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Editorial On Elmor's Open Letter, or The State of the Industry

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Well if you, Elmor and the like don't want to flash a BIOS, I say stick to your principles and only go with companies that actively support overclocking.

Ironically you might not win any benchmarks, but at least you have stuck to your guns.

No you can't unlock the BIOS on all cards and like buildzoid said it's a friggin nightmare to work around cards that can't
 

TheLostSwede

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@TheLostSwede Jetway is still in the market but you need to look at industrial segment. Their boards are still interesting albeit higher in price.

So is AOpen and DFI, but who cares, we're talking about consumer products here.
 
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The MSI X370 Titanium has nothing really impressive other than paint and leds, it lacks refclk, has a pretty poor VRM and still the most expensive AM4 board on the market, costing almost $ 100 more than the biostar GT7 whose VRM's are made of top quality ICs but hey, it also still got the eye candy leds .
The Titanium VRM is fullfilled with the world famous and non reliable cheapcrap Nikos fets. Now you figure there are plenty review sites that can do entire review by not stating their opinion, they just state half truths and nothing else.

During the last 7 years

How often a motherboard has been reviewed and received an score that was lower than "ok" ?

How many boards had overclocker badge all around it's features but then showed sub-par VRM capabilities ?

How many boards had their power capabilities down rated by the manufacturers and how many of these boards had said deficiency spotted by the review sites ?

How many times the users had detected and suffered the effects of those faults ?

Yeah, if you answer to these questions then everything elmor is talking about starts to make sense.
 
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eelmor

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I'm really glad this got picked up by TPU, more discussion is definitely needed. To clarify the statements about Intel/AMD/Nvidia and how much they support overclocking and enthusiasts, it's considered from my own perspective and how they work with it together with the manufacturers. Both Intel and AMD has specific overclocking workshops for their platforms to make sure it's supported properly before launch. Additionally they often provide NDA documents with their findings on how to improve overclockability and overall performance of their products. Of course this is not something the customers see directly so I understand if some are confused by the statements.

AMD on their graphics side is a bit worse. They have really strict limits on frequency and TDP ranges when building VGA BIOSes. Additionally the maximum memory frequency is artificially limited by driver & BIOS, I can't understand why.

NVIDIA supports overclocking relatively well by default. The main problems are the limited TDP and voltage ranges available. We're able to build "unlocked" BIOSes for internal use, which is a big help. When it comes to sub-ambient overclocking however, there are a few issue causing us trouble. Requests for solutions which we know are solvable by BIOS has been falling on deaf ears. Additionally as soon as the product is only sold by Nvidia (like Titan X/Xp) there's no support whatsoever. It really annoys me when you know there's so much more performance to be had from a product, but we can't get there because of arbitrary limitations. I guess for most consumers this doesn't really affect you, but this is my perspective.

To the TPU editors, I'm curious to know how you can justify giving a 10.0 score to any X370 motherboard when the platform is in such a broken state? I agree it's really good price performance, but still. https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASRock/X370_Taichi/15.html
 
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Just to add to Elmor there what I said was all from personal experience on how i prefer overclocking on AMD vs Nvidia GPUs.

Overclocking on Nvidia has been a crapshoot for me everytime with hitting powerlimits voltage limits and what not non stop and all the other ridiculous arbitrary made up restrictions like how it throttles down to 1.081v when you reach like 60C or something around there and how you can't increase the voltage AT ALL.

Overclocking AMD cards has always been really free for me since yea I guess the set power limit on BIOSes are really hard set but most higher end SKUs have high power limits that you won't ever really hit unless doing extreme OC under LN2 or something. And you can easily just modify the BIOS to increase the powerlimit if you need to and also increase the memory speed limit and even get this...modify memory timings. I mean damn that's way more advanced overclocking than Nvidias approach of dumbing down overclocking and only letting people move some sliders around. Also another thing is watch how most Nvidia reference PCBs are garbage while AMD makes the absolute most overkill PCBs with the insanely powerful VRMs.

