What do you think of nVidia locking down voltage?

[RussianSensation]

Interesting to see how the market may react. Granted Steam isn't the end-all-be-all indicator but the GTX 660 Ti's growth was the highest for the month:

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/directx/?sort=chg

According to NV's reaosning for launching the GeForce experience, 80% of NV gamers do not know how or do not bother tweaking in-game settings to optimize their gaming experience. GeForce experience was created to make it easier for these gamers to determine the most optimal settings for games. Sounds to me like 80% of NV users are not sophisticated gamers to begin with - there is your market assessment. If we let the general market vote, i.e., the average consumer, you would instantly sign a death sentence to all the best products in the world, cutting edge innovation and especially overclocking. Products like McLaren F1, Pagani Zonda, high-end fashion, Blade laptops. The demand for high(est) end features come from the minor fraction of enthusiasts in many fields and later these trickle down to lower end and mainstream product. If the enthusiast market didn't exist, companies would take a lot less risks and cater to the average sheep.

The market as you keep throwing around includes everyone but unfortunately your "let the market decide" philosophy means catering to the average consumer. This is why there are millions of Honda Civics and very few Bugatti Veyrons. There is no question most of the market doesn't overclock and from those who do even less use voltage control. Using your theory then we should all let the less experienced overclockers decide for us? That's brilliant!! How about keep the option of allowing voltage control which pleases both the enthusiast and the casual overclocker? First you remove voltage control, then you remove overclocking completely if we let "the market decide".

Stating that "the market should decide" is a pretty strange statement to make in this case since by the very definition overclocking and overvoting+overclocking is a small fraction of the market to begin with, which means if we "let the market decide", overclocking and overvolting would be dead as we know it. Not sure how that's a good thing, but it seems you are perfectly happy for the average gamer to decide this for you?

Finally, you always keep pointing to letting the market decide but that always assumes the market is rational, has access to up-to-date information, is knowledgeable enough to make good decisions, etc. I personally hold very low regard for the average consumer which comprises a large chunk of "the market".

For example if 1 million people buy GTX660Ti but only 500k people buy HD7950, it doesn't mean at all that 660Ti was the better card. Just because 1 product is the better selling, doesn't mean anything about it being a better product. In some cases it is, in others it is not at all correlated. Uggs, Crocs, skinny jeans, etc. etc. Everyone who is a videophile knows that Plasma is by far superior in image quality to LCD/LED but only commands about 10% of the entire TV market. There are plenty examples in the GPU space of lousy NV GPUs selling well like 550Ti or FX5200. The average consumer won't even be buying GTX670 PE / GTX680 Lightning or GTX680 Classified as these are high end enthusiast GPUs. In itself I still can't grasp your "let the market" decide philosophy since enthusiasts in any market are by definition the minority. We are not in economics class. This specific outcome negatively affects overclockers on this very forum if the option is removed, while keeping this option does not really negatively affect the average consumer. This is the difference. Thus far no one has been able to prove why RMA is a factor since MSI and EVGA are responsible for RMA.

 

[f1sherman]

Are you ready for this...





Source

Thanks for the link, and allow me the quote again, because it goes into specifics, and should tone down the amount of noise on this particular issue.

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."

 

[SirPauly]

The market is what the market is. It's not my fault that the GTX 660ti offered serious growth numbers based on Steam. All I ever offered it was strong competition that may of of forced AMD to reduce pricing of the HD 7950, HD 7870 and HD 7850.

 

[Nelly]

I guess their will be no MSI GTX 780 Lightning now, I mean, what is the point of MSI designing such a great card if it can't do what it's intended for?

Sad times. :'(

 

[RussianSensation]

How is Steam's % growth of any GPU related to this thread at all? It is not, not even remotely.

