Wednesday, October 3rd 2012
NVIDIA Forces EVGA to Pull EVBot Support from GTX 680 Classified
According to an Overclockers.com report, NVIDIA forced EVGA to remove voltage control, more specifically, support for its EVBot accessory, on its GeForce GTX 680 Classified graphics card. EVBot, apart from realtime monitoring, gives users the ability to fine-tune voltages, a feature NVIDIA doesn't want users access to. This design change was communicated by EVGA's Jacob Freeman, in response to a forum question a users who found his new GTX 680 Classified card to lack the EVBot header.
"Unfortunately newer 680 Classified cards will not come with the EVBot feature. If any questions or concerns please contact us directly so we can offer a solution," said Freeman. Hinting that NVIDIA is behind the design change, he said "Unfortunately we are not permitted to include this feature any longer," later adding "It was removed in order to 100% comply with NVIDIA guidelines for selling GeForce GTX products, no voltage control is allowed, even via external device." To make matters worse, Freeman said that EVGA has no immediate plans to cut prices of the GTX 680 Classified.
Source:
Overclockers.com
"Unfortunately newer 680 Classified cards will not come with the EVBot feature. If any questions or concerns please contact us directly so we can offer a solution," said Freeman. Hinting that NVIDIA is behind the design change, he said "Unfortunately we are not permitted to include this feature any longer," later adding "It was removed in order to 100% comply with NVIDIA guidelines for selling GeForce GTX products, no voltage control is allowed, even via external device." To make matters worse, Freeman said that EVGA has no immediate plans to cut prices of the GTX 680 Classified.
99 Comments on NVIDIA Forces EVGA to Pull EVBot Support from GTX 680 Classified
Also it is AIBs fault in part, cause they promised what they couldn't deliver.
I think that when Jacob Freeman said "It was removed in order to 100% comply with NVIDIA guidelines for selling GeForce GTX products" he might actually be like saying "If we want to get the warranty...".
:o
www.tomshardware.co.uk/MSI-GTX-660-670-overvolting-PowerEdition,news-40278.html
edit: lol it's the same posted by Humansmoke (kinda)I think there's much more to the voltage story than we can know by just looking at a single source.
Right now, to me the whole thing just looks like the kids have been misbehaving and toying with things they shouldn't have and now daddy is angry.
www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2012/10/3/nvidias-green-light-program--improving-quality-or-strangling-innovation.aspx
Thank you all! You know who you are :)
:toast:
seriously though... this is a bad move on nVidia's part.
MSI put a part speced with a maximum operating voltage of 5v, way up to 8v, why is Nvdia supposed to cover that graphics card with a warranty?
EVGA is not as bad, or maybe it is, since they are allowing users (even idiots) to use whatever voltage they want, way higher than the maximum safe voltage specified by Nvidia. It's EVGA who has to take responsabilty if it breaks, not Nvidia. That's why specifications are set in the first place.
Nvidia just said, "we quit covering parts that do not meet our specifications, if you want to go beyond that, you are on your own", MSI and EVGA simply prefered to get the warranty. It's all their fault.
EDIT: Of course EVGA should keep the feature and suck it up if they get a very high return rate. Problem is they probably know full well they'd end up having big loses. All the related stories makes me think that Nvidia was covering those faulty chips until now, which is unthinkable in any industry that I know off. Anywhere if you push something beyond the specifications you're SOL.
The way its doing it or atleast the info that is being reported on is bad.
If project greenlight was established as a product quality control for AIB designs. Common sense would make you beleive all designs go through Nvidia. So they had to approve the desing at some point as per the BSN report.
So what changed ?
Did Nvidia strong arm the MSI and EVGA to change those designs or suffer ?
Reasonable thing to do if they were approved by Nvidia at somepoint just to phase them out. They were advertise and sold as such and if approved Nvidia and AIB should suffer the RMAs but Nvidia shouldn't strong arm to drop "card x" or AIB to risk warranties on all others cards.
And the cards are still approved. Greenlight seems to be about what AIBs can do, not about what is covered by Nvidia's own warranty. They are and have always been free to create such products, they still are, but Nvidia doesn't cover the warranty. And they shouldn't, why should they cover warranties of products that exceed their safety limits? Overvolting is allowed and covered by warranty, up to a point, extreme overvolting is not covered. Makes 100% sense.
What it doesn't make any sense is that it's implied that before now, Nvidia actually covered designs that went beyond their specifications and limits. At least to me, that's competely unheard off in any industry and if AMD is doing that too, they better change that model since it's not reasonable, nor fair for them. Nvidia has typically offered more extreme OC cards and maybe that's why tho.