NVIDIA Back to Dirty Tricks with GTX 900M Series Overclocking

erek

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Dec 19, 2005
Messages
10,785
NVIDIA's driver team is at it again. The company drew outrage from the PC enthusiast community, for developing drivers that prevent GPU overclocking on its GeForce GTX 900M series notebook GPUs, in February 2015, with the introduction of its GeForce 347.29 WHQL drivers, blaming it on a "bug" that allowed overclocking on previous drivers. When called-out and under pressure from the community, it re-enabled overclocking on these chips, with the following GeForce 347.88 drivers, with an equally lame quasi-apology.

http://www.techpowerup.com/212769/nvidia-back-to-dirty-tricks-with-gtx-900m-series-overclocking.html
 
This isn't something new, they had the vbios lock for awhile now. If someone wants to overclock that badly, they can go to Tech|Inferno and grab a vbios from Prema that bypasses it.
 
So they don't want noobs blowing up their laptops? Oh the humanity!
 
This is a complete non-issue.

Gamer rage du jour is tiresome and pathetic. We can't go one week without the Internet whining about something they are totally clueless about.
 
lol @ "clock-block"

The article might have been easier to take seriously if it wasn't so filled with fauxrage.
 
Putting in artificial software restrictions to make the competitor appear worse is one thing...

http://www.jayceooi.com/how-to-enable-dead-trigger-tegra-3-extended-effects-on-non-tegra-3-device/

but I don't disagree with disabling overclocking to prevent damage especially on a mobile product with limited cooling.

I think they should add it to desktop cards too. How many cards are sent in for RMA due to oc damage. Of course it is never the overclock that caused damage.
 
Putting in artificial software restrictions to make the competitor appear worse is one thing...

http://www.jayceooi.com/how-to-enable-dead-trigger-tegra-3-extended-effects-on-non-tegra-3-device/
The criticism is ironic because Dead Trigger gets a noticeable performance hit when "Tegra only" features are enabled on non-Tegra devices. Like GameWorks, the Tegra effects library is made available under license to benefit owners of devices containing Tegra chips.

If you really want to use it, there are at least 2 different ways to work around Tegra only limitations in Tegra optimized games that are capable of working on other GPUs. I'm not sure what the criticism is. Should Nvidia stop making effects libraries available? Every major mobile GPU maker I can think of has similar libraries for gaming effects and also video processing which only work on their GPUs.
 
The criticism is ironic because Dead Trigger gets a noticeable performance hit when "Tegra only" features are enabled on non-Tegra devices. Like GameWorks, the Tegra effects library is made available under license to benefit owners of devices containing Tegra chips.

Bullcrap. I had Tegra3 1st gen Nexus 7 and non-Tegra devices when this came out and there was no performance hit with non-Tegra and as a matter of fact it was more consistent and stable with non-Tegra. That's why Tegra is pretty much dead in the mobile market and after that incident I won't reward shady anti-competitive behavior and the other reason is all the Tegra-only fragmented apps I paid for are useless now.
 
Last edited:
Bullcrap. I had Tegra3 1st gen Nexus 7 and non-Tegra devices when this came out and there was no performance hit with non-Tegra and as a matter of fact it was more consistent and stable with non-Tegra.
Since I can't find references to the performance problems you mention in Dead Trigger (other than 3rd party tools causing problems in many other games too), I'll assume you just made it up. :)

Thanks for skipping the main criticism.
 
My experience of mobile PCs has been largely salvaging them after they have overheated.
They get thinner and more powerful yet the cooling hardly improves.
I dont blame NVidia for clock blocking.
Great term btw :p
 
I think they should add it to desktop cards too. How many cards are sent in for RMA due to oc damage. Of course it is never the overclock that caused damage.

They do. Cards are limited to X voltage and TDP based upon the cooler spec. The OEM sets those limits and they're enforced - stock cards have stock TDP, and more exotic coolers get higher TDP. If you overclock too high, the TDP limit kicks in.

I figure that those highly-overclockable cards with outrageous voltage limits are just insured in part by the outrageous prices OEMs charge. Most people won't destroy them, and for those that do...well, it's covered :D

At least the cooling situation is a whole lot easier on a desktop.
 
Hardly new.

They clockblocked Fermi to cap at 1000mhz with the first Kepler driver.

My lovely 580 could do 1050mhz dammit! Though oddly enough, at some point they seem to have removed the clockblock last time I checked.


So...history repeating? :p
 
A more tactful approach would have been to have more aggressive power/temp throttling on the cards. For example, my 980m doesn't get above 70C even when overclocked to +135, I'm not at risk for frying anything. If they started throttling overclocks at 80C or so, it would save people from their own stupidity without the negative press.
 
This is a complete non-issue.

I think it would be a non-issue if they had handled it better. Waffling back and forth is probably a big part of the community frustration. If they had just come out from the beginning and said "we don't support overclocking on laptops...blah blah blah thermal design is fixed, unlike desktop, blah blah blah if you find a way to overclock do it at your own risk."

Then it would be a non-issue.
 
