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Nvidia Permenantly Blocking Overclocking

K

kinjo

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Dec 17, 2010
Messages
1,053
For Mobile GPU's

https://forums.geforce.com/default/...king-with-347-09-347-25/post/4458903/#4458903

Nvidia Rep Just announced on their official Forums that all overclocking will be blocked for Mobile GPU users in all driver releases going forward.

I know there are not a ton of mobile Users here but this is a really big deal. Users should be able to use their products how they see fit not be restricted by OEM.

And believe me when I say it's just a matter of time before this spreads to desktops too if nothing is done. so please show your support for our mobile enthusiast brethren by letting Nvidia know that locking down our GPU's is not acceptable.
 
Thank you for posting this, but I do believe this will be more appropriate for the nVidia subforum since this affects only nVidia and not AMD users. As for my thoughts I'm just going to quote myself:

n=1 said:
OT, but have a look at this shit:

ManuelG said:
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.
Click to expand...



So much bullshit it's not even funny. For as long as I can remember mobile GPUs have always allowed overclocking. Hell even my pathetic Toshiba laptop from 5 years ago with a dinky GTS 350M could be overclocked. I understand if most of you couldn't give a shit less because this only affects laptop users.

But this brings me to my main point: this is exactly the sort of shit you can expect when a corporation gets too big, becomes complacement with indifferent buyers who forgive and forget all the evil shit they do, and the competition doesn't bring anything worthwhile to the table.
Click to expand...
 
I can't help but shake head at what they are doing in these days. Fix things that are not broke and don't fix things that are broke...
 
They said they're patching a "bug" that allowed overclocking to protect the mobile GPUs from operating beyond design limits. So was mobile overclocking previously locked anyways?

Some might take this as a sign.... Maybe nVidia sees overclocking headroom as something they should be charging extra for.
 
haz_mat said:
They said they're patching a "bug" that allowed overclocking to protect the mobile GPUs from operating beyond design limits. So was mobile overclocking previously locked anyways?

Some might take this as a sign.... Maybe nVidia sees overclocking headroom as something they should be charging extra for.
Click to expand...

Hmm you may be on to something here....

980M Stock
980M OC Edition +$200 nets you 100 mhz
980M OMG Edition +$400 nets you 200 mhz

Oh Jen Hsun you sneaky bastard! :D

USD1_Jensen_675.jpg


I don't buy the "bug" b.s. either but hey this is what happens when the only game in town for mobile graphics is NVIDIA. AMD has been asleep at the wheel and I'm afraid they will never catch up again. BUT the silver lining is that you can still get modded mobile vbios from sites like Tech|Inferno to OC these things so all is not lost.
 
Last edited:
Actually it'd probably be more like

980M stock
980M OC = Stock + $200 with up to 100mhz headroom
980M OMG = Stock + $500 with up to 200mhz headroom
 
If Nvidia can start selling overclocked mobile chips this will definitely help their bottom line. They are truly the Apple of the PC world.
 
I think they prefer people to rely on their GPU Boost for mobile.

You have to admit that the wiggle room in mobile GPUs are rather low, much lower than desktop GPUs. So what'll happen?

NVIDIA, by blocking mGPU OCing, now can control exactly how much TDP is needed, allowing their mobile partners to cut costs by using lesser cooling solutions and/or cheaper board components. So cheaper laptops and notebooks.

On the other hand, they can also make GPU Boost more aggressive. We've seen from Maxwell 2 how much granularity they have over controlling the GPU performance. This will lead to higher battery life/higher performance/both.

Not to mention the headroom on most laptop's GPUs are very low. Most of the time it won't make a noticeable difference in gameplay experience.

Also, why do people complain about mGPUs not being overclockable when mCPUs haven't been overclockable ever? Honestly I can't remember a time where laptops allow you to overclock CPUs.
 
trandoanhung1991 said:
I think they prefer people to rely on their GPU Boost for mobile.

You have to admit that the wiggle room in mobile GPUs are rather low, much lower than desktop GPUs. So what'll happen?

NVIDIA, by blocking mGPU OCing, now can control exactly how much TDP is needed, allowing their mobile partners to cut costs by using lesser cooling solutions and/or cheaper board components. So cheaper laptops and notebooks.

On the other hand, they can also make GPU Boost more aggressive. We've seen from Maxwell 2 how much granularity they have over controlling the GPU performance. This will lead to higher battery life/higher performance/both.

