Friday, August 6th 2010
EVGA Gives Away ''Free Performance Boost'' to its GTX 460 Users
The GeForce GTX 460 broke the mold set by older GF100-based graphics cards (such as GTX 465, GTX 470, GTX 480), by offering decent overclocking potential for its core and shader clock domains. This allowed partners to pack their factory-overclocked models with generously high clock speeds compared to the reference design model. Apparently EVGA fell a little behind with slightly conservative clock speed boosts on their models, that they decided to give away what they call a "Free Performance Boost" to all owners of their GeForce GTX 460 graphics cards.
The Free Performance Boost is basically a graphics card BIOS update. The new BIOS packs increased clock speeds - 720 MHz for the core (vs. 675 MHz reference), and 1,440 MHz for the shader or CUDA core domain (vs. 1,350 MHz reference). The fan-speed upper limited has been increased to 100%, which was earlier restricted to 70%. The update comes in the form of an update executable that takes care of the entire update process from within Windows. You can get the executable specific to your EVGA GTX 460 model here.
The Free Performance Boost is basically a graphics card BIOS update. The new BIOS packs increased clock speeds - 720 MHz for the core (vs. 675 MHz reference), and 1,440 MHz for the shader or CUDA core domain (vs. 1,350 MHz reference). The fan-speed upper limited has been increased to 100%, which was earlier restricted to 70%. The update comes in the form of an update executable that takes care of the entire update process from within Windows. You can get the executable specific to your EVGA GTX 460 model here.
17 Comments on EVGA Gives Away ''Free Performance Boost'' to its GTX 460 Users
The users most likely who will care would have already used EVGA Precision to get the extra speed they want.
The thing is, EVGA are trusting every core they have put out so far is capable of the new speed the BIOS provides (I can't even be bothered looking at what it is). They should have given the customers that speed at the start because if they did that they won't run the risk of someone with a core that can't handle it downloading it and toasting their card.
They should have just given them a special EVGA Precision with the new speeds built in. The thing is people are going to think EVGA are giving out free stuff, but they're not, they're just overclocking your card.
And by the clock speeds they've set, every core will be able to handle the new speeds, I've yet to see a gTX460 that couldn't, and I'm guessing there might even be a small core voltage increase built into the new BIOS to make sure of it(which I guess is why the max fan speed was raised to 100%, just in case).
And look how much of an utter gimmick that turned out to be?
Here, let me go make a custom/slimmed down Windows services registry file. Then all you do is simply double-click it, select 'yes' when prompted and voila, you now have a free performance boost!
This is the same thing; EVGA isn't doing anyone any favors - they're only perpetuating consumer ignorance and gullibility, and that's never good.
Takes the hassle out of setting overclocks/profiles every time you install OS, etc. and some of us re-install OS more times than we care to admit.
I think they would be perpetuating consumer ignorance and gullibility, if they DIDN'T release the BIOS update or any other fix; and instead ignore the issue or try to convince us that an underclocked card is best.
Just my opinion.
Anyway why even bothering doing upgrade when there's riva tuner evga precision and tools like that. I'd certainly void that upgrade without watt meter in my hand to see how much more fuel it will cost me after unnecessary voltage bump. I wouldnt be too much surprised if the real thing they forgot was voltages they oblige to follow by some nVidia gpu reseller guidelines, and nVidia was worried that chips would suffer from hypothermia :D and wouldn't be killed soon enough for next upgrade.