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

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.

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.

Oh, almost forgot - seems appropriate; http://gentoochan.org/g/src/1340775015574.png

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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....

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.