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GTX1080-Feature2

A few posts on TechPowerUp have highlighted issues with GTX 1080 and 1070 cards from Asus and MSI. Specifically, both vendors have been caught shipping cards to reviewers that were configured for overclocking mode out of the box, while retail cards are shipping at base clocks past default.

In this case, the clock speed differences are very small, at roughly 1.5%, which means they're only probable to produce ~1% of difference, if that.

Asus responded to PC Perspective's inquiry on this issue by noting that reviewers and buyers akin can adjust GPU clock speeds via its GPU Tweak Ii utility, and that "The printing samples for the ASUS ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1080 OC and ASUS ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1070 OC cards are set to "OC Mode" past default. To save media fourth dimension and effort, OC mode is enabled by default as nosotros are well enlightened our graphics cards will be reviewed primarily on maximum performance."

The truth is, vendors have been pulling tricks similar this for well over a decade. In the erstwhile days, they'd overclock CPU buses slightly, pushing a 133MHz base clock upwards to 136MHz. On a 2.13GHz CPU with a 16x base clock, that'south enough for a roughly 2% clock speed increase. Other scenarios accept been more egregious — we've seen motherboards that would automatically enable optimized CPU overclocking settings when XMP memory profiles were enabled. In this item instance, that meant all CPU cores were set to run at the maximum Turbo frequency normally reserved for a unmarried-threaded scenario. Optimizations like this can affect measured performance past significant amounts, much more the 2% we mentioned earlier.

Asus claims that these changes are made to "help" reviewers, just that's a secondary reason at best. Yes, we evaluate cards based on maximum operation, including overclocking performance — but what this is really about is securing top placement on a comparing graph between multiple vendors.

Consider, later on all, the plight of companies like Asus, MSI, Zotac, Gigabyte, EVGA, and the other various GPU or motherboard vendors. They know that pricing is at least as important as make when it comes to convincing users to buy a GPU. The trouble is, many buyers practise buy on price. The only mode to justify asking an extra $10 to $twenty is to offer something the other guy doesn't take. Cooling, overclockability, and quiet operation are all means to influence client decisions, just those features only work if they can plant meaningful differences. Overclocking ever varies by card and a GPU family unit may not be peculiarly loud or hot past default.

A card that turns in consistently higher performance is a card that'll tend to either be at the top of the stack or volition be highlighted in a different color. Information technology'll be the component that catches the middle, ane mode or the other.

In that location is a scintilla of truth to Asus' statement. Because reviewers oftentimes review many cards at once, making certain that you've configured every piece of OEM software required to enable a given feature can be confusing. Since a review is a presentation of a product under objective testing weather, Asus can make the argument that they want to brand certain the product is tested in the correct atmospheric condition. It's not completely wrong. The problem is, those "right weather condition" may be just as applicable to the end-user, who may not bother installing or configuring OEM software, either — particularly if they have the long-standing stance that OEM software is more than or less garbage.

Is a ane.v% overclock a primal betrayal of customers? No. We routinely have much larger variations in products nosotros buy. But the trouble with pushing the envelope like this, across the fact that information technology looks pretty bad, is that information technology can pb to instability or other bug. In the motherboard example we mentioned above, the arrangement would crash at full CPU load because the CPU we were using wasn't a particularly good overclocker and couldn't run all iv cores at the single-thread Turbo Way clock without a voltage nudge. Said nudge wasn't programmed into the UEFI, which meant the scrap seemed unstable until we hunted down the actual crusade of the problem.

In some cases, even tiny increases crusade issues. While our Fury X GPU runs rock-solid at stock speed, nudging it upwards even by 3% acquired instability concluding year. The bottom line is that manufacturers should keep stock speeds stock and offer overclocking modes through clearly communicated alternate settings — not preloaded BIOSes pulled for reviewers.