Thus, only 1 logical conclusion remains left --> The main reason you linked 660Ti Steam % in this thread is because you clearly insinuated with your post that:

1) GTX660Ti had the highest % growth on steam (this product does not have voltage control)
2) HD7000 series lagged behind (this product has voltage control)

The implied conclusion is that because 660Ti sold better, the market doesn't care for voltage control and overclocking on the whole. Thus, according to you the market has decided that some other features matter more to them than overclocking and overvolting.

Thanks for stating the obvious. Of course the majority of GPU buyers do not care for overvolting on the whole because they either don't know how to or don't overvolt. Enthusiasts care about overclocking and overvolting and they are a small fraction of the market. Enthusiasts who overclock heavily do not buy a GTX660Ti in the first place because they would have bought an HD7950 and overclocked it to achieve 20% faster performance over the 660Ti OC (and would have realized that 660Ti tanks hard with MSAA). I would guess here that the average 660Ti consumer could care less if the GPU even had overclocking at all.

Why would you expect the average consumer to care for overclocking, especially overvolting?

Using the sales of some NV GPU to show that it sold well, and implying that NV didn't really suffer from removing voltage control this generation is the position you seem to be taking here unless you are just throwing Steam sales numbers for some other reason?

If the average consumer in the U.S. purchased Velvetta processed cheese and less companies sold Havarti, Swiss, Jarlsberg, Brie and other fancier cheeses, if you loved cheese, you have every right to be upset that the average consumer has ruined the cheese market because companies can get away with selling watered down cheese and not care. This is no different to COD which sells very well but as a result it negatively affected the FPS genre because very few companies are now willing to take risks with a FPS game. Instead, they want to make it mainstream and appeal to the masses. NV seems to have taken a step to water down overclocking and the average PC gamer doesn't seem to care because they never used this feature in the first place. What a brilliant finding!

 

[blackened23]

The market is what the market is. It's not my fault that the GTX 660ti offered serious growth numbers based on Steam. All I ever offered it was strong competition that may of of forced AMD to reduce pricing of the HD 7950, HD 7870 and HD 7850.

How does this have anything to do with the topic at hand? A September chart doesn't show how the market "reacts" to 1 day old news (as you put it) unless buyers predicted this 1 month ago? I could have told you that nvidia sells more GPUs, and that has nothing to do with the topic. The market did not react to this news which is one day old, 4 weeks ago. What are your thoughts on voltage control on aftermarket boards? How is this even relevant to the discussion regarding voltage lockdown on all kepler cards?

 

[SirPauly]

Thanks for the link, and allow me the quote again, because it goes into specifics, and should tone down the amount of noise on this particular issue.

Indeed, nice link!

 

[SirPauly]

How does this have anything to do with the topic at hand? A September chart doesn't show how the market "reacts" to 1 day old news (as you put it) unless buyers predicted this 1 month ago? I could have told you that nvidia sells more GPUs, and that has nothing to do with the topic. The market did not react to this news which is one day old, 4 weeks ago. What are your thoughts on voltage control on aftermarket boards? How is this even relevant to the discussion regarding voltage lockdown on all kepler cards?

The lack of voltage adjustments on Kepler is not really new information!

 

[blastingcap]

Is NVDA allowing UNDERvolts? I'm just curious if it's just blocking overvolts or all voltage manipulation.

 

[Nelly]

If AIB's such as MSI, Evga etc DO allow overvolting on the next generation of Nvidia cards, one can assume if their is no Nvidia warranty, the cards will carry an extra premium, unless R&D of the AIB's can conclude the cards won't end up being RMA months down the line...

 

[SirPauly]

How is Steam's % growth of any GPU related to this thread at all? It is not, not even remotely.

Thus, only 1 logical conclusion remains left --> The main reason you linked 660Ti Steam % in this thread is because you clearly insinuated with your post that:

1) GTX660Ti had the highest % growth on steam (this product does not have voltage control)
2) HD7000 series lagged behind (this product has voltage control)

The implied conclusion is that because 660Ti sold better, the market doesn't care for voltage control and overclocking on the whole. Thus, according to you the market has decided that some other features matter more to them than overclocking and overvolting.

