[GeForce Forums] Nvidia has officially blocked 900M overclocking

[RussianSensation]

"Unfortunately GeForce notebooks were not designed to support overclocking. Overclocking is by no means a trivial feature, and depends on thoughtful design of thermal, electrical, and other considerations. By overclocking a notebook, a user risks serious damage to the system that could result in non-functional systems, reduced notebook life, or many other effects.

There was a bug introduced into our drivers which enabled some systems to overclock. This was fixed in a recent update. Our intent was not to remove features from GeForce notebooks, but rather to safeguard systems from operating outside design limits."

Post #42 from NV Customer Representative

GTX 900M Overclocking is now disabled starting with 347.09, 347.25 drivers. ~ "In these new drivers overclocking has been disabled on all mobile Maxwell based GPU's (GTX 980M 970M 860M 965M)"

I really don't know what's happening with NV. I don't know if the high market share, record profits or what is getting to their head but the company is turning its respected brand that catered to enthusiasts into some Apple-like arrogant PC manufacturer. First, they failed to own up to the 970 false advertising, did absolutely nothing as far as offering refunds or gaming coupons and now they are going after PC enthusiasts outright and disabling overclocking. Why don't they just make a disclaimer that if you overclock your part, the manufacturer will not replace it under warranty and let PC gamers take risks themselves if they choose to. After-all after you buy your gaming laptop, shouldn't you be able to do with your laptop what you wish?

https://forums.geforce.com/default/...s/gtx-900m-overclocking-with-347-09-347-25/1/

First, NV locked out voltage control on desktop Kepler cards, and now it has completely disabled overclocking on mobile Maxwell cards. For those who say we don't really need strong competition in the GPU sector because it won't affect PC gamers....well it has already begun.

Look, if NV is really suffering that badly financially from RMA of failed NV GPUs in laptops from overclocking, let them charge $100-200 extra for NV "K" branded voltage unlocked overclocking binned GPUs like Intel does. I means surely there are other viable options for NV to cater to PC enthusiasts without purposely gimping their product's maximum potential capabilities. Real sad what's happening considering it was NV that gave us the 6800 non-GT unlock and the overclocking beast that was the GTX460.

 

[wand3r3r]

Wow, what a joke!

Do the mobile parts have the VRAM-Gate?

They are really locking down the gpus to make sure you pay to get a faster gpu.

 

[exar333]

This definitely sucks for 'desktop replacement' laptop makers like Sager or the like. If you have the cooling capabilities, why not allow overclocking? If you overclock and the cooling can't handle it, the design already throttles.

I don't get. :'(

 

[Quad5Ny]

It's blocked via the driver. I'm assuming there is nothing stopping you from modding the driver or flashing a custom vBIOS.

Besides most laptops are limited by their power brick and cooling TDP anyway.

IMO this is a smart move on NVIDIA's part, it stops 14 year old's from releasing the magic smoke from MOSFET's and boiling Caps.

 

[exar333]

It's blocked via the driver. I'm assuming there is nothing stopping you from modding the driver or flashing a custom vBIOS.

Besides most laptops are limited by their power brick and cooling TDP anyway.

IMO this is a smart move on NVIDIA's part, it stops 14 year old's from releasing the magic smoke from MOSFET's and boiling Caps.

Please explain.

The parts are already throttled today. You would get nothing by adding an insane OC on either the core or memory without a lot of work to create a custom BIOS and force specific voltage(s) AND bypass throttling effects. The other possibility is artifacting or crashing. Again, damaging your card (for 'stupid' users) is pretty hard these days.

 

[RussianSensation]

It's blocked via the driver. I'm assuming there is nothing stopping you from modding the driver or flashing a custom vBIOS.

This is beyond the capabilities of most PC gamers. Considering mobile cards do not have dual BIOSes/bios switches like desktop cards, performing BIOS flashing becomes a very dangerous proposition that from time-to-time has resulted in corruption in games, etc.

Also, mobile 900M cards run at 70-75C so the argument that overclocking them would melt something inside the laptop doesn't match the reality under which these chips operate.

