Almost a year ago, boutique PC maker Origin PC and AMD (NYSE: AMD) had a public falling out  which resulted in Origin dropping AMD’s GPUs from its lineup. Fast-forward a year, and  the two companies are back to being partners with Origin PC being a PC-builder partner for the launch of AMD’s new R9 285 mid-range card.

“A lot can happen in a year in our industry. A year is almost a lifetime. Obviously things can change,” Origin PC’s co-founder and CEO Kevin Wasielewski said on the Maximum PC podcast.

In October of last year Origin PC dropped AMD cards from its lineup citing a lack of communication from the company, stability issues with drivers, as well as consumer preference. Shortly after the announcement came that Origin PC and AMD were parting ways, Wasielewski explained to Bright Side of News that working with AMD proved to be a frustrating experience.

“Communication was drastically inconsistent and unreliable. I can’t even tell you how many different people we have been sent to over the past four years because the number is so high that we have lost count,” Wasielewski said to BSN* at the time. “When we had issues with their product we had to jump through hoops to get someone to help us quickly diagnose and solve the issue. When new products launched we would not get them in a timely manner and we had to juggle the possibility of having to risk launch just to remain up to date on our site (we never did and instead launched late).”

But now Wasielewski says that AMD has resolved these issues, citing Roy Taylor, AMD’s VP of Global Channel Sales (a role which would involve liaising with partners like Origin PC to get AMD silicon in its products) efforts to patch things up.

“A year ago we weren’t getting any communication or support from AMD. We didn’t want to make a move like that, but we thought we had to,” Wasielewski said to Maximum PC’s editors, pointing to the example of Origin PC being out of the loop of AMD’s Hawaii GPU announcement. “Now, Roy Taylor has been in contact with me along with the rest of the AMD team and things are completely different from a year ago.”

Wasielewski explained that Taylor reached out to him, which began the process which led, today, to AMD GPU’s being available on Origin systems.

“We’re coming from the back foot,” Taylor added. “You guys know this. AMD’s in a bit of a turnaround but we’re working really hard. We have a lot of work to do to win everybody’s trust.”

Dispelling the rumors

Shortly after Origin PC’s announcement last October, controversial hardware blogger Charlie Demerjian posted a series of stories which alleged that the company’s dropping of AMD was less about technical reasons and lack of communication, and more about a series of clandestine kickbacks from Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA).

If you were wondering how sleazy Nvidia will get when the chips are down, Origin PC’s ‘dumping’ of AMD GPUs answers that question,”Demerjian wrote at the time. “If you said Origin PC has some technical problem with AMD you would be wrong. If you guessed that Nvidia paid them off, you would be right on the money.”

“Multiple SemiAccurate sources say this number is in the six digit range, several gave exact figures but asked us not to publish them. This isn’t direct cash payments but more towards MDF funding, product discounts, and other quasi-legal kickbacks that are directly tied to and based on sales volume of AMD GPUs,” Demerjian wrote in a follow-up post, further stating that his program, called “tier-0,” came from the upper echelons of Nvidia’s management.

While Wasielewski and Nvidia both categorically denied such allegations at the time, Wasielewski took the opportunity to address such rumors again on the podcast.

“It simply wasn’t true, and it was unfortunate that rumors started spreading,” Wasielewski said.