Just my past experiences. Not a fanboy or anything. If you guys see how i have dual 480s its only because i use em for crypto mining and the fact that i AVOID hardware that thinks it knows better than me like the plague (read: Nvidia cards).
 
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Ratings are given in relation to the support given to each component, not on the basis that I would like. That manufacturers replace the main attributes of the product to make the product more attractive to us. From generation to generation more they prevent higher OC ,more it will deteriorate the quality.
 
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Imitation is said to be the sincerest form of flattering, and the entire market (not just the motherboard market, mind you), is built on it. Whether or not this is healthy is another matter entirely - companies who invest in new features do so knowing that their competitors will immediately look towards matching and surpassing their own implementation. They may have a head-start, but it won't ever be a significant one - and original design, feature and product development is much more expensive and time-consuming than imitation. Paving the road is the hardest part, not actually riding it.
Isn't this for patents are for?
 
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This seems - off?
 
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To the TPU editors, I'm curious to know how you can justify giving a 10.0 score to any X370 motherboard when the platform is in such a broken state? I agree it's really good price performance, but still. https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASRock/X370_Taichi/15.html
This exactly!
If it's perfect as is, then what is the point of doing any updates at all, why not just leave it exactly as is? More over, what does it say about the competing products? The Tai Chi with the issues not only inherent in the platform, but with ASRock's own flavor of dysfunction added can't objectively have a perfect score. And in future, If and when all major issues are fixed from AMD and ASRock side. Surely it would mean the board is better at that point, yet it already had a 10. So exactly what is the point of the scoring, what does it even mean?

This kind of thing is exactly what sends tacit approval to vendors that anything and everything is acceptable. 10/10 or 9.9 or some such scoring that has such a positive bias that is makes IGN game scoring look credible by comparison.

Then again, if board reviews have an overclocking section that simply increases the vcore and cpu multiplier then calls it a day. Then yeah, I guess all boards are near perfect.
I'm interested to read how this is explained as well.

Just to add to Elmor there what I said was all from personal experience on how i prefer overclocking on AMD vs Nvidia GPUs.

Overclocking on Nvidia has been a crapshoot for me everytime with hitting powerlimits voltage limits and what not non stop and all the other ridiculous arbitrary made up restrictions like how it throttles down to 1.081v when you reach like 60C or something around there and how you can't increase the voltage AT ALL.

Overclocking AMD cards has always been really free for me since yea I guess the set power limit on BIOSes are really hard set but most higher end SKUs have high power limits that you won't ever really hit unless doing extreme OC under LN2 or something. And you can easily just modify the BIOS to increase the powerlimit if you need to and also increase the memory speed limit and even get this...modify memory timings. I mean damn that's way more advanced overclocking than Nvidias approach of dumbing down overclocking and only letting people move some sliders around. Also another thing is watch how most Nvidia reference PCBs are garbage while AMD makes the absolute most overkill PCBs with the insanely powerful VRMs.

Just my past experiences. Not a fanboy or anything. If you guys see how i have dual 480s its only because i use em for crypto mining and the fact that i AVOID hardware that thinks it knows better than me like the plague (read: Nvidia cards).
You've clearly not overclocked AMD cards on LN2.
constant black screens, driver saving unstable clock settings upon crash (i.e the clocks stick and are loaded on windows start as the driver loads so you can get stuck in a boot loop). Heck, take one of your RX480's and put it under LN2. set 1.3v and see if you can get a signal at all to the monitor?
The mem clock limits baked into those very RX480s isn't easy to remove either.
Not an NVIDIA vs AMD thing, but just making you aware that XOC on AMD has been painful for years on end and it's not gotten better. In fact the Rx480 is the easiest to OC simply because of it's very low clock ceiling.
Be it NVIDIA or AMD, they are not making GPU OC easy at all. The people who would know this the most are the ones involved in XOC more than anyone else, as anything other than that is sliders for both vendors.
Voltage also isn't the issue on air cooling for most GPUs, 1.15v on air for GTX 1080 doesn't add any more frequency than 1.087v. Lots of limitations on NVIDIA GPUs and they've gotten really bad. However these are not going to affect air OC for the most part, but XOC.
 
