:18 PM

I have also had a negative experience with ATI customer support. I have sent in two reports on the capture drivers since 2.3. I use my All-in-Wonder Radeon card as a digital VCR. I have not been able to make any driver sets work reliably since 2.3. Sometimes they capture and sometimes they don't. Sometimes they start and then after a few minutes just stop working. This is under XP. I have even installed XP as a fresh install and next the drivers, MMC and DVD. They still would not work. I got 3.0 to work about 80% of the time which is not good enough to set and forget. 3.1 is back to working only about 10 % of the time.

I have sent 2 problem reports to ATI with no response.

I have started a thread in the forum and received no help.

ATI Customer Support may be trying to work out problems with the new cards, but I paid good money for my card and it is still in warranty even if it is 15 months old.

The375Boy · Feb 26, 2003, 11:46 AM

Veridian3, i had almost the same thing happen to me i'm running an AMD 2700 with pc133 512 ram with a 300 watt Power Supply and it would always throw the monitor into standby when i tried to run natural selection ( mod for half- life) and i figured out the problem, it was the power supply i got a 450 and it worked perfectly so...wut PSU (power supply) wattage are you running???

rtoledo · Mar 9, 2003, 12:49 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Veridian3
HI all,

I wanted to post the experience i have had with ATI's support staff over the last couple of weeks. (please read it all)

After setting up my system with the 9700pro i tried 3dmark and a couple of games only to find that after 1-5 mins in any 3d app the system would freeze, ocasionally it was so bad that the system would freeze and the monitor would go into standby. I tried in vain for about a week and could not get the system stable...i tried everything driver changes. hardware changes (e.g. diff PSU HD etc) BIOS updates OS's but nothing would work. Eventually i came to the conclusion that the motherboard chipset wasnt handeling the power to the AGP slot correctly. I detailed everything i had tried and my theory on the concern in a mail that was at least 2 pages long and sent it off to ATI (via a PM at rage3d and driverheaven to an ati staff member), MSI and SIS.

The only company to respond was ATI, i was passed from Ben Bar-Haim ATI's VP of software to Terry Makedon ATI's senior product manager and then on to engineers and tech specialists within ATI. Each of the guys i spoke to was approachable, enthusiastic, quick to respond and even when they couldnt exactly replicate my concern they never gave up, instead they took a fresh approach to the investigation. Thanks to their determination to solve my concern we have established that there is a concern between the motherboard, Northbridge and the system memory - and that some DDR333 (including my Samsung ddr333) fails under intensive use. (The motherboard is a MSI 648 Max, using the SIS 648 chipset)

Normally as an end user i would be happy with this result and have the motherboard/RAM RMA'd rather than wait for MSI/SIS or Samsung to solve the concern however ATI have gone a step further - they have offered me an exchange of my RAM for some that they have verified is compatable with the motherboard! Yes you read correctly - ATI have offered to fix a concern not caused by their hardware, rather than have me - their end user -inconvenienced. Truly above and beyond the call of duty. Not only that, they are taking the findings from the investigation to MSI/SIS/Samsung so that they can all work together and solve the concern.

Basically, i couldn't recommend them more to anyone looking to buy a new Graphics card - Great customer support, great drivers, great Image Quality and great performance. What more could a user want???

Stu

how did you get thru? I've tried emailing and it seems the web site is set up in a perfect loop that keeps sending you back to the FAQ. I have not had the time to call, and my hours are really bad, so that might be my fault, but all I get back when I finally tried a blind email addy of support@ati.com are auto responses.

I've always had ATI cards and just keep handing them down to my lowly nix boxes, so I'm not putting their product down, and I just moved up from the AIW8500DV to the AIW9700pro and I'm having problems with the drivers that came on the CD atimmc ? causes a crash on installation on a clean w2k box that only has DX9 and sp4.036.

I spent 5 days trying to download from their site the new drivers and the links seem to point to a miir.com ? IIRC site, anyway this site just goes to sleep and never downloads, I've done traceroutes to it and seems to be just slow like a site on 300BAUD and there's a 1000 of us downloading.

Anyway I finally got the latest driver's but the screen KEEPS restting to 640x480 on EVERY reboot.

Since this is a new card I'm hopping they can send me a new cd with newer driver's that work with DX9 and SP4.

other than the driver problems I'm having I do like this card and it seems to be a bit better than the 8500dv although that card I knew all it's intricasies and could get it to work after a learning curve of a month.

VW_Factor · Mar 10, 2003, 06:10 PM

Back when I purchaced my 9700Pro, and a new power supply, just in case.. Installed it, and it ran awesome.. Except, that after a few minutes in a game or 3D app.. My computer would crash to desktop.. I tried the new drivers, and such.. No avail.. I emailed ATI.. They suggested perhaps a bigger power supply.. I think.. I just bought this PSU, which supplies plenty of amps across all voltage rails (as computer people put it). The thing has plenty of power.. With the side panel OFF my rig, I got more gaming time.. I thought.. Its getting to hot.. After getting a new case (big one this time, with plenty of air flow room) and installing a few more fans in strategic places, and installing a p3 heatsink and fan to the core of the 9700 (it was modded a bit) The problem went away.. I emailed back to ATI and let them know the results of this, and send them some pictures of "new" heatsink and fan. They actually responded back not with "We dont support this, and you voided your warranty".. They actually told me that they are appreciative of the input, and their enginneers are looking into why overheating was a problem..
Im sure their engineers have costs to consider, as to why the shim is installed to protect the core during the manufacturing process... And also.. Not everyone has free PCI slots near their AGP port. (nVIDIA??) I was thanked for more input.. I thought.. Hey thats kinda strange.. But hey.. Gotta love ATI.. Never had any problems with their tech support.. Considering, those guys probably get "tons" of calls in a day, sometimes you just have to be fair..