From what I've read in the last topic discussing this, good gaming laptops actually have plenty of cooling for overclocking the GPU. Especially a mobile (low power) variant with good silicon. Remember that standardized cooling solutions' efficacy entirely depends on how much you won with the silicon lottery. It's kind of how the R9 290's recommended PSU is 750W when in reality the card's TDP would have you be totally fine with a good quality 500W PSU. They clock them into their current clocks just because they're certain that they would be safe regardless of silicon or other factors. Just blindly saying that "it's a mobile platform with limited cooling and you shouldn't overclock" doesn't really mean jack squat. That's like saying any stock Nvidia GPU has limited cooling. You can redirect the airflow around it. That's about it. It's even more moot when you consider some people overclock their friggin phones. Something that practically has no dedicated cooling.

I suspect that if anything is the issue, it's that when you mess up overclocking a laptop GPU, it's not just the GPU that is messed up. Sometimes it isn't even removable. You might be RMAing an entire system. I think that type of headache would cause many companies to tip off Nvidia if they'd just lock down mobile overclocking. Because not everyone knows how to overclock properly and the stakes are higher.
 
At least they aren't rebranding 2-3 year old GPUs and selling them as new while releasing unsupported technology with 6+ month old drivers like AMD.
 
Many laptops are built for OCs and Gaming.
This idea that we are all talking about some Dell or HP laptop is a great way to make this seem like a non-issue, but knowing it affects Laptops with thermal headroom and OC as an advertised feature is very much so bullshit on nvidias part.
 
Many laptops are built for OCs and Gaming.
This idea that we are all talking about some Dell or HP laptop is a great way to make this seem like a non-issue, but knowing it affects Laptops with thermal headroom and OC as an advertised feature is very much so bullshit on nvidias part.

I guess you have a reading comprehension problem. NVIDIA already addressed the issue, there's no longer a lock. And confirmation is here from the guy who found it in the first place: http://forum.techinferno.com/genera...ut-overclocking-mobile-gpus-6.html#post133921
 
So they walked their stance back again, for the second time?
Thats not a good image. Your link had an awful lot of people complaining about nvidias drivers.
Thats probably because when a company lies once it's bad, lie twice about the same exact issue and people have all the right to be a little peeved about it even happening.

Also personal insults? Wow very childish man, sorry to offend your deity. Next time Ill think about your feelings and make certain to not bruise them.

Here are some quotes from your helpful link.

"Fixes a regression that prevented overclocking the GPU on some GeForce Notebooks"

Just read that.
Does it mean they changed their mind? .-.

The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt Game Ready Driver (352.86 Win8.1/8/7 64bit) also confirmed blocked if vBIOS has lock-bit.
So, here we go again? We need to create another petition and create new thread on each forum Nvidia Lied about overclocking Mobile, They Clockblocked AGAIN!

Well done, nVidia. That's how you disappoint your customers! Good job, really...

Even without "pushing boundaries", the problem is "lack of control". Everything being locked down is for people who want to pay for Macs. Our QA and QS doesn't come close to the shit we get with a Mac, but our prices are still high as shit and our support is half-assed and half of these retailers don't know what the hell is going on with their own machines.

We pay for top end hardware, we demand control of it.

OK, here we go again:


- 347.88 & 347.90 have the clock block removed and ignores the vBIOS "OC-lock-bit" only partially:
(If you only unlock the core slider on a clock-block-vBIOS, then this driver will still limit you to only 135Mhz)

- 350.12 now no longer ignores the vBIOS "OC-lock-bit". So if you have a locked vBIOS, OC is gone entirely once again.


BUT, it doesn't end there...new lock bits have now also turned up on system BIOS level...more later after I am done testing.

So it boils down to this:

If you have a vBIOS dated before early December then OC works with 350.12.
If you have a vBIOS dated later than early December then OC is blocked once again.
If you have one of the new system BIOS with additional "OC-lock-bit" then, well...more later.
 
So they walked their stance back again, for the second time?
Thats not a good image. Your link had an awful lot of people complaining about nvidias drivers.
Thats probably because when a company lies once it's bad, lie twice about the same exact issue and people have all the right to be a little peeved about it even happening.

Also personal insults? Wow very childish man, sorry to offend your deity. Next time Ill think about your feelings and make certain to not bruise them.

Here are some quotes from your helpful link.

People get upset when something they like is changed. Quoting a bunch of posts that show this means nothing. What is really important is NVIDIA acknowledged it as a mistake/bug and fixed it. Subsequently the fix slipped past their next release, they acknowledged it and addressed how it happened and fixed it. Sorry, you're gonna have to try harder to find smoke.


XFIQUaE.png
 
Last edited:
nV is just taking a cue from Congress where they'll just try to sneak what they want into a bill (driver) until they get their way :)
 
Dude, it's a bug introduced by a new driver meant to fix other issues. That shit happens all the time.

It's a reference to fact that regression testing didn't pick it up. This happens due to incomplete tests, too little time to test all cases, and also new features introduce unexpected new states.

See here if you don't understand how every bug you fix in software development introduces 3 more:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_regression

The fact that regression tests are SO GOOD is the reason why you don't see most of those new bugs produced. They are usually caught by automated tests and removed before the code goes live. But they don't always work, because you can't test everything.
 
Given the margins most gaming laptops cooling solutions are built to I can't say I blame NVIDIA. Especially when you consider many solutions integrate the heatsinks of GPU & CPU via heatpipes...

Overclocking the GPU could cause unexpected CPU & GPU throttling and thus worse performance or even system crashes or at worst bricking.
 
had to roll back drivers on my video card as they killed the factory oc
 
Back
Top