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How do you do innovation on a motherboard?
 
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Benchmark Scores Faster than yours... I'd bet on it. :)
I'm really glad this got picked up by TPU, more discussion is definitely needed. To clarify the statements about Intel/AMD/Nvidia and how much they support overclocking and enthusiasts, it's considered from my own perspective and how they work with it together with the manufacturers. Both Intel and AMD has specific overclocking workshops for their platforms to make sure it's supported properly before launch. Additionally they often provide NDA documents with their findings on how to improve overclockability and overall performance of their products. Of course this is not something the customers see directly so I understand if some are confused by the statements.

AMD on their graphics side is a bit worse. They have really strict limits on frequency and TDP ranges when building VGA BIOSes. Additionally the maximum memory frequency is artificially limited by driver & BIOS, I can't understand why.

NVIDIA supports overclocking relatively well by default. The main problems are the limited TDP and voltage ranges available. We're able to build "unlocked" BIOSes for internal use, which is a big help. When it comes to sub-ambient overclocking however, there are a few issue causing us trouble. Requests for solutions which we know are solvable by BIOS has been falling on deaf ears. Additionally as soon as the product is only sold by Nvidia (like Titan X/Xp) there's no support whatsoever. It really annoys me when you know there's so much more performance to be had from a product, but we can't get there because of arbitrary limitations. I guess for most consumers this doesn't really affect you, but this is my perspective.

To the TPU editors, I'm curious to know how you can justify giving a 10.0 score to any X370 motherboard when the platform is in such a broken state? I agree it's really good price performance, but still. https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASRock/X370_Taichi/15.html
its a subjective system...there are not defined things bere that tale away points... its all by feel. This is a fundemental problem with any site which reviews give number scores without a defined point system. I also wondered why the letter wasnt posted.

Anyway...ive been complaining to asus, msi, giga, nvidia themselves about their limits on cards. This is all nvidia really. These aib's want the cards, you must fit it within thier parameters. What i keep asking aib is why cant yoh say, fine 'no warranty returns' on one level of card like the classy, or matrix, or lightning... something.

But you find few people care about this at tpu... its mkre run of the mill ambient clocking in these parts. ;)
 
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its nearly ten? years back from now but i can tell ya working at alternate.at we never got 1 dead cpu back in 2 years(and boy ya could oc that i7-920 and most x58 hardware)
but dont ask me how much mainboards(most through user error=pins espacially socket 1366 or shorting them with a wrong placed spacer) we got back telling us we sold them kaputt.

i just tell this because back then i and a lot other benchers in austria bought there and even with ln2 you dont have to ruin hardware if you dont aim for the last mhz which needs quadruple the volt.
hardcore benchers look after there hardware and know the most time what they are doing because just a small elite is getting sponsored and the rest uses their own money
 
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You've clearly not overclocked AMD cards on LN2.
constant black screens, driver saving unstable clock settings upon crash (i.e the clocks stick and are loaded on windows start as the driver loads so you can get stuck in a boot loop). Heck, take one of your RX480's and put it under LN2. set 1.3v and see if you can get a signal at all to the monitor?
The mem clock limits baked into those very RX480s isn't easy to remove either.
Not an NVIDIA vs AMD thing, but just making you aware that XOC on AMD has been painful for years on end and it's not gotten better. In fact the Rx480 is the easiest to OC simply because of it's very low clock ceiling.
Be it NVIDIA or AMD, they are not making GPU OC easy at all. The people who would know this the most are the ones involved in XOC more than anyone else, as anything other than that is sliders for both vendors.
Voltage also isn't the issue on air cooling for most GPUs, 1.15v on air for GTX 1080 doesn't add any more frequency than 1.087v. Lots of limitations on NVIDIA GPUs and they've gotten really bad. However these are not going to affect air OC for the most part, but XOC.