Not to mention the headroom on most laptop's GPUs are very low. Most of the time it won't make a noticeable difference in gameplay experience.

Also, why do people complain about mGPUs not being overclockable when mCPUs haven't been overclockable ever? Honestly I can't remember a time where laptops allow you to overclock CPUs.
Click to expand...

So many incorrect assumptions in this post I don't know where to begin so I won't bother. I will recommend you read up on performance gaming notebooks and visit pertinent websites that have such communities. People are exceeding desktop performance levels with some of those gaming notebooks that have 2 x 980M with overclocks. And yes their CPUs are also capable of being OC'd.
 
trandoanhung1991 said:
snip
Click to expand...

Fair arguments. But sometimes conditions allow for better clocks. Low ambient temps combined with one of those laptop cooling pads with fans on it can certainly allow for a better thermal envelope.

Also, I'm pretty sure there are a few overclockable laptop CPUs around. Sure, its not the norm, but there are at least a few desktop CPUs that make it into high end laptops.

I also think it is important to mention that some games demand GPU resources differently than others. There are situations where one game can handle a higher overclock than another with the same thermals. I would think an enthusiast might want control over that.
 
@trandoanhung1991: please dont feed the community with wrong info.
I own three Alienware systems: m17x r2 , m17x r3 , m17x r4 , all these systems can be overclocked on cpu , ram and gpu . I do overclock when benching .
my m17x r4's i7 3940xm physx (cpu) score comes near to my 3930k .
Also intel releases the XM version of cpu which has the capability of overclocking to show that mobile cpu's also can be overclocked. But other cpu's also can be overclocked by 20% .

What nVidia has done will cause a major drop in notebook gpu sales : AW/Asus/Clevo/MSI will switch over to AMD . So its time for AMD to rise again :rolleyes: .

Also I feel bad about my new GTX 970m purchase for 500$ , but I can use it with old drivers which wont make a huge difference.

I feel that this will extend towards the desktop side ;) .

Excuse my typing: im on my iphone .
 
trandoanhung1991 said:
I think they prefer people to rely on their GPU Boost for mobile.

You have to admit that the wiggle room in mobile GPUs are rather low, much lower than desktop GPUs. So what'll happen?
Click to expand...

I recommend you look up Alienware and Clevo laptops, specifically the M18x R2 and the P370SM. For extra fun look up the P570WM.

NVIDIA, by blocking mGPU OCing, now can control exactly how much TDP is needed, allowing their mobile partners to cut costs by using lesser cooling solutions and/or cheaper board components. So cheaper laptops and notebooks.
Click to expand...

Cost cutting sounds about right.

Not to mention the headroom on most laptop's GPUs are very low. Most of the time it won't make a noticeable difference in gameplay experience.
Click to expand...

Yeah no. A 10% OC is easily achieved in Afterburner, and with a bios mod you can go to 20% and beyond.

Also, why do people complain about mGPUs not being overclockable when mCPUs haven't been overclockable ever? Honestly I can't remember a time where laptops allow you to overclock CPUs.
Click to expand...

Since the Nehalem quads and the introduction of XM chips with unlocked multipliers.
 
Obvious money grab here, especially considering nV's (and AMD's) particularly nefarious model of releasing a mobile chip, then six months later subty increasing clock speed for a "refresh". Pitcairn is the worst example of this in that we're now on the third rebrand of the exact same chip (7970m, 8970m, m290x), each with a very marginal clock boost.

Of course nV doesn't want a user with a "680mx" or "780m" (easily) overclocking their cards so it magically becomes an "880m" (all of which are GK204).

And for those saying you don't have a lot of headroom on mobile GPUs, every single mobile card I've owned for the past 7 years has OC'ed to their desktop counterpart's speeds and frequently beyond.
 
evilsofa said:
No, it won't. Don't be ridiculous.
Click to expand...

Why not? Same thing Intel does. Sell a locked and an unlocked chip. If you can cope with Intel doing this, then why complain about Nvidia doing the same? I don't have a problem with them making more money adding more features to their video card lineup.
 
evilsofa said:
No, it won't. Don't be ridiculous.
Click to expand...

Actually it will if no one does anything, from a business perspective it makes perfect sense; If you were Nvidia would you rather A. have to spend tons of money developing a new GPU every time you want a performance increase... or B. Lock down overclocking sell GPU's you intentionally Down clocked a bit and then when it's time for a "new" product Overclock your existing product 20% slap a new label on it and roll around in your huge piles of money.

