No more mobile GPU overclocking - has Nvidia gone insane?!

Yea, some people have weird logic. What if i go outside and fall down, and break my leg? So that means i shouldn't go outside? What if, what if, what if....

 

Just 69 more votes to reach 500 signatures, which is pretty good! I'm sure that there are way more people that agree that NVidia dropped a big one by removing overclocking on their latest mobile GPUs, if you're one of them please sign:
https://www.change.org/p/nvidia-re-...geforce-equipped-notebooks?recruiter=20925400

NVidia were out of order with the way they mislead customers with the desktop GTX 970 VRAM debacle, and now they've mislead customers again by removing overclocking on their latest mobile GPUs - people bought laptops with the understanding that they could overclock (been overclockable through Official NVidia Drivers for the last 5 years), don't let them get away with treating their customers (us/you!) like this! Please signup to be counted & show them what you think!

 

Signed, while I don't overclock myself, it is ridiculous that Nvidia is taking that choice out of its users hands.

 

I just thought of something. By Nvidia disabling the OCing feature of their new mobile GPUs then the Laptop manufacturers such as ASUS who says that their Laptops support GPU OCing when they don't thanks to Nvidia. To me by Nvidia's latest move made the ASUS and other Laptop manufacturers who support GPU OCing look like they are falsely advertising a feature when they weren't before which is wrong.

 

^

Reminds me of Windows UAC, designed to keep idiots safe from themselves meanwhile enraging everyone else. It's the first thing I disable in a fresh install of Windows.

No matter how you slice it, a manufacturer limiting what you can do with your own product which YOU own is 100% BS and is likely illegal in many places, or will be in the future.

 

You're free to do whatever you like to your product...as long as you don't expect the manufacturer to pay (warranty) for it. Nor are they obligated to make it easy for you to operate a product outside of it's operating range.

 

If you were in the US and tripped over a crack on a public sidewalk....$$$$$

 

Thanks for signing, just 11 more signatures to go to meet the 500 signature mark! Each time it reaches the goal I believe a letter goes out from change.org to NVidia, so would be great to get those remaining 11 signatures.
https://www.change.org/p/nvidia-re-...geforce-equipped-notebooks?recruiter=20925400

On the change.org page I was reading a comment from someone who signed, and he came up with an overclocking opt-in solution so that NVidia wouldn't have to be concerned with laptop failures from overclocking, here's his quote:

"Why not re-enable it [overclocking] and add a clause that requires the user to manually input text among the lines of "I am aware of the risks that come with overclocking the GPU in a system with limited cooling capabilities and I accept that hardware damage will not be covered by warranty."?"

I think that's a good idea if they're concerned about failure due to overclocking - it would make me think twice about overclocking while in warranty period. Having said that I don't think that's the real reason NVidia is blocking overclocking (I don't think there's many overclock related failures), I think a large part of it is that they want to increase sales by being able to release marginally faster clocked products without consumer-overclocked products eating into those potential sales.

 

Clearly an issue in hiding

This ban on mobile overclocking is clearly an attempt to hide a recently discovered problem with the new mobile gpus, maybe even a preemptive one for 960m. Most likely a thermal problem causing the gpu to burn instead of throwing a driver error, freezing or rebooting.

I didn't think too badly of 970 slow memory part fiasco because 970 with is already a very fast gpu. If it had fast access to all 4 gigs, it may have been too close to 980, which may not be what nvidia wants, since they want to sell 980s too.

 

Although thermals are generally excellent (& lower than the previous Kepler generation) with the new Maxwell cards, and they're still being manufactured on the now very mature 28nm fabrication process, so I would have thought that there wouldn't be any nasty surprises for them.

 

I support your thoughts but only half of it. I think that enthusiast laptops SHOULD be allowed to overclock to whatever level the user wants, as they are clearly gaming/workstation machines. They are built for high performance parts and with ample thermals and power delivery systems in place. Ultrabooks (with dGPUs), and the vast majority of "everyday" laptops (which vastly outsell more expensive gaming ones), however, are often cheap or focused on slimness/weight, and lack said cooling and thermal headroom. Overclocking on these machines will often cause another point of failure (VRMs, temperature sensitive parts) even if it doesn't damage the dGPU itself. They aren't "crap" machines, but are simply targeting a different type of user (casual gaming) while maintaining a decent, slim/low-weight, package.

You have to remember, most users out there are not exactly tech-savvy. My friend for example, has a M14X. When he gets issues running the latest game, he'll Google for "how to run X game faster". There are alot of sites out there and not all of them give good advice. When he called one day to ask about a large amount of issues, his laptop was filled with various "optimizing" tools (including overclocking ones), toolbars, viruses, and malware. He was also asking about flashing someone else's modded vbios, something that would most likely brick his laptop because he doesn't even know if its compatible or not. Did it make his machine faster? No, and he still has absolutely on idea what he is doing. He likes to search for things and try it without really reading into it.

