NVIDIA Disables GeForce GTX 900M Mobile GPU Overclocking with Driver Update

tommybhoy · 12 Feb 2015 at 15:13

With GeForce R347 drivers (version 347.29), NVIDIA disabled overclocking on its GeForce GTX 900M series mobile GPUs. Buyers of new notebooks, and using older drivers, with the chips fell under the impression that like their desktop counterparts, the GTX 900M series support overclocking, until they updated their drivers to 347.29, to find that their overclocks were wiped back to reference clocks, and overclocking using third-party tools was disabled.

When angry users took to the official GeForce forums to report the bug, NVIDIA explained that overclocking on the GTX 900M series was enabled by accident, and has since been disabled with the recent driver updates. This explanation was met by angry reactions by users who argued that they should be allowed to use the hardware as they want, even if it voids their warranties. Historically, overclocking was allowed on NVIDIA GPUs.

http://www.techpowerup.com/209820/n...bile-gpu-overclocking-with-driver-update.html

Disturbing habit lately with all this disabling...

Nvidia The Way It's Meant To Be Disabled

Rroff · 12 Feb 2015 at 15:14

Definitely shouldn't be completely locked out - can understand hiding it behind advanced features and/or a warning dialog, locking it out entirely is just small minded and petty.

Gregster · 12 Feb 2015 at 15:20

Terrible....Next.

ED209 · 12 Feb 2015 at 15:25

don't see why they removed the ability to overclock the GPU, surely its down to the owner what they want to do with it

Marine-RX179 · 12 Feb 2015 at 15:29

tommybhoy said:
Nvidia The Way It's Meant To Be Disabled

"More than 5 years in the making"

tommybhoy · 12 Feb 2015 at 15:36

Marine-RX179 said:
"More than 5 years in the making"

Gregster said:
Terrible....Next.

Discrete gpu's.

Gregster · 12 Feb 2015 at 15:38

tommybhoy said:
Discrete gpu's.

I look forward to it.

Orangey · 12 Feb 2015 at 15:41

What's it gonna take for NV to embrace OCing.

mmj_uk · 12 Feb 2015 at 15:55

Seems quite sensible given that power circuitry and cooling on mobile devices is often just about good enough for standard operation and anyone who kills their device overclocking won't take responsibility for damaging it and will just RMA it.

r7slayer · 12 Feb 2015 at 15:57

Guys stop trolling... Pritty please!

Yea i dont get why nVidia don't like overclocking so much! Then again i guess its to keep their returns % low. Still would be nice to allow some sort of user overclocking!

RavenXXX2 · 12 Feb 2015 at 15:59

It's so Ngreadia can overclock the same GPU's and sell them as upgrades next year, simples.

TheRealDeal · 12 Feb 2015 at 16:00

RavenXXX2 said:
It's so Ngreadia can overclock the same GPU's and sell them as upgrades next year, simples.

+1

SiDeards73 · 12 Feb 2015 at 16:33

lol Nvidia just go from one PR disaster to the next, wont stop the millions of drones buying their products though.

The average kid gamer in the street, loads up a game and see's Nvidia logo's everywhere and then just thinks "oh i need a card from them to play it" and then just carries on through life supporting their products without ever visiting forums like this or other tech forums.

Normally they dont even bother with driver updates, as long as the game works, if it doesnt, google, first reply "update the drivers", update drivers, game works, life goes on.

Its only enthuisiasts that care about the hardware they are buying and dig deeper, the common Nvidia owner probably couldnt even tell you what specs of the card they have, can probably just about tell you the model if you asked.

RanxZy · 12 Feb 2015 at 16:33

RavenXXX2 said:
It's so Ngreadia can overclock the same GPU's and sell them as upgrades next year, simples.

Surprise surprise :rolleyes:

bru · 12 Feb 2015 at 16:46

Although I can understand the reasoning behind having a mobile product that run to a certain spec to protect the overall hardware. the way that Nvdia go about these things really sucks.

Maybe they should divert some of that profit they have made into a decent customer relations team, because they way they handle these incidents is really, really bad.

guitaristanime · 12 Feb 2015 at 17:16

Nvidia really aren't handling media well at the moment.

Disco_P · 12 Feb 2015 at 17:16

You had to flash a custom bios to get overclocking on my 860M. Even then it wasn't easy to overclock as MSI AB didn't work.

Finally most people used to undervolt rather than overclock for better thermals and acoustics.

eyetrip · 12 Feb 2015 at 17:57

Nvidia - "we don't care what you want. We will give you what we feel like and you will like it."

humbug · 12 Feb 2015 at 18:05

tommybhoy said:
http://www.techpowerup.com/209820/n...bile-gpu-overclocking-with-driver-update.html

Disturbing habit lately with all this disabling...

Nvidia The Way It's Meant To Be Disabled

The problem is the power efficiency; particularity on Maxwell depends on a tight set of predefined perimeters, once you start overclocking it can throw those parameters out and increase power consumption dramatically. It's A kind of (Goldilocks zone)

It's why some factory overclocked GTX 970/80 actually have power consumption levels comparable to GK110.

In Maxwell laptop's it's important to maintain that efficiency and therefore those predefined parameters, so no overcocking.

chaparral · 12 Feb 2015 at 18:31

Surely you can just edit the clock speeds to faster ones in the bios