FRONTPAGE NVIDIA Says No to Voltage Control

hokiealumnus said:

Kain665 said:

Take Nvidia's response with a grain of salt. There's more at play here than the AIBs not wanting to stomach the warranties.

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QFT. I've talked to partners directly (who I can't reveal for obvious reasons) that have been begging NVIDIA to allow vBIOS modification for months without success. I find it hard to believe the only reason they aren't releasing the BIOSes is because they don't want to bite the bullet on the warranties....especially when they do give voltage control happily on AMD cards.

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What impact would that have on enthusiasts?

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hokiealumnus said:

Heh, with the Classified retailing for $630, I think it's safe to say they already passed the cost on to the consumer!

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DarthGrantius said:

Why don't they release a 680k edition that's unlocked? And charge an extra 20 bucks?

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DarthGrantius said:

Why don't they release a 680k edition that's unlocked? And charge an extra 20 bucks?

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wagex said:

thats what the classified is to begin with thats why it already costs like 100+ bucks more than your average 680

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We contacted Nvidia for comment and received a response from their Senior PR Manager, Bryan Del Rizzo with the following,

"Green Light was created to help ensure that all of the GTX boards in the market all have great acoustics, temperatures, and mechanicals. This helps to ensure our GTX customers get the highest quality product that runs quiet, cool, and fits in their PC. GTX is a measureable brand, and Green Light is a promise to ensure that the brand remains as strong as possible by making sure the products brought to market meet our highest quality requirements.

Reducing RMAs has never been a focus of Green Light.

We support overvoltaging up to a limit on our products, but have a maximum reliability spec that is intended to protect the life of the product. We don’t want to see customers disappointed when their card dies in a year or two because the voltage was raised too high.

Regarding overvoltaging above our max spec, we offer AICs two choices:

· Ensure the GPU stays within our operating specs and have a full warranty from NVIDIA.

· Allow the GPU to be manually operated outside specs in which case NVIDIA provides no warranty.

We prefer AICs ensure the GPU stays within spec and encourage this through warranty support, but it’s ultimately up to the AIC what they want to do. Their choice does not affect allocation. And this has no bearing on the end user warranty provided by the AIC. It is simply a warranty between NVIDIA and the AIC.

With Green Light, we don’t really go out of the way to look for ways that AICs enable manual OV. As I stated, this isn’t the core purpose of the program. Yes, you’ve seen some cases of boards getting out into the market with OV features only to have them disabled later. This is due to the fact that AICs decided later that they would prefer to have a warranty. This is simply a choice the AICs each need to make for themselves. How, or when they make this decision, is entirely up to them.

With regards to your MSI comment below, we gave MSI the same choice I referenced above -- change their SW to disable OV above our reliability limit or not obtain a warranty. They simply chose to change their software in lieu of the warranty. Their choice. It is not ours to make, and we don’t influence them one way or the other.

In short, Green Light is an especially important program for a major, new product introduction like Kepler, where our AICs don’t have a lot of experience building and working with our new technologies, but also extends the flexibility to AICs who provide a design that can operate outside of the reliability limits of the board. And, if you look at the products in the market today, there is obviously evidence of differentiation. You only need to look at the large assortment of high quality Kepler boards available today, including standard and overclocked editions."

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Frakk said:

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/new...mproving-quality-orstrangling-innovation.aspx

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Some of our best and most passionate customers have told us (though forums, partners and directly) that they are frustrated with our position on GPU Overvoltaging. So we feel that it is important to explain exactly what our position is and why we feel that it is important.

We love to see our chips run faster and we understand that our customers want to squeeze as much performance as possible out of their GPUs. However there is a physical limit to the amount of voltage that can be applied to a GPU before the silicon begins to degrade through electromigration (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromigration). Essentially, excessive voltages on transistors can over time "evaporate" the metal in a key spot destroying or degrading the performance of the chip. Unfortunately, since the process happens over time it's not always immediately obvious when it's happening. Overvoltaging above our max spec does exactly this. It raises the operating voltage beyond our rated max and can erode the GPU silicon over time.

In contrast, GPU Boost always keeps the voltage below our max spec, even as it is raising and lowering the voltage dynamically. That way you get great performance and a guaranteed lifetime.
So our policy is pretty simple:

1. We encourage users to go have fun with our GPUs. They are completely guaranteed and will perform great within the predefined limits.
2. We also recommend that our board partners don’t build in mechanisms that raise voltages beyond our max spec. We set it as high as possible within long term reliability limits.

The reason we have a limit on max voltage is very simply to prevent damage to the GPU chips. At NVIDIA we know that our customers want to push their GPUs to the limit. We are all for it, and as a matter of fact NVIDIA has always prioritized support for hardware enthusiasts by providing tools to access hardware settings and by supporting our board partners in creating overclocked enthusiast products. Leading up to the GeForce GTX 680 release for example, we worked closely with developers of 3rd party overclocking utilities to make sure they fully supported GeForce GTX 680 and GPU Boost on the day of launch.

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Nvidia accused of crippling board partners' designs
A source inside one of Nvidia's largest graphics manufacturing partners, who spoke to us on the condition that they remain anonymous, explains: 'The fact is Nvidia is stopping ALL partners from allowing any form of hardware/software overvolting, or providing hardware mods beyond its very limited restrictions. They threaten to cut allocation [of GK100 parts] if hardware mods aren’t removed or avoided entirely.'

While homebrew soldering-iron-and-prayer overvolting is still permitted, manufacturing partners aren't allowed to make it easy for buyers. 'We're not allowed to openly advertise the PCB markings [for overvoltage adjustment] on the GTX 680,' our source continues.
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Claims that manufacturers aren't being restricted in their designs beyond the confines of the Green Light programme are soundly denied by our source, however. We've been told that the secretive restrictions on board partners go yet further: 'They [Nvidia] also threaten allocation if you make a card faster than the [stock] GTX 690.'

These restrictions are not limited to just a couple of companies, either: they appear to stretch right across the board, and are responsible for product cancellations and - as with EVGA's removal of the EVBot header from the GTX 680 Classified - hardware modifications from multiple manufacturers. They're also leaving a bad taste in board partners' mouths: where in previous generations each company has been able to push its own cards to the limit in order to beat the competition, under Nvidia's alleged new rules all GTX 680 boards will be more or less identical in performance and features.

The hardware restrictions are a loss for the consumer, too: EVGA has already stated that it won't be reducing the price of the GeForce GTX 680 Classified, despite removing the EVBot header and corresponding facility for custom voltages outside Nvidia's recommended limits - meaning buyers now get less card for their cash than before the company capitulated to Nvidia's alleged demands.

We've approached other board partners, but thus far none have been willing to comment on the record regarding our source's claims of hardware restrictions - and with our source alleging that Nvidia may even cut chip allocations for companies that talk publicly about the matter, that's no surprise.

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wagex said:

wow nvidia are kicking themselves in the butt.

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bmwbaxter said:

Personally, this won't affect my personal purchases much since I run my GTX 680 at stock...




EDIT: just to be clear, this post isn't singling you out for your opinion. just the one I responded to is all.

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wagex said:

i know, idk i mean if they cant put out pretymuch anything but reference all amd will have to do is be like ha ours is cocked higher and can oc furter. but i guess i see both sides as most people dont even know what an overclock is

p.s. we need a smaller version of that smiley lol

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Bobnova said:

This isn't a new thing. It's a return to the old stuff.

I continue to remind everybody that there was no software voltage for Fermis over 1.21v if you didn't have the (very) special, restricted use, software.
Many generations didn't have any software voltage control at all!

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