facebook rss twitter

Nvidia re-disables GTX 900M overclocking with latest drivers

by Ryan Martin on 22 May 2015, 15:31

Tags: NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qacrmr

Add to My Vault: x

Nvidia caused a storm back in early February when it released a driver update, R347.29, that disabled overclocking of GTX 900M mobile series GPUs in gaming notebooks. At the time, Nvidia claimed overclocking had been enabled previously because of a bug in old drivers and that the R347 driver was intended to fix that bug.

Nvidia claimed disabling overclocking was necessary since "GeForce notebooks were not designed to support overclocking. Overclocking is by no means a trivial feature, and depends on thoughtful design of thermal, electrical, and other considerations. By overclocking a notebook, a user risks serious damage to the system that could result in non-functional systems, reduced notebook life, or many other effects". This reasoning from Nvidia caused outrage since notebook vendors, such as Asus, had advertised the fact the mobile GPUs could be overclocked.

Yet in a surprising turn of events the company backtracked on its decision just over a week later, in late February, claiming that it would reinstate overclocking features for GTX 900M users with a new driver, R347.88. The company also reiterated that GeForce notebook owners should revert to driver version R344.75 if they wanted to start overclocking straight away.

According to the latest news, Nvidia has disabled overclocking once again with R350 and R352 drivers, and the gaming notebook community has already labelled the latest incident as part of the 'clock-block' saga. The new GeForce drivers prevent overclocking on systems when a 'lock-bit' is found in the vBIOS of the GPU. An ongoing mega-thread over at the NotebookReview forums is detailing the trials and tribulations of many GeForce notebook owners and the effort they are making to restore overclocking functionality to their gaming notebooks.

Nvidia has yet to issue an official response to the latest incident but it will be interesting to hear the logic behind the decision to remove overclocking capabilities once again. Undoubtedly, the gaming notebook community will continue to put pressure on Nvidia until a satisfactory response is offered.

HEXUS Forums :: 7 Comments

Login with Forum Account

Don't have an account? Register today!
Posted by TRUTHnTRINITY - Fri 22 May 2015 15:34
Haha they just can't make up their mind!!!!
Posted by kingpotnoodle - Fri 22 May 2015 15:57
Disabled by lock bit? So it's only disabled if notebook OEM sets it so in the BIOS at the factory?

Nice way to shift the blame ;-)
Posted by edzieba - Fri 22 May 2015 16:13
kingpotnoodle
Disabled by lock bit? So it's only disabled if notebook OEM sets it so in the BIOS at the factory?

Nice way to shift the blame ;-)
Sounds like they're trying to limit overclocking to notebooks with thermal designs that would actually SURVIVE overclocking. Most designs are already thermally constrained and will throttle under even normal use (as the designed decided to trade off performance for compactness and weight). With the notebook OEM ultimately responsible for both the thermal solution used, AND the warranty of the machine, having the abll be in their court makes the most sense.

It's not fair to lock down those who DO have one of the massive desktop-replacement notebooks that can handle overclocking with aplomb. But it's also a really bad idea to leave overclocking enabled on designs that can't handle it. It's not just a ‘you might get lots of instability and crashing’ issue, but you could literally cause physical damage to the notebook. Nvidia and AMD both have been hit by hardware failures arising from solder cracking in the GPU interposer due to thermal shocks, and that's with stock clocks. Overclockging and/or overvolting could damage chips that are fully in-spec.
Posted by RyanM - Fri 22 May 2015 16:37
edzieba
kingpotnoodle
Disabled by lock bit? So it's only disabled if notebook OEM sets it so in the BIOS at the factory?

Nice way to shift the blame ;-)
Sounds like they're trying to limit overclocking to notebooks with thermal designs that would actually SURVIVE overclocking. Most designs are already thermally constrained and will throttle under even normal use (as the designed decided to trade off performance for compactness and weight). With the notebook OEM ultimately responsible for both the thermal solution used, AND the warranty of the machine, having the abll be in their court makes the most sense.

It's not fair to lock down those who DO have one of the massive desktop-replacement notebooks that can handle overclocking with aplomb. But it's also a really bad idea to leave overclocking enabled on designs that can't handle it. It's not just a ‘you might get lots of instability and crashing’ issue, but you could literally cause physical damage to the notebook. Nvidia and AMD both have been hit by hardware failures arising from solder cracking in the GPU interposer due to thermal shocks, and that's with stock clocks. Overclockging and/or overvolting could damage chips that are fully in-spec.

You make valid arguments, we have contacted Nvidia to get a more detailed response about how this works. If it's model or vendor specific, which ones will be locked down and which will not, etc. We will post a detailed response when we get it.
Posted by Tarinder - Fri 22 May 2015 21:56
Here's an official response from Nvidia:

“There was a small software regression that caused this and it is now being fixed, we’re sorry for the inconvenience and updated driver will be available next week. In the meantime, if you’re using OC features on your notebook then hold off updating the driver or rollback until the new one arrives.”

SEE NEWER »