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Guru3D.com » News » NVIDIA Green Light program requires board partners to validate their designs

NVIDIA Green Light program requires board partners to validate their designs

by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 10/05/2012 06:50 AM | Source | 40 comment(s)
NVIDIA Green Light program requires board partners to validate their designs

A day or two ago we reported that NVIDIA has halted EVGA to include EVBot support on their GeForce GTX 680 Classified graphics cards. Apparantly this is due to NVIDIA's Green Light program, which requires board partners to validate their designs with NVIDIA before making the final product. NVIDIA initially allowed the GeForce GTX 680 Classified because it would serve as a good marketing tool to set overclocking records, but forced EVGA to tune down the card once it had served its purpose. 

Officially, the program is designed to smoothen the launch of new GPUs and to reduce RMAs, but NVIDIA's add-in board partners aren't happy because Green Light puts too many limits on how they can differentiate their graphics cards reports BSN.

Some parameters of the Green Light program are that vendors have to send in their board designs for approval from Nvidia to meet Nvidia's noise, power, voltage and heat figures. If those figures are not met, Nvidia does not approve the card. If a company does not follow the Green Light program, they risk losing their GPU warranty and BIOS support. More importantly, they could possibly risk their allocation according to some AIBs.

In addition to the design of the card itself and the aforementioned parameters, Nvidia also restricts certain software from being bundled with the cards by the vendors.

One example was when MSI released the unlocked BIOS with high voltage in their Afterburner overclocking utility. Needless to say, Nvidia was not happy and forced MSI to immediately remove the feature.

Nvidia was asked to 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."



Tagged as: NVIDIA, designs, partners, program, requires, validate




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Mufflore
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#4424280 Posted on: 10/04/2012 11:41 PM
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 :P

DarkKnightDude
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#4424287 Posted on: 10/04/2012 11:47 PM
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
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#4424290 Posted on: 10/04/2012 11:52 PM
Oh Snap - I just posted a link to that article in another thread. :)



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
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#4424296 Posted on: 10/05/2012 12:05 AM
Oh, almost forgot - seems appropriate;



Veteran
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#4424311 Posted on: 10/05/2012 12:26 AM
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
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#4424316 Posted on: 10/05/2012 12:31 AM
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!
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#4424330 Posted on: 10/05/2012 12:58 AM
Isn't this kinda thing fixable at the BIOS level, as in, if someone writes a custom BIOS for the nVidia cards?

PhazeDelta1
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#4424331 Posted on: 10/05/2012 01:01 AM
Probably. Someone on the EVGA Fourm said he was working on a bios editor for the 600 series cards.

PhazeDelta1
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#4424336 Posted on: 10/05/2012 01:03 AM
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---
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#4424338 Posted on: 10/05/2012 01:05 AM
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
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#4424346 Posted on: 10/05/2012 01:21 AM
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
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#4424350 Posted on: 10/05/2012 01:28 AM
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
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#4424357 Posted on: 10/05/2012 01:38 AM
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
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#4424358 Posted on: 10/05/2012 01:41 AM
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
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#4424387 Posted on: 10/05/2012 03:33 AM
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.

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