On another note I hate to be that Whiny guy with a cause but it sure would be great if a mod could put this on the front page since it's an issue that in principle affects all enthusiasts.
 
Maybe they will do what Intel did when they 'disabled' overclocking - Sell an 'unlocked' GPU.

Otherwise, I'm switching to AMD and never looking back. I've overclocked every mobile GPU I've owned which can overclock, starting with my Firebird 2.
 
To take a quote used often in the gtx 480 days...

"You gotta pay to play"

YGP2P

Seems appropriate here.
 
kinjo said:
Actually it will if no one does anything, from a business perspective it makes perfect sense; If you were Nvidia would you rather A. have to spend tons of money developing a new GPU every time you want a performance increase... or B. Lock down overclocking sell GPU's you intentionally Down clocked a bit and then when it's time for a "new" product Overclock your existing product 20% slap a new label on it and roll around in your huge piles of money.
Click to expand...

Your business perspective only makes perfect sense if you are an illegal drug dealer.
 
evilsofa said:
Your business perspective only makes perfect sense if you are an illegal drug dealer.
Click to expand...

It's Intel's business acumen that nets them huge profits every quarter using that same tactic. Don't knock what works. :) Think about how Nvidia could market a GTX 980 that only runs at stock clocks? If you thought the current ones are really efficient and cool, then a locked one would be even better! Europeans looking to save every watt would love it!

Then they could sell an unlocked version for $750 for the environmentally unconscious consumer looking to hotrod their cards. Win, win for everyone involved.
 
cageymaru said:
It's Intel's business acumen that nets them huge profits every quarter using that same tactic. Don't knock what works. :) Think about how Nvidia could market a GTX 980 that only runs at stock clocks? If you thought the current ones are really efficient and cool, then a locked one would be even better! Europeans looking to save every watt would love it!

Then they could sell an unlocked version for $750 for the environmentally unconscious consumer looking to hotrod their cards. Win, win for everyone involved.

Then they could sell an unlocked version for $750 for the environmentally unconscious consumer looking to hotrod their cards. Win, win for everyone involved.
Click to expand...


yeah, YEAH... Win environment, win performance per watt, win for corporate profits, win for... almo$t everyone...

(*Looks at massively overclocked laptop in Sig*)
 
They could be doing this to prevent people from melting stuff. The cooling on a laptop is no where near that of a desktop part. I really can't blame them for this. Someone over volts their gpu and it melts right through the laptop and burns them self. That's a pr hit.
 
Just occurred to me - If it's drivers doing it, software patches can un-do it.

I recall fondly the old 'Omega' drivers and all the hacks to make one-off video cards function with newer drivers and features (my own experience with 9800M graphics card).
 
trick0502 said:
They could be doing this to prevent people from melting stuff. The cooling on a laptop is no where near that of a desktop part. I really can't blame them for this. Someone over volts their gpu and it melts right through the laptop and burns them self. That's a pr hit.
Click to expand...

Not to be a jerk but you like alot of people are misinformed. 1. no one is talking about overvolting which has always been locked off for mobile GPU's and 2 any decent performance laptop has plenty of cooling to handle a sizable OC done properly Laptop GPU OC'ing is just as safe and effective as desktop.
 
new2019 said:
@trandoanhung1991: please dont feed the community with wrong info.
I own three Alienware systems: m17x r2 , m17x r3 , m17x r4 , all these systems can be overclocked on cpu , ram and gpu . I do overclock when benching .
my m17x r4's i7 3940xm physx (cpu) score comes near to my 3930k .
Also intel releases the XM version of cpu which has the capability of overclocking to show that mobile cpu's also can be overclocked. But other cpu's also can be overclocked by 20% .

What nVidia has done will cause a major drop in notebook gpu sales : AW/Asus/Clevo/MSI will switch over to AMD . So its time for AMD to rise again :rolleyes: .
Excuse my typing: im on my iphone .
Click to expand...

Fair enough. Thanks for the heads up about XM CPUs being overclockable. Any others? AMD CPUs?

Also, please do notice that all of your examples are desktop-replacement class, which comprises a pretty small slice of the notebook market. You're forgetting business laptops, ultrathins, etc...

n=1 said:
I recommend you look up Alienware and Clevo laptops, specifically the M18x R2 and the P370SM. For extra fun look up the P570WM.
Click to expand...