Most of people on enthusiast sites know what they are doing. The regular users however, don't and often are too lazy to do research on what overclocking is, much less the intricate balancing act between thermals and power usage.

However, like I said earlier, I absolutely agree that the capability should be there, but should be made only available via OEM's that opt in for them, such as gaming laptops from ASUS, MSI, etc. This will help prevent casual users from wrecking laptops that weren't built for overclocking in the first place. It does add another layer of inconvenience, but I can understand the manufacturer/supplier's point of view.

 

It doesn't have to be the gpu but other components like power ICs, capacitors etc. The mobile cards are different - you can't blame asus, evga etc: there is only 1 or 2 manufacturers for mobile working very closely for nvidia.

I have a tv belonging to a bad series - nearly all tvs from that series failed due to the same capacitor - apparently they used an old capacitor tucked away at an old factory to save a few cents.

They are trying to bury a similar problem here.

 

Never had a problem ocing my laptop using Nvidia inspector. This is a big blow for me as it enabled me to fully enjoy COD:AW for example. I've always taken ocing with Nvidia for granted and it's very strange that we are here in 2015 even discussing this. Most overclockers are enthusiasts; we know what we're doing.

Rather than locking the feature, Nvidia should just add a quick check-box disclaimer.

Long-term, I was going to stay on laptops and get another high/est-end Nvidia equipped laptop, but, now that choice isn't so simple. For some of us, this might be the end of the road and time to give-up and stop upgrading especially when great AAA titles are few and far between anyway.

Up-to-now, my laptop has felt very much like a desktop experience (albeit much quieter than desktop and portable, amazing really). Dream is over I guess.

Ahwell, I've got enough games to last me a life-time anyway.

 

My healthy brain is fully mental thank you very much :3eyes:

as to what nVidia have done well they should just make it abundantly clear that when you click allow over clocking you void your warranty ( no takesies backsies

 

That also might not be a proper one-size-fits-all solution. Some laptop companies, like some GPU manufacturers, advertise overclockability and would prefer that the warranty with them stay valid if a user chooses to do so. Some keep their warranty valid even if you make physical changes to the hardware.

The simpler solution is to keep NVidia out of it, reenable overclocking. Companies already do a good job making clear what their warranty covers. If a user shoots themselves in the foot and does something to damage their laptop that is out of the purview of the warranty then that's on them. This is the same thing we do with every other thing sold ever.

 

I've been overclocking on laptops for years. On 5870M, 7970M, 675MX. And now a 980M system will be arriving soon and was planning on overclocking that also.

My issue is, if Nvidia is worried about overclocking causing serious damage to hardware.

1). It poses the same risk for desktop as mobile, if going to remove overclocking, then do it across the board.

2). How is this is a bug or an issue if enthusiasts have been doing this for years?

3). We're not infants, we can decide for ourselves and weigh the risks. And considering the 980M doesn't throttle or reach thermal limits with overclock, Nvidia has no basis for removing overclocking.

 

Anyway, it would be great if desktop gamers, even if you don't like laptops for gaming to support this and sign the petition.

We're all gamers, we all love hardware and we all love overclocking and enjoy tweaking our machines. Sign it, and support us who just want Nvidia to let us decide for ourselves to overclock despite these supposed risks that ManuelG is so afraid of.

Laptop gamers are crazy just like desktop gamers.

My upcoming system just to show how much laptop gamers love hardware and PC Gaming.

i7 4790K with a Z97 board
GTX 980M
512gb M600 M.2 SSD
256 ADATA Pro SSD
1TB 7K1000 HGST
16GB ADATA CL9
330w PSU

Thanks

 

The 500 signature milestone has been broken, we're at 567 now, thanks to everyone that's signed so far!
https://www.change.org/p/nvidia-re-enable-overclocking-on-geforce-equipped-notebooks

 

The ignorance of some in this thread is really amazing... in a bad way...

If someone really believes that they fixed a bug is also believing that the wrong (too good specs) of the GTX970 beeing released was a "communication issue".

1) The "bug" was there for several years (5 or more)
2) The "bug" is only "fixed" for GTX800M and GTX900M series - all others can still overvclock.
3) I don't think it's a coincidence they also try to disable vbios mods. The gtx900m series can only be flashed with vBios SIGNED by NV. Flashing is only possible with a modded version of nvflash and the mod is now detectable by the driver - so I doubt that this will be possible for long

Everyone with a gaming laptop should know that OCCing is easily unlocking about 20-30% potential with every new generation of chips. Why ? Because NV as well as the notebook manufactureres are actually PLANING to release a refresh generation after one year. This "refresh" is just an overclocked version of the previous one. So every next generation is just factory OCCed and nothing new. This game is going on for years now...
And my bet is they keep the needed clock reserves...

That's why the GTX500, 700 and now the 900 series can easily be OCCED by 25-30% !
25 to 30% is something that you will notice in games...

 

https://forums.geforce.com/default/...king-with-347-09-347-25/post/4466443/#4466443