Are Nvidia and AMD starting to remove voltage tweaking on their cards??

I saw this thread over on OcUK:

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/sho...php?t=18447128

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Originally Posted by EVGA rep on removal of EvBot

It was removed in order to 100% comply with NVIDIA guidelines for selling GeForce GTX products, no voltage control is allowed, even via external device.

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Originally Posted by EVGA rep

I have just made some phone calls...

It appears that Nvidia is attempting to keep the performance differential intact from its unreleased "original" 680 that was withheld at the 600 series launch.
From what I gather with people who know about such things, this may portend a much earlier release of the withheld card than was projected just a few months ago.

This appears to be all about Nvidia milking the customer to the last red cent (since AMD has fallen flat on its face) and removing the ability to truly push ones cards into higher performance levels is being done to simply increase the profit margin.

It appears that Nvidia has forgotten the key to its overwhelming success. Providing the experienced user with the options to increase performance levels.

Once you start removing features to increase ones profit levels, you are heading downhill as a company.
It appears that Nvidia is doing just that. In my opinion this is a serious mistake that may increase profits "now" but lead to issues should such behavior be contiuned by Nvidia.

+1 for profit margins, -5 for end users
Greed is a terrible thing, if allowed to become company policy. Nvidia may be able to get away with this given the current state of videocard development between AMD and itself, but further down the road could open the door to Nvidia becoming marginalized.

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It seems MSI Afterburner 2.2.4 also removes voltage tweaking for Kepler cards too:

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/sho...php?t=18443954

Some XFX and Sapphire HD7950 cards also lack voltage tweaking it seems,although it might be possible to flash to a suitable BIOS(I might be wrong here).

Is he also suggesting that the GK100/110 is launching sooner rather than later?

Meh, screw those Lightning owners - at least they can move their voltage up and down. :(

OTH,I wonder if an overclocked GTX680 would be competitive with a GK110 based card??

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Originally Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH

OTH,I wonder if an overclocked GTX680 would be competitive with a GK110 based card??

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Definitely interesting, especially given the usual internet fluff about the 'real' 680 being streets ahead in terms of grunt.

It seems Nvidia is starting to exercise more control over 3rd party designs:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/graphic...t_Designs.html

Well it's all over the net like a rash now, but...

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Originally Posted by brightsideofnews.com, 3rd October 2012

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."

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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.

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Source

Another response from Nvidia...

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Originally Posted by EVGA Product Manager, 5th October 2012

Some of our best and most passionate customers have told us (though forums, partners and directly) that they are frustrated with our position on GPU Overvoltaging. So we feel that it is important to explain exactly what our position is and why we feel that it is important.

We love to see our chips run faster and we understand that our customers want to squeeze as much performance as possible out of their GPUs. However there is a physical limit to the amount of voltage that can be applied to a GPU before the silicon begins to degrade through electromigration (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromigration). Essentially, excessive voltages on transistors can over time "evaporate" the metal in a key spot destroying or degrading the performance of the chip. Unfortunately, since the process happens over time it's not always immediately obvious when it's happening. Overvoltaging above our max spec does exactly this. It raises the operating voltage beyond our rated max and can erode the GPU silicon over time.

In contrast, GPU Boost always keeps the voltage below our max spec, even as it is raising and lowering the voltage dynamically. That way you get great performance and a guaranteed lifetime.
So our policy is pretty simple:
We encourage users to go have fun with our GPUs. They are completely guaranteed and will perform great within the predefined limits.
We also recommend that our board partners don’t build in mechanisms that raise voltages beyond our max spec. We set it as high as possible within long term reliability limits.

The reason we have a limit on max voltage is very simply to prevent damage to the GPU chips. At NVIDIA we know that our customers want to push their GPUs to the limit. We are all for it, and as a matter of fact NVIDIA has always prioritized support for hardware enthusiasts by providing tools to access hardware settings and by supporting our board partners in creating overclocked enthusiast products. Leading up to the GeForce GTX 680 release for example, we worked closely with developers of 3rd party overclocking utilities to make sure they fully supported GeForce GTX 680 and GPU Boost on the day of launch.

