NVIDIA Back to Dirty Tricks with GTX 900M Series Overclocking

btarunr · May 21, 2015

NVIDIA's driver team is at it again. The company drew outrage from the PC enthusiast community, for developing drivers that prevent GPU overclocking on its GeForce GTX 900M series notebook GPUs, in February 2015, with the introduction of its GeForce 347.29 WHQL drivers, blaming it on a "bug" that allowed overclocking on previous drivers. When called-out and under pressure from the community, it re-enabled overclocking on these chips, with the following GeForce 347.88 drivers, with an equally lame quasi-apology.

Hoping that nobody would notice, the company seems to have reinstated the overclocking block, or "clock-block" as the community is calling it; with its R350 and R352 drivers, such as the GeForce 352.86. Enthusiasts in notebook-centric communities such as NotebookReview, discovered that the latest GeForce drivers prevent overclocking if it reads a "lock-bit" in the video BIOS. Below are the two excuses the company exhausted by means of mutual-contradiction.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

Selene · May 21, 2015

The last two game ready drivers seam to have degraded the performance of my 780 Classifieds and have caused me to revert back to 347.88, get driver has stopped responding all the time, I think it has to do with my G-sync monitor.

erocker · May 21, 2015

Back to dirty tricks? Pretty sure they never left from doing dirty tricks.

Hood · May 21, 2015

I demand the God-given right to melt down my own laptop, and if the building burns down, so be it...(but let me check with my lawyer first, to make sure I can still blame nVidia)

GhostRyder · May 21, 2015

Were back to this again???

Fluffmeister · May 21, 2015

Presumably there is nothing stopping laptop users installing drivers I dunno... 160+ days old?

Dippyskoodlez · May 21, 2015

Fluffmeister said:
Presumably there is nothing stopping laptop users installing drivers I dunno... 160+ days old?

Games that wont work on the old drivers.

64K · May 21, 2015

GhostRyder said:
Were back to this again???

Looks like it. Maybe Nvidia thinks they didn't try hard enough to make it stick last go 'round. :rolleyes:

Hood · May 21, 2015

erocker said:
Back to dirty tricks? Pretty sure they never left from doing dirty tricks.

Yes, they've expanded their Dirty Tricks department by 38% this year alone...my GPU company keeps up with the competition! Those red team bastards were getting ahead of us with their latest dirty tricks, now we're in the lead again! Good going nVidia, never wuss out and become "honest", that would be like giving up the fight!

Fluffmeister · May 21, 2015

Dippyskoodlez said:
Games that wont work on the old drivers.

True regular driver updates are nice, but I can't imagine there is any game breakers out there.

Interestingly I noticed 344.75 were released 183 days ago.

john_ · May 21, 2015

I see Nvidia owners going full overclock, helping with damage control.

rtwjunkie · May 21, 2015

Selene said:
The last two game ready drivers seam to have degraded the performance of my 780 Classifieds and have caused me to revert back to 347.88, get driver has stopped responding all the time, I think it has to do with my G-sync monitor.

347.88 is where I am at now, and running great. I plan to stay there until I find an inability to play a game. Even Witcher 3 plays wonderfully on that "old" driver.

Fluffmeister · May 21, 2015

john_ said:
I see Nvidia owners going full overclock, helping with damage control.

Lighten up fella, that poke was an easy one to make.

Besides I personally think gaming laptops are stupid and often massively overpriced, but if they want to overclock them then they should be allowed to do so.

Beyond that this really doesn't affect me at all so. /shrug

the54thvoid · May 21, 2015

May I also point out this article is from Bta who is apparently an Nvidia stooge. Can we reroute the AMD driver posts to here please so?

rtwjunkie · May 21, 2015

the54thvoid said:
May I also point out this article is from Bta who is apparently an Nvidia stooge. Can we reroute the AMD driver posts to here please so?