I clearly never said anything about XOC on any of my cards. I just do air or water OC myself so no I don't know how it is under LN2. I've seen it is possible though so I wouldn't say its harder than Nvidia's when you consider all the hoops you have to jump through on Nvidia. And the mem clock limits are easily increase by editing the BIOS using polaris bios editor and also allows you to change timings, so that's another thing that Nvidia doesn't let you do at all. Also more voltage on Nvidia cards do help as long as you have enough cooling like say on water or big air so yes it does affect normal OCs, and the "the frequency gain is small compared to the wattage/voltage increase" argument is pointless because if you care about that you just don't overclock.
 

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To the TPU editors, I'm curious to know how you can justify giving a 10.0 score to any X370 motherboard when the platform is in such a broken state? I agree it's really good price performance, but still. https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASRock/X370_Taichi/15.html

@cadaveca can explain that one better. After playing with the board myself I was unimpressed, but I understand his feelings on release. The board worked with 3200+ MHz ram out of the box overclocked well enough for the testing he did etc. Of the boards released on that platform it seemed more finished.
 
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As someone that used to be a tech writer/journalist for over a decade, the motherboard industry is boring these days. There's no innovation any more, only minor improvements or iterations. One of the best examples is Gigabyte's mini-ITX boards.

This is the port layout of the GA-Z77N-WIFI


And this is the GA-Z270N-WIFI

So over a period of around five years, the only feature change is the addition of a USB-C port. Ok, so the to HDMI ports swapped places with the DVI port (which lost analogue support) and the connectors for the Wi-Fi, but so what?

Sure, the actual boards have some changes, like an M.2 slot for an SSD, the Wi-Fi card is M.2 rather than mini PCIe and the overall board layout has improved, but in terms of the complete feature set, little has changed.

Admittedly this is not limited to Gigabyte, it's an industry wide thing. Compared to the "happy" 00's and the time before then, there's almost no innovation due to the industry having shifted focus, as making PC parts is simply not profitable any more.

On the other hand, I don't understand the Taiwanese board makers that offer 10 different models that only differ in terms of one or two features. It doesn't make economical or logistical sense to offer so many SKUs. I doubt most consumers would care if a motherboard is $10 extra because they get a set of six audio connectors instead of three and an HDMI port, rather than none. However, these are the type of differences there often are between SKUs.

I miss companies like Abit, AOpen, DFI, EPoX, Chaintech, Soyo and dare I say, even Jetway. At times, they all came up with things that no-one had done before. Abit was way ahead of its time in many ways, such as removing all legacy ports, which didn't quite work at the time. AOpen made boards with tube amplifiers for the audio, but sadly used crappy Realtek audio chips that made it quite pointless. DFI had the most advanced BIOS options ever seen, although maybe not always the most stable BIOS releases. EPoX tried a lot of new things, most of them never really took, but at least they tried. Chaintech was also willing to try new things, although that noise little 20mm fan I had at the rear I/O on a board was not a hit. Soyo made some rather good and stylish silver boards. Even Jetway has had a few unique products over the years.

Now it's all about who can put the most RGB bling on the boards, a feature I turn off fairly quickly, as it's not my thing. Yes, it's nice that it's an option, but it's something that's adding a lot of cost to the boards and motherboards have never been more expensive than now. Even basic "performance" chipset boards are easily starting at $150 these days, whereas not too long ago, they started at around $100. The "bundles" you get these days aren't worth to be called bundles, as you don't even get a full set of SATA cables. It would be nice to get the drivers on a USB drive rather than a CD for one, as I haven't had an optical drive in a system for at least a handful of years by now.

