Nvidia's Response to Voltage Control

[PhazeDelta1]

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."

What does this mean for consumers?
This essentially breaks down to giving consumers fewer options between their cards and limits the innovation that AIBs are capable of implementing in their products. If Nvidia is limiting the AIBs within a set of parameters on their non-reference cards, then they are hurting those board vendors' most profitable products. This gives consumers less choice, while enabling Nvidia to theoretically have lower RMAs. Such a program does, however, make sense if you think about the perception of Nvidia if all of their board partners are running amok. They obviously have to have a certain level of control over what their AIBs do with their GPUs if they are going to warranty them. But, we believe that Nvidia has gone too far in their restrictions on board partners and amount of control they exercise in the process.

So, the Green Light program is a program that we believe hurts AIBs and consumers while enabling Nvidia to reduce their RMA rate and improve their margins. If you are an Nvidia investor, this is great news, but if you are a consumer, this is clearly bad news. Nvidia claims that this has to do with the quality of the product and smoothness of launches, however, we believe that in the end it's all about money.

Source



I find the bolded part interesting. I would gladly take a card with no warranty if it meant I had free reign to do with it as i please. Like I said in another thread, if I blow it up, Ill just go buy another one.

[Mufflore]

From the bolded

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.

The point of them making a statement is that they have influenced MSI through the warranty.
You'd think they would be good at logic

[DarkKnightDude]

I remember there was a rumor going around that the 680/670 series that performance degraded over time through overvolting, maybe this is related.

I don't see why EVGA or MSI would put money and effort into creating the Classy or Lightning and then disabling their over volting features later.

[Pill Monster]

Oh Snap - I just posted a link to that article in another thread.

Originally Posted by PhazeDelta1

Source



I find the bolded part interesting. I would gladly take a card with no warranty if it meant I had free reign to do with it as i please. Like I said in another thread, if I blow it up, Ill just go buy another one.

You think you'd still say that if your card died 6mths from now?

Personally I like a little bit of security.

[Pill Monster]

Oh, almost forgot - seems appropriate;

[Veteran]

I would have liked a voltage mod for the 690 as it would then justify watercooling it for myself but atm using water and only a 30mhz increase on average over air just isnt worth the time and hassle even though i already have pre-purchased all my custom water equipment,guess ill save it for something better down the road.

[aayman_farzand]

I don't see the fault in this really. If other companies want to mod the heck out of their cards then why should nvidia have to pay for their mistakes? If they are absolutely confident that their specs won't blow up the hardware, then they can safely provide the warranty themselves.

But clearly they don't trust their cards as much as they would like to. So yea, it is all about the money. Both on Nvidia and AIC's part.

[BLEH!]

Isn't this kinda thing fixable at the BIOS level, as in, if someone writes a custom BIOS for the nVidia cards?

[PhazeDelta1]

Probably. Someone on the EVGA Fourm said he was working on a bios editor for the 600 series cards.

[PhazeDelta1]

Originally Posted by Pill Monster

Oh Snap - I just posted a link to that article in another thread.




You think you'd still say that if your card died 6mths from now?

Personally I like a little bit of security.

My response wouldn't change. I know the risk of overvolting and if something happens, i'll take responsibility for it.

[---TK---]

almost seems like a ploy for free advertising by nvidia, as soon as the bios editor is confirmed working people are going to buy these cards out of spite just to overvolt them.

[rflair]

Originally Posted by PhazeDelta1

My response wouldn't change. I know the risk of overvolting and if something happens, i'll take responsibility for it.

I would also, but we both know many would just RMA something that was of their own doing.

I actually see this more as the AIB partners responsibility and trying to protect their best interests, after all Nvidia did say if you want to do this then those cards, all and any that come back for RMA are your responsibility for what ever reason the issue is.

[Neo Cyrus]

Sounds like nVidia are not confident in their products. I've had this horrible excuse for a video card overvolted to hell and back and I've had it since the start of 2011 (IIRC), it shows no signs of degradation.

Wow, I never even thought of how long I've had it, I've never had a high end video card hang on this long. Usually I have to replace them after a year or suffer crappy performance in the latest games. That just shows how horribly progress has slowed down and I blame it all on consoles and their crappy 2005 technology.

[Lane]

Funny enough, processors, GPU, etc are tested and made for work with higher voltages of what is set ... the stock voltage is part of how they bin the card between TDP respect, and stability...

I tend to ask me if Nvidia have not been too much short on some specification of the PWM system .
But this should not inclue high end overclocking card with own brand pcb as the Evga, the lighting etc..