First thing I thought when I saw his post was all the people in the other thread accusing him of getting handouts from Nvidia to be their PR guy. :roll:

TRWOV · May 21, 2015

john_ said:
I see Nvidia owners going full overclock, helping with damage control.

huh? They're the affected ones, I would think every laptop owner with an overclocked nVidia GPU would be up in arms over this :confused:

Frick · May 21, 2015

This article has the smell of qubit and it's not a good thing.

Tsukiyomi91 · May 21, 2015

in the 1st place, they disabled it to ensure no one melts their GPU & now they re-enable it? what?

that kind of apology isn't gonna make any GTX900M users happy... IMO, keeping it stock for reliability is best since I know the risks of shortening the lifespan of the chip for a very small impact in which it won't reach desktop levels.

manofthem · May 21, 2015

rtwjunkie said:
First thing I thought when I saw his post was all the people in the other thread accusing him of getting handouts from Nvidia to be their PR guy.

I thought the exact same thing. Oh it's funny how things go

GhostRyder · May 21, 2015

Fluffmeister said:
Lighten up fella, that poke was an easy one to make.

Besides I personally think gaming laptops are stupid and often massively overpriced, but if they want to overclock them then they should be allowed to do so.

Beyond that this really doesn't affect me at all so. /shrug

If you throw gas on the fire your going to get burned...

64K said:
Looks like it. Maybe Nvidia thinks they didn't try hard enough to make it stick last go 'round.

Right, I mean really this should have been resolved awhile back.

rtwjunkie said:
347.88 is where I am at now, and running great. I plan to stay there until I find an inability to play a game. Even Witcher 3 plays wonderfully on that "old" driver.

I agree, upgrading drivers really is more meant for the CFX/SLI profiles. I don't update my laptop driver to much unless I see something specifically saying words like "Fixed bug on (Insert Game)" or the likes.

rtwjunkie said:
First thing I thought when I saw his post was all the people in the other thread accusing him of getting handouts from Nvidia to be their PR guy.

Its a trick, he's trying to throw everyone off the scent.
/sarcasm

Meh, I think the same thing I thought before. Loosen restrictions on the top end GPU's and be tighter about the lower ones. I mean most if not all laptops with a GTX 970m+ have some decent enough cooling to handle it (I can only think of 1 or 2 exceptions).

Haytch · May 21, 2015

I don't know why, but I had a feeling this would reoccur.

Perhaps they are having some sort of issue with this series that they cannot resolve at the manufacturing level and are being cautious via the driver.

Hopefully we get more than an apology this time 'round and end up with an excuse.

Fluffmeister · May 21, 2015

GhostRyder said:
If you throw gas on the fire your going to get burned...

This is true.

But when I go fishing, I need to use bait...

Nosada · May 21, 2015

Well this should put the record straight about TPU's (and bta's) rumoured pro-nVidia bias :laugh:

Let me reiterate my point from the other thread:

AMD and nVidia are screwing us over in the support department, the market needs a third player.

Selene · May 21, 2015

Sorry I don't think my post was correct, the two new drivers for GTA5 and Witcher 3 causes problems with my 780 Classifieds(SLI) reverting back to 347.88 fixes the problems it causes for me. I did more reading today and discovered that after 347.88 Nvidia has only been optimizing Maxwell GPUs (960/970 980 and Titan X) with its new game ready drivers.

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/833016/geforce-700-600-series/gtx-780-possible-fail-as-performance-in-the-witcher-3-wild-hunt-/1/

tehehe · May 22, 2015

Selene said:
The last two game ready drivers seam to have degraded the performance of my 780 Classifieds and have caused me to revert back to 347.88, get driver has stopped responding all the time, I think it has to do with my G-sync monitor.

I have the same problem but with sli 970. It's really annoying. I get driver has stopped responding all the time even when browsing in chrome :/

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NVIDIA Back to Dirty Tricks with GTX 900M Series Overclocking

btarunr

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