 

[Quad5Ny]

Were you able to overvolt the cards and change fan profiles or was it clocks only?

 

[Cloudfire777]

I overclock my GTX 970M SLI as I overclocked my 770Ms earlier.
I also sometime use a profile where I downclock them depending on what I`m doing with my machine.

ie, I have a lot of fun with my OWN hardware I paid for.

This move, to oficially defend their move to remove a feature thats been part of mobile GPUs for a very long time, is stupid at best.
OEMs should disable overclocking if they fear that the GPUs inside the laptop cant be overclocked. Nvidia shouldnt be able to broadly disable overclocking across all notebook and brands because they feel they know more about the notebook`s cooling system than the users or manufacturers.
There are a ton of gamer notebooks from many brands that can easily acoomodate overclocking on the GPU.

Secondly, all systems have a built in protection system that shuts off the system if you overclock it too much or the heat is too much for the cooling system. If the temp hit a certain limit, it will automatically shut off, to protect the GPU.
You can if you are unlucky or stupid, kill a GPU with overvolting. Thats an entirely different feature. Overclocking is generally safe.
Another thing, is that all mobile drivers, I think desktop too, come with a +135MHz limit on overclocking anyway. Chances are that any notebook can do that overclock without issues.

Nvidia better issue out an apology and revert the changes, or I`m done with them. This move was rude and hostile against their own supporters

 

[Nhirlathothep]

if they can,(market leader on mobile gpus) they ll do.

Intel did it, it s nvidia s turn. Normal, but sad.

next step is to sell OC capable cards (K) (X) at higher price

 

[hawtdawg]

Nvidia has pissed me off enough lately that I'm going to buy a AMD this time around. What's really pissed me off lately is that it's as if they've purposely let Kepler performance suffer in order to make the 9xx series look better than it actually is.

 

[exar333]

if they can,(market leader on mobile gpus) they ll do.

Intel did it, it s nvidia s turn. Normal, but sad.

next step is to sell OC capable cards (K) (X) at higher price

I actually would be OK with w 'K' or 'X' model that is fully-unlocked, considering you cannot even get that today from NV except for a few, random models by specific OEMs. A factory-unlocked 'vanilla' reference card would be great. The premium would probably be smaller than a lot of these 'Lightnings' and 'Kingpin' crap.

At least give us an option to OC and OV as we see fit, without all the custom BIOS shens. Like how they used to, and AMD still does.

 

[utahraptor]

This reminds me of how angry the evga users were when they found out the 680 GTX classified was voltage locked. I was lucky enough to get one of the first 5000 MSI Lightnings that was not and I am still using it.

 

[tviceman]

If this stays as is, I'm never buying another Nvidia product - be it Tegra, desktop GTX, or notebook GTX.

Beyond absolutely ridiculous.

 

[Nhirlathothep]

If this stays as is, I'm never buying another Nvidia product - be it Tegra, desktop GTX, or notebook GTX.

Beyond absolutely ridiculous.

in notebook market u have no choice, and they know it.

gtx 970m-980m are better also at stock speed

 

[tviceman]

in notebook market u have no choice, and they know it.

gtx 970m-980m are better also at stock speed

I do have choices and those choices are AMD graphics or not buying a notebook at all. If Nvidia is going to treat me and it's other customers this way then I'll either buy AMD-equpped laptop or I won't buy a notebook at all. And when it comes to tablets, I won't even consider getting a Shield or Nexus 9 or whatever future products might contain Nvidia chips.

 

[exar333]

in notebook market u have no choice, and they know it.

gtx 970m-980m are better also at stock speed

I am inclined to agree with you. If you put together AMD's burned bridges with Enduro and the fact it's tough to find anything higher-end available with AMD graphics, NV knows they have the market cornered here. I'm sure this is to protect their margins on the 980M so people don't OC their 970s too close in performance. The 'downside' to efficiency is that there actually is overhead to mobile GPUs now, rather than always being right at the ceiling of cooling.