The industry is really struggling and in as much as Elmor is concerned about the overclocking potential, it's not the only thing that's suffering. My past couple of Intel based boards (both from Gigabyte) have been fairly unstable and it felt like they were never quite finished off from a UEFI perspective. My new Asus board (and Ryzen processor) has so far, been very stable, which is quite a surprise to me. At the same time, I feel like I was cheated, as it's missing a fair few overclocking features that Asus' ROG board has, but they decided to gimp on this board in favour of flashy LEDs. I know which I would've preferred. On the upside, we're getting vastly better chipset and power regulation these days, no more plastic push pins, which is at least something.

Overall it just feels like there isn't enough competition with three major players in the motherboards industry, as sadly ASRock isn't a full-on competitor, Biostar, well, they just seem to be available in some markets and ECS seems to be on the way out of the consumer space. With Asus, Gigabyte and MSI left, we're stuck in a situation where we have, as mentioned in the article, companies that are only doing just enough to stay on the same level as their competitors, but nothing much more. :(
I'm still waiting for graphics cards to get mounted right side up. :p
 

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To the TPU editors, I'm curious to know how you can justify giving a 10.0 score to any X370 motherboard when the platform is in such a broken state? I agree it's really good price performance, but still. https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASRock/X370_Taichi/15.html
I understand that difference between platform issues and design issues, and remove platform niggles from opinion since I am not specifically reviewing the platform; we have a series of separate reviews for that, starting here: https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/Ryzen_7_1800X/

I'm judging the board makers in board reviews, not the CPU makers in board reviews. I'm available for specific consultation to design staff at any company, under contract. ;)

From our side I'd say OC Socket and DIMM.2 are the best examples of innovation from our side in recent years.

It's not just that. BIOS design is ASUS's forte, and is the one area that few can match. There are also many "fit and finish" design cues that are sorely lacking by other board makers. It's funny because I am working on a review of an ASUS Z270 product right now, and a lot of what ASUS offers specifically in the ROG product lines is ethereal and might not be noticed by people who haven't seen many many boards to notice the differences.

Then again, if board reviews have an overclocking section that simply increases the vcore and cpu multiplier then calls it a day. Then yeah, I guess all boards are near perfect.
I'm interested to read how this is explained as well.

I hate to repeat myself, but... there is a difference between overclocking to reach "records", and overclocking in a way that can be used by the average user on a daily basis. A big part of that is BIOS support for things that the end user does not know about or understand, and how difficult it is for the average user to use the products they bought that were designed for "overclocking" by the masses.

That's the thing; the masses cannot OC and make records. That's a niche of a niche. In order to sell products to the masses, they have to meet the needs of the masses, not the niche.
 
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This exactly!
If it's perfect as is, then what is the point of doing any updates at all, why not just leave it exactly as is? More over, what does it say about the competing products? The Tai Chi with the issues not only inherent in the platform, but with ASRock's own flavor of dysfunction added can't objectively have a perfect score. And in future, If and when all major issues are fixed from AMD and ASRock side. Surely it would mean the board is better at that point, yet it already had a 10. So exactly what is the point of the scoring, what does it even mean?

This kind of thing is exactly what sends tacit approval to vendors that anything and everything is acceptable. 10/10 or 9.9 or some such scoring that has such a positive bias that is makes IGN game scoring look credible by comparison.

Then again, if board reviews have an overclocking section that simply increases the vcore and cpu multiplier then calls it a day. Then yeah, I guess all boards are near perfect.
I'm interested to read how this is explained as well.


You've clearly not overclocked AMD cards on LN2.
constant black screens, driver saving unstable clock settings upon crash (i.e the clocks stick and are loaded on windows start as the driver loads so you can get stuck in a boot loop). Heck, take one of your RX480's and put it under LN2. set 1.3v and see if you can get a signal at all to the monitor?
The mem clock limits baked into those very RX480s isn't easy to remove either.
Not an NVIDIA vs AMD thing, but just making you aware that XOC on AMD has been painful for years on end and it's not gotten better. In fact the Rx480 is the easiest to OC simply because of it's very low clock ceiling.
Be it NVIDIA or AMD, they are not making GPU OC easy at all. The people who would know this the most are the ones involved in XOC more than anyone else, as anything other than that is sliders for both vendors.
Voltage also isn't the issue on air cooling for most GPUs, 1.15v on air for GTX 1080 doesn't add any more frequency than 1.087v. Lots of limitations on NVIDIA GPUs and they've gotten really bad. However these are not going to affect air OC for the most part, but XOC.