Thanks for stating the obvious. Of course the majority of GPU buyers do not care for overvolting on the whole because they either don't know how to or don't overvolt. Enthusiasts care about overclocking and overvolting and they are a small fraction of the market. Enthusiasts who overclock heavily do not buy a GTX660Ti in the first place because they would have bought an HD7950 and overclocked it to achieve 20% faster performance over the 660Ti OC (and would have realized that 660Ti tanks hard with MSAA). I would guess here that the average 660Ti consumer could care less if the GPU even had overclocking at all.

Why would you expect the average consumer to care for overclocking, especially overvolting?

Using the sales of some NV GPU to show that it sold well, and implying that NV didn't really suffer from removing voltage control this generation is the position you seem to be taking here unless you are just throwing Steam sales numbers for some other reason?

If the average consumer in the U.S. purchased Velvetta processed cheese and less companies sold Havarti, Swiss, Jarlsberg, Brie and other fancier cheeses, if you loved cheese, you have every right to be upset that the average consumer has ruined the cheese market because companies can get away with selling watered down cheese and not care. Like COD has negatively ruined the FPS genre because very few companies are now willing to take risks with a FPS game. NV seems to have taken a step to water down overclocking and the average PC gamer doesn't seem to care because they never used this feature in the first place. What a brilliant finding!

Last time I checked, 999, 499, 399 and 299 price-points are not average consumers or price-points.

 

[RussianSensation]

Last time I checked, 999, 499, 399 and 299 price-points are not average consumers or price-points.

Ya, so your "Let the market decide" and linking GTX660Ti Steam % where dropped into this thread for what purpose?

How is this related to GTX670 PE, MSI GTX680 Lightning or EVGA Classified 680?

Is there a point you were trying to make on how the market decides on overvolting?

 

[SirPauly]

Curious how the lack of voltage control would effect the GTX 690, GTX 680, GTX 670 and GTX 660ti as a whole, including Steam -- considering nVidia seems to be frowning on it since the introduction of Kepler. Adds a data point to discussions considering how large steam is and lists all the sku's -- what's the big deal?

 

[f1sherman]

Is NVDA allowing UNDERvolts? I'm just curious if it's just blocking overvolts or all voltage manipulation.

Sure they are. Most likely as much they are allowing overvolting.

I.e. if AIB does not follow operating specs guidances, they do not get warranty from NV.

Exact details are publicly unknown, although we did hear that Nvidia is more strict with Kepler.
And without knowing exact details, it's impossible to know if Green Light is fair to AIBs or not.

 

[blastingcap]

Sure they are. Most likely as much they are allowing overvolting.

I.e. if AIB does not follow operating specs guidances, they do not get warranty from NV.

Exact details are publicly unknown, although we did hear that Nvidia is more strict with Kepler.
And without knowing exact details, it's impossible to know if Green Light is fair to AIBs or not.

OK, does anyone have any information on how much you can over/undervolt under NV's guidelines?

 

[f1sherman]

Curious how the lack of voltage control would effect the GTX 690, GTX 680, GTX 670 and GTX 660ti as a whole, including Steam -- considering nVidia seems to be frowning on it since the introduction of Kepler. Adds a data point to discussions considering how large steam is and lists all the sku's -- what's the big deal?

For all we know, and this seems to bethe general sentiment here,
Nvidia could be choking AIBs with specs guidances.

OTOH the sheer number of 660/Ti/670 SKUs that hit the market right after the launch seems to suggest otherwise

OK, does anyone have any information on how much you can over/undervolt under NV's guidelines?

1.175V seems to be the upper limit. And it may be very likely that if you want to get GreenLigh-ed, you cant go over it.
Nvidia obviously does not want to bless 250W TDP design anymore, wants cool and quite image etc etc.