AMD cards have a limit max on overvoltage too.. for the 7970 it is fixed by AMD at 1.381V for reference cards ( who is really high anyway ).. Hence why this is the max you can obtain with MSIAB or Trixxx .. It is free to the AIB if they allow in the bios an overvoltage higher to get component for do it. ( Lightning and other gpu with Power controller different of the reference one ).

But lets be serious, many years ago, i remember have kill many cards, including 2x ATI 9700Pro Maya edition and 1x ATI 9800XT, Nvidia 6600GT, cause at this time the cards had absolutely no protection, software or hardware. today the cards are really more safe about abnormal condition.. OCP, temperature protection, tdp limit etc etc ....

Speaking about RMA for Nvidia look for me a bit strange. they are binned as they respect the tdp and clock speed at a voltage x... But they are designed for be able to take a lot more of voltage. And with the last feature as TDP limit, control + Boost clock, thoses type of safety real time control, work even deeper of the simple " protection":

If i take the exemple of AMD, If you reach a high temp, or have set too much voltage, on a certain point, the card will by itself decrease the voltage and clockspeed dynamically for adapt them to different factor. whatever you have set. for protect the "card".. This is the type of protection got the cards today and we had not before.


The problem with the MSI 660 Power edition card, for what i have see, is they use an additional piece on the voltage controller for push 9.3V on the Richtek who work with 5V recommended and 7V as maximum .. I dont know if the 2.3V more can or will cause damage in a long term use.

For the EVGA; the problem is ofc different.

[Mufflore]

My take on it is this:

People worked out how to make gfx cards run faster.
This generated a market that gained competition, mfrs provided the tools to do the job because customers demanded it.
NVidia set the limits for clocking based on what wont harm the cards but tried to give us the max possible, so they are pushing the boundaries.

Sometimes the limits are set a bit too high, but it takes time to find out some problems.
Thus to remain safe, the limit has to be lowered if a problem appears.

I dont see there is a need to lay blame, its just one of those things.
They have been nice enough to us, sometimes we cant have it all.

[sykozis]

I'm kinda with Phase on this one. If I want to push 12V through my GPU....where does NVidia have the right to tell me I can't?? I own the card. They forfeited all rights to it the day I bought it.

[rflair]

Originally Posted by sykozis

I'm kinda with Phase on this one. If I want to push 12V through my GPU....where does NVidia have the right to tell me I can't?? I own the card. They forfeited all rights to it the day I bought it.

Yes but he also said he would not RMA because the fault was his, I have seen cases on other sites where people have fried cards repeatedly and RMA them every time.

And also the topic at hand is not what end users do, it is the agreement Nvidia has with its AIB partners.

[Pill Monster]

I'd be interested to know how the the supposedly reduced number of RMA's will stack up against expected reduced sales from the cards being castrated....

This can only be good for AMD.

[Denial]

Originally Posted by Pill Monster

I'd be interested to know how the the supposedly reduced number of RMA's will stack up against the expected reduced sales from the cards being castrated....

This can only be good for AMD.

I dunno, I can't really see classified cards providing any type of significant revenue to Nvidia. It's probably better to avoid a 590 fiasco then not selling a few chips to EVGA.

[Pill Monster]

Originally Posted by Denial

I dunno, I can't really see classified cards providing any type of significant revenue to Nvidia. It's probably better to avoid a 590 fiasco then not selling a few chips to EVGA.

Yeah but it's not just EVGA - this affects all their partners....

[sykozis]

Originally Posted by rflair

Yes but he also said he would not RMA because the fault was his, I have seen cases on other sites where people have fried cards repeatedly and RMA them every time.

And also the topic at hand is not what end users do, it is the agreement Nvidia has with its AIB partners.

I've overheated my HD4850 more times than I can count. Currently, it's pretty useless for anything other than web-browsing and watching movies. It artifacts in every game/benchmark.....it's sitting on my shelf. Won't sell it....won't throw it away. It was still under warranty when it started to artifact, but Diamond knows nothing of it....not that they could find out since "after sales support" is non-existant with them...

The AIBs are limited what we can do with the cards, because NVidia wants them to. Thus, it's NVidia's will being forced on us.

[PhazeDelta1]

Or Nvidia could pull an intel and sell 2 versions of the same card. 1 with a locked bios and 1 with a unlocked bios and no warranty. Which would then be left up to the AIBs to either eat the cost at a replacement or not offer a warranty on the unlocked cards either. I personally wouldn't give a damn. If I was worried about burning up my stuff, I'd stop the LN2 session. But it's just too damn addicting.

[sykozis]

If I was worried about frying my graphics cards....I wouldn't forget to plug their fans in....lol On a more serious note....I kinda like that idea Phaze.

[Pill Monster]

Meh - where's BFG when you need them...?

Oh...wait.

[sykozis]

I miss BFG....