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NVIDIA's GTX 680 voltage control restrictions explained

It's all to do with electromigration and maximizing GPU life.

Looks like Legit Reviews got an exclusive on this as nvidia talked to them about it, here.

Quote:

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.

With so many page views, I'm surprised that no one cares about this enough to comment over something so significant. qubit scratches his quantum head, perplexed

One can certainly take the cynical view that nvidia is doing this to protect their interests by reducing the number of RMAs they have to deal with or that they don't want the much cheaper GTX 670 being overclocked and performing as well as a stock GTX 680 or better.

Regardless, electromigration does happen and does reduce lifespan and performance, so there is truth to nvidia's claims, regardless of any other motives.

Quote:

Originally Posted by qubit (Post 2740439)

i dont think EVGA was given that answer honestly as to why pull their ebot or w/e it was, sound like a spyware bot anyway

X company says this, someone says that. It's been discussed in another thread during the initial story. There's not much left to discuss I guess. :ohwell:

this could be combined with the topic about it

Can't merge into news posts.

Quote:

Originally Posted by qubit (Post 2740439)

With so many page views, I'm surprised that no one cares about this enough to comment. qubit scratches his quantum head, perplexed

One can certainly take the cynical view that nvidia is doing this to protect their interests by reducing the number of RMAs they have to deal with or that they don't want the much cheaper GTX 670 being overclocked and performing as well as a stock GTX 680 or better.

Regardless, electromigration does happen and does reduce lifespan and performance, so there is truth to nvidia's claims, regardless of any other motives.

But the motives they explain are common knowledge.

Take Intel for instance they achive there Boost well with in spec v1.2 and still have room for OC by user with-in that v1.45000 recommended spec

What Nvidia did which seams dumb. They take the chip and basicklly voltage it to the brink thinking no-one of the "enthusiast" buying an "enthusiast" card from them with their chip will not OC. Just seam silly
They admit there is no degridation for the chip at the voltage and boost frequencies for the normal life span, Why not run it at that spec all the time and get rid of the "Microstutters" the GPU-Boost causes. 3 WQHL drivers later and they just manage to minimize the microstutters which they said they were gonna fix back in June.

Nvidia
The Way Its Meant to Be Overclocked
*but we already did it for you so dont touch it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by erocker (Post 2740448)

X company says this, someone says that. It's been discussed in another thread during the initial story. There's not much left to discuss I guess. :ohwell:

Thanks E, I did look in the nvidia section about this and hadn't seen that it was reported in the news section. At least I understand why now. :)

Please feel free to close the thread if you feel it would be more appropriate.