Sorry, but you're asking for microcode updates for CPU architectures released in 2003 and 2007? Not even Intel does that (they're skipping a lot of security patches even for Nehalem, which is far newer than both K10 and K8). How would you expect a company a fraction of their size to have the resources to do this, especially for products that have been EOL for a decade or more? And why would they want to?
As for your GPU experiences, I kind of feel bad for you, as you've obviously had some bad luck. The first sounds like it really should have been RMA'd - if the powerplay tables borked themselves, with no outside intervention, that's a warranty issue - while I can't quite understand what you mean with the second. Did you desolder the RAM and GPU package from the card and resolder them on other cards to test? If not, how on earth can you say that "they are fine?" Things break. Again: should've RMA'd it. The third is a bit odd, and pretty crap that they wouldn't fix it, but in those days AMD's driver support wasn't exactly stellar. Not surprised, sadly. But again, things have thankfully improved. And, on the other hand, I've had no significant issues with my HD 4850s (Crossfire, noisy as hell with the stock cooler, better when I replaced them with Arctic coolers), my HD 6950, or my Fury X. I might have been lucky, you might have been unlucky, or the truth might be somewhere in between. Nonetheless, things are a lot better these days than when AMD was at risk of going bankrupt.
Brisbane has 0 microcode updates. Never saw one. Either this is a perfect cpu (doubt), they released a cpu knowing it has a cpu microcode update issue unsolvable (worst than most of things done by intel) or they just didn't cared.
Now the Athlon x4 640 that I own was released around 10 May 2010. The latest microcode for it was released in March 2010. I can say this cpu saw no love after release.
Nobody asked for a microcode release for such old cpu in 2019. But then when you see that well one received 0 and the other one none after it was pushed on the market you start to think about how much they do care about the products they sell.
The hd 4350 has a messed up power play table, only thing good there is the boot clocks. For some reasons only those were used (some older drivers 9.x early 10.x actualy ignore the messed up structure and read other parts from it, 11.x just reads the boot clock and uses that for everything). A simple RMA wasn't going to fix it, this is not the result of a bad flash during manufacturing, this particular model was sold with a bad power play table (I asked the manufacturer to send me a vbios for it, they send me exactly the same I already had flashed). Also explaining to the shop that you know the vbios is a mess wasn't really going to work. It was going to pass all the tests this is the hilarious part.
How or why the tool used to compile the vbios didn't noticed that the power play table is not right I have no clue.
Sure you can say it was ATI. When you buy something you don't buy only the good parts you buy the bad parts too.
(If you were buying only the good parts I would had been the first to buy a wife
).
Sure things have change but I still read a lot of issue regarding AMD that well don't really make me think things have change enough for me to take them into consideration.
Regarding the hd 7750 well it took me a couple of years to "fix it" and I'm still very limited in the drivers I can use on it on Windows side. Also I didn't had a proper reason to RMA it. Not gonna make them accept the RMA because I say it doesn't feel smooth or snappy like an NVIDIA gpu is...
Regarding the first part. I actually don't care anymore to be honest and I don't joke. i've been banned on some games forum because I just posted videos with cheaters that weren't banned. They decided that to ban me on the forum is better than to log in the game and ban the cheaters, that's how I ended up to not care if I get banned on a forum or in a game, I just move on if I'm banned simple as that (when I actually care I'm the one ending up hurt so to protect myself I had to learn to care as less as possible; when I don't understand grey and I only see white or black there is just no other way to try to survive in this world).
And regarding games. I reported in a game a particular nasty bug abuse. They did nothing for 6 months. I decided to force them to fix it and basicaly started to abuse it. They banned me but still didn't fixed the bug. When I'm the mood to troll them I make a new account and I abuse it because I don't need to level up in any way to do it. They just don't want to fix it simple as that. And i show up from time to time wasting 15 minutes just to remind them.
At some point they even made a topic about me and what I do (fun part they never wrote that I reported that bug and I started to abuse it only when I saw that they did nothing for 6 months) they wrote some stupid things about how I do it when in fact I just jump and move forward in their game (the fact that this is how you can climb walls that you shouldn't be able to climb is not my fault)... For what exactly I'm banned? For their incompentence on fixing a bug?!? They can even disable jumping, it doesn't change anything in that game.
Yes I agree that after you reported a bug and they did nothing for 6 months you can happy abuse it because they clearly don't care and only abusing it is the only way to force them do it. (Trust me if I'll find a bug in a router model that allow me to take control over it, report it and see how they do nothing for 6 months, I'll build myself a botnet with that router model only and set it to flood that manufacturer ("Fix the bugs in the model xyz you made!" will be included in the flood packets so they know why it happens!), maybe they will understand when the routers they made and sold are used to take down their websites... because it's clearly they need to see what can happen to understand the problem. Ofc they can start legal actions against me, I'll involve the press and I'm gonna play not guilty because this wouldn't had happened in the first place if they would had released a fix for the bug I reported, by doing nothing they allowed this to happen so if someone is guilty is them, any lost is caused by them and they are the ones fully responsible for it. I doesn't even matter if I win or lose, they lost anyway.)
My expectation atm regarding AMD are:
1) to have to mod the vbios to get it right
2) to have issues with the drivers and a limited amount of drivers I can use
3) big issue at release
4) big issue with first generation
I can bash NVIDIA don't worry. Expectation with NVIDIA:
1) if something is bad in the vbios pray that it's big enough to be able to RMA it else god have mercy cause i won't really figure out easily how to fix it
2) always worried that there will be a driver that well gonna get smoke out of the gpu (they did it once)
3) higher prices for the performance offered
Intel:
1) cool design bugs where you lose performance when you update the microcode
2) no real improvement in term of performance in last many years
3) keeping high prices
Intel indirectly:
1) cool that you release microcodes, not cool that the manufacturer don't update the bios, not cool that there is no nice way to update the microcode like it is with the ME
2) bios locks that don't even let you flash a modded bios (mostly for the microcodes) and you need to either use some weird bugs to do it or well some weird ways to unlock it (assuming you figure out the addresses that need to be changed cause are not the same...)
We kinda need at least a 3rd competitor in cpu area and a 4th in gpu area. Sadly it I don't see it happen.
L.E.: Regarding the soldering part yes. Some people came to me with problems regarding their pc. They are all warn that I'm not responsible for any damage I do to their pc/laptop (they don't like it they are free to go to someone else and pay for the service). I prefer to change the parts that I believe are broken and not to try to repair them (gonna get back here). I also don't change anything for my work (if things are replaced either the owner buy them or if the owners agrees I order the stuff and he give me the money for it), I just do it cause I want and I like to do it. Usualy the parts that I believe are broken stay at me (because the owner doesn't want them back). So I ended up with various broken things.
From time to time I'm in the mood (to be read I feel that my hands are steady enough and my eyes are in a good shape) to try to "fix" them. Max I can do at an acceptable level is a reflow. That didn't stopped me from using the reflow procedure to actually try to solder a gpu chip. Usualy when I try such thing well I get smoke as result, but I had some (think it was 3) working results (I'd never use such of my "working" result for more than testing because it's a joke the way those things are soldered and won't actually hold for more than a few hours). The stuff doesn't work anyway so for me it's between doing experiments or just trash it, i prefer do experiments and if it's fail (usualy) trash it.
The stuff is broken and free so the costs are a bit of electricity bill and my time.