Desktop-replacement/mobile workstation, tiny subset of notebook market. Do tell me how this will affect the rest of the market. I'd say nothing has changed for the majority of the notebook owners.

n=1 said:
Yeah no. A 10% OC is easily achieved in Afterburner, and with a bios mod you can go to 20% and beyond.
Click to expand...

Overclocking and BIOS modding voids warranty. Plus, BIOS flashing isn't easy on a lot of notebook models. So basically only limited to enthusiasts. And doesn't affect the rest of the market.
 
evilsofa said:
No, it won't. Don't be ridiculous.
Click to expand...

??? Seriously, IMO the only thing stopping either nVidia or AMD from monetizing EVERY clock speed is they don't want to be the only company to do it (when the other still has overclocking available), and possibly logistics. But if they could pull it off, there would be the gtx 970, 971, 972, etc instead of SC, SSC, etc. On the other side the 290, 292, 294, etc. Right now the vendors like EVGA, ASUS, MSI, and pretty much everyone else are creating the overclocked versions with different ranges in price. I can easily see this going to AMD and nVidia who would cap the chips clocks at different levels and charge accordingly. Instead of the vendors (some who bin, some who don't) creating their own overclocked versions it would all be done (and binned automatically) at the chipset manufacturer. And then AMD and nVidia would be making the extra coin instead of the vendors. Overclocking completely locked down because that is performance thats not paid for.

Everything would be the same, no excitement, no discovery, no "silicon lottery", just more money made. If it could pencil out this could easily happen.
 
trandoanhung1991 said:
Fair enough. Thanks for the heads up about XM CPUs being overclockable. Any others? AMD CPUs?

Also, please do notice that all of your examples are desktop-replacement class, which comprises a pretty small slice of the notebook market. You're forgetting business laptops, ultrathins, etc...

Desktop-replacement/mobile workstation, tiny subset of notebook market. Do tell me how this will affect the rest of the market. I'd say nothing has changed for the majority of the notebook owners.
Click to expand...

Majority of notebook owners don't overclock, or haven't even heard of the word overclocking. So if it doesn't affect them, why neuter a feature for those who actually care and do overclock?

The other problem with this argument is that mobile GPUs have always allowed overclocking. This isn't some new feature that was introduced a year ago and now taken away because people were abusing it.

Also, laptops designed to house a 100W TDP part like the 980M aren't your average mainstream notebooks. These are enthusiast class machines designed to handle overclocking.

Overclocking and BIOS modding voids warranty. Plus, BIOS flashing isn't easy on a lot of notebook models. So basically only limited to enthusiasts. And doesn't affect the rest of the market.
Click to expand...

So just further adds to my argument that this is a dick move on nVidia's part, aimed squarely at enthusiasts to prevent them from squeezing more performance out of their hardware, forcing them to pay more for more performance and nothing more.
 
It sounds like they're putting the locking mechanism into the drivers and not the hardware. If this is true, then anyone who wanted to get around the issue would find a way to just flash a new device ID that allowed the overclocking to take place.
 
n=1 said:
So just further adds to my argument that this is a dick move on nVidia's part, aimed squarely at enthusiasts to prevent them from squeezing more performance out of their hardware, forcing them to pay more for more performance and nothing more.
Click to expand...

Wasn't it just a few months ago that we saw Jen-Hsun up on stage with a 970 held up in his right hand as he was bragging about what a great overclocker it is?
 
I will say as an avid desktop and laptop enthusiast if Nvidia stays firm on this my current Nvidia GPU will be may last.
 
kinjo said:
I will say as an avid desktop and laptop enthusiast if Nvidia stays firm on this my current Nvidia GPU will be may last.
Click to expand...

I'm actually very disappointed with this as well. I've spent thousands in the last two generation on NVIDIA based products and am tempted to simply get rid of my 980s and G-sync display and go AMD with FreeSync + R300 Xfire. I'll wait a few weeks to see what NVIDIA does about this but it will certainly be a decision I'll be weighing. Will probably make a little documentary video detailing my disappointment with NVIDIA and showing how they lost a customer that spent money on their premium hardware. Hopefully others do the same thing and send a message to them.
 
First Intel is forcing everyone on the mobile end to go to socketed cpu's and now this.. WOW the mobile gaming industry has taken yet another hit.
 
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