Nvidia bans overclocking for its G80

[stinger608]

NVIDIA told all of its partners that it simply won't allow the overclocking of G80 cards. It doesn't want another Geforce 7900 GT overclocking fiasco that caused a too high return rate for the cards!!!

Read more:

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=35244

[Jokerswild]

What they don't want the enthusiast market.

[gvblake22]

Originally Posted by Jokerswild

What they don't want the enthusiast market.

HA, I think they know those chips are already at about their maximum sage level and don't want to risk the manufacturers cranking out too many lemons because they wanted an extra 1 fps improvement over the next guy.

[drew and not u]

Do they mean that they won't allow factory overclocking or end user overclocking as well?

[yurimxpxman]

Stole my question.

Personally, I think factory-overclocking is a bad idea for the most part.

[polobunny]

Apparently they're talking about factory overclocking (nVidia partners overclocking) so brands like XFX and BFG won't be able to do their stuff.
I'm with yurimxpxman on this, I never liked the idea of factory overclocked cards very much. Sure you got a warranty to back it up but most often you pay a premium for a few ridiculous frames.
You could technically do this yourself with more or less chances of breaking the hardware too if done properly. It's an easy solution for people wanting to get a bit more from their card without voiding the warranty, but I think this is a very marginal part of the population.

On one side, you have those who know nothing to their video card and just play games.
On the other side, you have those who know their video card and are ready to void the warranty to get extra frames.
The "factory-overclocked users" who are ready to pay the premium are between those two so either they know about the hardware but want a hassle free way of getting a few more frames or they're the simple consumer being pushed by a salesman.

Besides there's alot of "versions" of cards being produced with the same core, for example the X1900GT, X1900XT, X1900XTX or the 7900GT and 7900GTX so you can simply pick the one that fits your needs.

I like to think factory-overclocked cards to some point might even hurt the market. nVidia doesn't make much money selling small cards, all their income comes from high end cards. If partners are going to overclock the hell out of some more low end cards to the point the performance difference between the low end overclocked card and the high end stock card is minimal then chances are nVidia won't sell alot of those high end cards once semi-informed users see what's going on.

Also like pointed out in the article, not all those cards will hold what they're set at. There's tons of 7900GT that died because of too extreme overclocks combined with the 7900GT stock cooler (resulting in too much heat to dissipate) so personally I wouldn't put a component in my computer that has a much more higher chance of failing than the stock one, risking to break maybe some other components.

[Capper]

Yes its the factory overclocking that being targeted. In an effort to make thier products more appealing than their competitors, they OC the cards too much....OCing a card is free, while other things that differentiate products, like a good bundle, cost the company money, making them less attractive

[Panda Man]

Maybe you can overclock the water-cooled card if anyone makes one.

That statement I believe is what makes it unclear as to whether it's just the manufacturer's that are targeted, or the end-user as well. I would assume capper would know though, so I'll take his word on it. Not to mention, it IS the Inquirer. Everything I would point is already mentioned :hmmmm:

[Sovereign]

Well with the 7 series (especially the 7900), the cards were running at the very edge of their maximum speed (or rather the maximum speed of most of the chips, there were some that functioned fine at 700/900, but those were rare)