German retailer releases video card RMA data

Quizzical

Out of over 120,000 video cards sold in some recent period, how many were returned?  And does this vary by vendor?

Here's the news article:

https://techreport.com/news/3472666/amd-gpus-rma-more-than-nvidia-report/

And here's the spreadsheet with the RMA data:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQbqvpHU0z6oK9HaCRbDPhkEoq5OA32mRGysyDZYhFsAk2kwKie-DaKplFyco7vwlw3ansFpjNstrpG/pubhtml

There are a variety of ways that you can look at this.  One is that the overall RMA rate was 3.2% for AMD cards and 2.5% for Nvidia cards.

You can also break it down by board partner, where AMD-only partner PowerColor was by far the worst.  PowerColor had a 5.4% RMA rate, while the next highest was 3.3% for XFX, Gainward, and Palit.  The difference between PowerColor and the second worst was larger than the difference between the second worst and the best, PNY at 1.7%.  If you remove PowerColor, the RMA return rate for AMD was about 2.5%--basically the same as for Nvidia.

You can also look at which particular SKUs were the worst.  On the AMD side, only four had an RMA rate above 5%, and all four of those were made by PowerColor.  That's how the board partner got such an awful overall RMA rate.  On the Nvidia side, it various tremendously by card, with all RTX 2080 Tis having a combined RMA rate over 5%, and the RTX 2070 not far below that.  Meanwhile, the RTX 2060, GTX 1660 Ti, and all of the Super cards had an RMA rate below 2%.

Scot

Moral of this article; buy a super card, you won't be disappointed.

achesoma

Of course the 2080 Tis will have high RMA. If someone pays over $1200 for a GPU then it better be absolutely perfect or else they'll return it.

I just can't imagine paying twice the amount of money for a Ti over a super to get negligible improvement.

Sandmanjw

I also would like to know what happened to those "returned" cards.

Card sellers are notorious for reboxing and re-selling the same cards  that have been returned with little to no quality checks.

Quite possible to really destroy any type of accurate numbers, specially when you are talking small data point of around 1500 or so returns.

Reason why i never, ever, buy any refurb or reboxed vid card no matter the deal to be had.

Ridelynn

I don't think it speaks to the engineering of either AMD or nV.

The numbers are all fairly close - 5% on the high end, average of around 2%.  Now, 5% isn't good, but it's not IBM Deathstar bad either.

Sure, it certainly makes you raise an eyebrow at PowerColor, but I don't think it necessarily speaks to the quality of AMD versus nVidia - more to the differences in various AIBs.

That said, I will say it probably does speak to the relationship that nV/AMD have with their AIBs - It looks like one area AMD needs to improve in. If you pull PowerColor out of that, they all look pretty similar.

Vrika

Quizzical said:

And here's the spreadsheet with the RMA data:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQbqvpHU0z6oK9HaCRbDPhkEoq5OA32mRGysyDZYhFsAk2kwKie-DaKplFyco7vwlw3ansFpjNstrpG/pubhtml

Are those sales numbers + RMA percents from retailer, and RMA amounts calculated by someone else? Or how did they manage to get results where people have RMA'ed fractions of a graphic card?

Ridelynn

Some random numbers:

Sold 457 cards

15 of them RMA'ed

100* (15 / 457) = 3.28% RMA rate.

Then, someone just used the % rate to calculate how many cards that would be, since that wasn't in the source data:

3.28% * 457 = 14.9

That's how you get fractions of a card.

Quizzical

Vrika said:

Quizzical said:

And here's the spreadsheet with the RMA data:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQbqvpHU0z6oK9HaCRbDPhkEoq5OA32mRGysyDZYhFsAk2kwKie-DaKplFyco7vwlw3ansFpjNstrpG/pubhtml

Are those sales numbers + RMA percents from retailer, and RMA amounts calculated by someone else? Or how did they manage to get results where people have RMA'ed fractions of a graphic card?

I'd assume that the percentages are what the retailer gave, and the numbers of RMAs are what someone else calculated.  That explains why the latter isn't an integer.

Cleffy

I think return rates could also be affected by return policy. Some manufacturers have different return policies which has the affect of making their defect rate seem smaller. For instance it's a real pain to return something to the Taiwan makers, but a lot easier to return something to a US or Chinese maker.
I am surprised by the data for AMD. Their sales are a lot closer to Nvidia than I would expect. Right now AMD GPUs are simply uncompetitive. Yet a decade ago when AMD had clearly superior GPUs, they only sold half what nVidia sold. I am also surprised that there were so few 5700 XT returned considering the issues with the card. AMD does have superior drivers and a control panel at this point.

Ridelynn

Cleffy said:

Their sales are a lot closer to Nvidia than I would expect. Right now AMD GPUs are simply uncompetitive. Yet a decade ago when AMD had clearly superior GPUs, they only sold half what nVidia sold. 

AMD GPUs are only noncompetitive at the high end. They are extremely competitive at mid-lower tiers, which have higher sales volumes.

But you do have a point, when the Evergreen / Northern Islands cards were out, they ran rings around Fermi. I think that's just the power of Marketing. nVidia did have a strong product for quite a while with the Tesla cards, and didn't sit long on Fermi before they were able to right the ship.

Vrika

Cleffy said:

I think return rates could also be affected by return policy. Some manufacturers have different return policies which has the affect of making their defect rate seem smaller. For instance it's a real pain to return something to the Taiwan makers, but a lot easier to return something to a US or Chinese maker.

Since it's Europe it's likely that the store handles all returns: In Europe it's common practice that whoever sells stuff professionally must also accept that defective products are returned to them and then the seller delivers it forward.

I don't know about that store specifically, but usually all the GPUs have same return policy and terms of returning them to the store if you've got problems.

Professor78

It's interesting to see that KFA2 have the best rate for the large volumes. Have seen the name a few times just would never really consider before.