But this also begs the question. Why not step outside if you're confident in your design?
To me it seems that there is much under the table (and it looks like it will remain so),
to answer for example why AIBs didnt go balls to the wall, not even with a single Kepler SKU.

 

[notty22]

Just posting this as reminder of the recent past.

Many models even specialty models did not support voltage adjustment during the 58xx series run. All the reference boards did. Not so many of the non-reference.

uP6213 is an affordable voltage regulator, unfortunately it does not support the I2C interface, so software voltage control is not possible.

The UP 6219 is a cost effective voltage regulator that Powercolor has chosen to replace the much more expensive Volterra controllers on the reference design. Nothing is known about this voltage regulator, but I doubt that it supports software voltage control.

 

[SirPauly]

For all we know, and this seems to bethe general sentiment here,
Nvidia could be choking AIBs with specs guidances.

OTOH the sheer number of 660/Ti/670 SKUs that hit the market right after the launch seems to suggest otherwise

I don't know what the exact data is or not but personally would like to see some manual control over volts -- specifically for the context of an AIB sku specifically engineered for over-volts and hardcore OC enthusiasts.

 

[blastingcap]

1.175V seems to be the upper limit.

Thanks, any info on the lower limit?

 

[SolMiester]

Wow that Nvidia statement is just sad...



They have gone hand in hand since I can remember, I used to overclock Motorola 6809's by increasing the voltage to insane levels.

What would you consider this forum to be? We talk about high end GPU's constantly, an enthusiast product. Who wants to talk about low end product anyway?

You need to start talking for just yourself mate....overvolting is not hand and hand with overclocking at all, some do, most dont...and I think there has been plenty of low range GPU discussions....it isnt just about benchmarks and gaming....Not all enthusiasts overclook either in my experience.

 

[SirPauly]

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/new...proving-quality-or-strangling-innovation.aspx

I read this again and really is a nice article that tries to offer many points-of-view -- nVidia, AIB and consumer. Thanks for sharing this article here -- good read!

 

[badb0y]

You need to start talking for just yourself mate....overvolting is not hand and hand with overclocking at all, some do, most dont...and I think there has been plenty of low range GPU discussions....it isnt just about benchmarks and gaming....Not all enthusiasts overclook either in my experience.

Yes but I am an enthusiast and I would like to overvolt so I can get to higher clocks.

Why not make a dual bios and void the warranty if it gets flipped like the AUSUM switch on 6990? Why not have some sort of an agreement so if you OC you can't RMA? Why do you have to completely take the ability to OV out?

 

[f1sherman]

Thanks, any info on the lower limit?

I have no idea

But I think we may be reading too much into it:

With Green Light, we don’t really go out of the way to look for ways that AICs enable manual OV.

The way I see it, MSI did a bit engineering under the table. They took the standard circuitry but then did a subtle change which resulted in higher voltage, and lower droop when Kepler protection kicks in.

How did they pass Nvidia control and got in this Green Light?
Trust and misuse of it would be my guess. Or maybe there was no dirty intentions on MSI side at all. Too much unknowns...

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/new...proving-quality-or-strangling-innovation.aspx

I read this again and really is a nice article that tries to offer many points-of-view -- nVidia, AIB and consumer. Thanks for sharing this article here -- good read!

LOL yeah BSN can surprise every now and then :hmm:

 

[Nelly]

I was going to make a separate thread, but wasn't sure with this thread being active... maybe it was worthy of it's own.

It's all over the internet now anyway, spread like wildfire lol.

 

[SolMiester]

Yes but I am an enthusiast and I would like to overvolt so I can get to higher clocks.

Why not make a dual bios and void the warranty if it gets flipped like the AUSUM switch on 6990? Why not have some sort of an agreement so if you OC you can't RMA? Why do you have to completely take the ability to OV out?

Isnt that what NV said to the manufacturers?....I dont think my opinion should take your options away. A dual BIOS sounds the ticket...