:/

 

[tviceman]

I am inclined to agree with you. If you put together AMD's burned bridges with Enduro and the fact it's tough to find anything higher-end available with AMD graphics, NV knows they have the market cornered here. I'm sure this is to protect their margins on the 980M so people don't OC their 970s too close in performance. The 'downside' to efficiency is that there actually is overhead to mobile GPUs now, rather than always being right at the ceiling of cooling.

:/

The problem with this argument, though, is that all Maxwell mobile GPU's (starting with the first release of GM106) were limited to a maximum +125 offset. Nvidia has positioned most of their mobile offerings so that 970m could never catch the 980m, and the 960m couldn't catch the 970m, and so on and so on unless the hardcore decided to create a modded notebook bios to overclock further than the +125 offset.

 

[boozzer]

I am sooooooooo relieved that I didn't buy the sager with 980m now

 

[Aikouka]

Eh, I own a 980M, and I really don't care. I could clamor all I want about how I'm missing out, but in reality, I don't overclock... at all. Overclocking usually means more noise (as a result of the higher heat output), and I don't like noise. My MSI GT72 is already (barely) audible when idling, I don't need it to be any noisier.

 

[RampantAndroid]

I really didn't realize people bothered to OC a notebook GPU - for the same reason nvidia just killed it: limited heat dissipation abilities...

The vendor should be doing the OC, NOT the user. Because if someone burns out their chip, odds are they're going to RMA it for repair, and the vendor will be paying for the user's poor decisions. Don't you think this move by NV might be to benefit the OEMs?

 

[Silverforce11]

This may be smart for regular notebooks but for gaming notebooks with capable heat dissipation, this is an idiot move. Should be at the bios level for manufacturers of notebooks to select, not a blanket ban via drivers.

 

[Paul98]

I wish could say that I was surprised about people defending this action. It's really rather sad, so lets say you bought it expecting to be able to overclock as it had been able to and then have that function removed. I know I wouldn't be happy if AMD stopped me from over clocking my video card, or intel and my CPU.

 

[n0x1ous]

or intel and my CPU.

intel does block you from OCing most cpus. but yeah i agree with silverforce, this should be done at the bios level for the oem to decide.

 

[RampantAndroid]

This may be smart for regular notebooks but for gaming notebooks with capable heat dissipation, this is an idiot move. Should be at the bios level for manufacturers of notebooks to select, not a blanket ban via drivers.

Playing devil's advocate here, but shouldn't the OEM then be shipping the laptop with an existing overclock already on it? Or offering custom BIOSes to flash on to chip? One that is the base line for running nice and cool, and one that is for when you want to push the card?

The alternative I see is coding the BIOS to include a "maximum GPU clock" parameter, and then having the driver read that field.

I wish could say that I was surprised about people defending this action. It's really rather sad, so lets say you bought it expecting to be able to overclock as it had been able to and then have that function removed. I know I wouldn't be happy if AMD stopped me from over clocking my video card, or intel and my CPU.

I'm not defending anything here, I'm merely suggesting that OEMs probably view this as a good thing (and probably help drive for this) as as I understand things, if you OC through the driver and kill the chip there's no way to tell that the chip died was overclocked. If you flash the BIOS, at least then you can look at what's in the BIOS.

Replacing chips the user killed by OCing them isn't something the laptop manufacturer should be forced to do.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Playing devil's advocate here, but shouldn't the OEM then be shipping the laptop with an existing overclock already on it? Or offering custom BIOSes to flash on to chip? One that is the base line for running nice and cool, and one that is for when you want to push the card?

The alternative I see is coding the BIOS to include a "maximum GPU clock" parameter, and then having the driver read that field.

Very bad idea. They won't bother testing and finding the optimal OC for each and every GPU they are shipping laptops with.

Hell, Asus has done that with their GTX 670 Top series cards, lots of cards failed to work reliably at "factory" clocks, they ended up issuing a bios later which decreased the clocks some. Should be up to the user, OC or not, imo.