AMD AIB, Diamond Multimedia, is claimed to have shipped up to 20,000 AMD HD 3800 series SKUs, with design or manufacturing defects, according to this breaking story from TG Daily.

System integrator, Alienware, was adversely affected by the issues it experienced with Diamond Multimedia SKUs, earlier this year.

Further to this, we have received information from our sources, claiming, that the failure rate on Diamond ATI video cards was higher than Alienware's tolerance levels.

The two main problems with the HD 3870 X2 parts, in particular, are reported to have been artifacts in 3DMark and games such as Crysis, followed by BSOD occurrences following the installation of drivers.

Alienware troubleshooted the issue and of four SKUs used, it was able to reproduce the artifacting issue with one and, the BSOD issue with two.

Only one SKU tested did not exhibit either issue.

Alienware also claimed to have experienced issues with other Diamond SKUs too and whilst Diamond Multimedia itself has refuted the claims, it has confirmed that, what it terms as an 'isolated problem', did affect one system integrator, earlier this year.

We'll keep you updated on this story, if and when, more information transpires.