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Source

LOL. As long as you keep voltage under the maximum level,like with CPU overclocking,and the GPU is also cooled well,you will not hit problems. I have probably overclocked almost every graphics card I have owned and yet even years later they still work.

OTH,it could be because Nvidia board partners might be much more agressive with their overclocks on average. I remember with the 1GHZ GTX560TI cards,a number had to withdrawn due to stability issues,and eventually were re-released with slightly lower clockspeeds.

lol check this out, all is not what it seems...

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Originally Posted by bit-tech, 5th October 2012

Nvidia accused of crippling board partners' designs
A source inside one of Nvidia's largest graphics manufacturing partners, who spoke to us on the condition that they remain anonymous, explains: 'The fact is Nvidia is stopping ALL partners from allowing any form of hardware/software overvolting, or providing hardware mods beyond its very limited restrictions. They threaten to cut allocation [of GK100 parts] if hardware mods aren’t removed or avoided entirely.'

While homebrew soldering-iron-and-prayer overvolting is still permitted, manufacturing partners aren't allowed to make it easy for buyers. 'We're not allowed to openly advertise the PCB markings [for overvoltage adjustment] on the GTX 680,' our source continues.
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Claims that manufacturers aren't being restricted in their designs beyond the confines of the Green Light programme are soundly denied by our source, however. We've been told that the secretive restrictions on board partners go yet further: 'They [Nvidia] also threaten allocation if you make a card faster than the [stock] GTX 690.'

These restrictions are not limited to just a couple of companies, either: they appear to stretch right across the board, and are responsible for product cancellations and - as with EVGA's removal of the EVBot header from the GTX 680 Classified - hardware modifications from multiple manufacturers. They're also leaving a bad taste in board partners' mouths: where in previous generations each company has been able to push its own cards to the limit in order to beat the competition, under Nvidia's alleged new rules all GTX 680 boards will be more or less identical in performance and features.

The hardware restrictions are a loss for the consumer, too: EVGA has already stated that it won't be reducing the price of the GeForce GTX 680 Classified, despite removing the EVBot header and corresponding facility for custom voltages outside Nvidia's recommended limits - meaning buyers now get less card for their cash than before the company capitulated to Nvidia's alleged demands.

We've approached other board partners, but thus far none have been willing to comment on the record regarding our source's claims of hardware restrictions - and with our source alleging that Nvidia may even cut chip allocations for companies that talk publicly about the matter, that's no surprise.

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Full story here >> http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2012/10/05/nvidia-crippling-partners/1

It appears MSI Afterburner 2.2.4 has removed voltage tweaking,so you need to stick with an earlier version it seems for Nvidia cards.

People are all up in arms about this which makes no sense to me. Nvidia designs the cards to run at their stock voltage. You can still adjust the voltage on most cards, within predefined limits.
Most of the people all mad about this aren't even sure why they are mad. In reality, the only people who have a need to overvolt their GPUs well beyond the stock limits are extreme overclockers and benchmarkers, who are usually also running extreme cooling such as liquid nitrogen.
Gamers and the average person has zero need to overvolt

Nvidia doesn't say you aren't allowed to do it. They are just saying don't do it if you want your warranty. They just don't want manufacturer's to make it easy.

You could still overvolt and mod your card to hell and void your warranty.
The 680 classifieds without an EVBOT connector, you can still buy a $2 part and solder it on
Because you see extreme overclockers who DO worry about overvolting, aren't worried about Nvidia doing this because they are modding the cards to hell anyway

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Originally Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH

It appears MSI Afterburner 2.2.4 has removed voltage tweaking,so you need to stick with an earlier version it seems for Nvidia cards.

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Afterburner 2.2.4 still has voltage tweaking that you can set, although however much you tweak it I fail to see any actual change reported by GPUz.

The card seems to be setting it's own voltage according to load regardless of values I set.

600 series GPU? They do have dynamic voltage control

Well if this IS happening on nvidias side then i think they will fall behind a bit, since amd cards already overclock better. But i have no idea what the next generation will be like.