The driver saving trash clocks is only a thing if you use GPUTweak or Wattman to OC. Using Sapphire Trixx I never had a problem with the card trying to boot at high core clocks.

The mem clock limit on RX 480s is 1 BIOS value. It really isn't hard to find and replace once you know where it is. I have 2500MHz BIOS for the RX 480 GTR. The only thing I don't know how to remove is cold slow.

The black screen issue is the display drive circuit not liking cold. Though I think the problems with that at least on RX 480s vary from card to card because my XFX RX 480 GTR didn't seem affected by it even at full pot(not that I could actually get any high scores on the card my mount seemed to fail over and over and over again on that card). The ref RX 480 on the other hand dropped out after a few seconds of Firestrike.
 
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No you can't unlock the BIOS on all cards and like buildzoid said it's a friggin nightmare to work around cards that can't

Good, it should be tough. Anyone can adjust a slider on Afterburner after all.

Silicon lottery plus an apparently "artificial" limitation sounds like a challenge to me.
 
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Good, it should be tough. Anyone can adjust a slider on Afterburner after all.

Silicon lottery plus an apparently "artificial" limitation sounds like a challenge to me.

Why are you defending a company blocking you from modifying your property? That's just absurd.
 

cdawall

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Why are you defending a company blocking you from modifying your property? That's just absurd.

Which company are you referencing? The one that requires a signed driver, has been artificially limiting overclocks since they added overclocking into the driver or the one that auto overclocks past the "rated speeds" straight out of the box?
 
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Which company are you referencing? The one that requires a signed driver, has been artificially limiting overclocks since they added overclocking into the driver or the one that auto overclocks past the "rated speeds" straight out of the box?

The company that has been artificially limiting voltages and power limits and disallowing AIBs to make extreme unlocked voltage cards. Oh and the company that has a throttling feature that they call "boost".

Don't get me started.

AMD limits clockspeeds? Where was that? You can easily mod the BIOS for the memory speeds as well and the signed BIOS is easily patched with a small tool that just requires one click where the green company's signed BIOS can't be worked around with.

Go suck Nvidia's d*ck somewhere else.
 

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The company that has been artificially limiting voltages and power limits and disallowing AIBs to make extreme unlocked voltage cards. Oh and the company that has a throttling feature that they call "boost".

Don't get me started.

AMD limits clockspeeds? Where was that? You can easily mod the BIOS for the memory speeds as well and the signed BIOS is easily patched with a small tool that just requires one click where the green company's signed BIOS can't be worked around with.

Go suck Nvidia's d*ck somewhere else.

The only reason I have an nvidia card right now is because AMD yet again is a year late and a dollar short. Both companies limit their products. Nvidia even limited is currently selling a better performing product. Buy a top end card and both companies offer XOC bios's. There is already a BIOS for my Ti with a 1.24vgpu and no TDP limit, that is as easy as a flash away.

This unlike your card wont blow the VRM's up when I use that BIOS, nor does it ship with a warning against using furmark. It also performs better than a pair of 480's in all games at all things, short of heat production. I know this because it replaced a pair of RX480's, which replaced an R9 290, which replaced a pair of 7950's (flashed to R9 280 and heavily overclocked). I also have a stack of Fury's I play with on occasion.

Might want to look into the history of some of the members here before assuming they swing one way or the other. I could care less what color the card is. I have a 4k monitor and want to play games maxed out without sounding like a jet taking off or have every other game not work because it doesn't have a profile.

AMD is no hero here. Both companies limit their products.
 
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